Cross Country Bookkeeping Service
(And you thought I'd never ask!) You might think this post is a little bit early but, from a bookkeeper's standpoint, there's no such thing as being too early to get and keep your business organized. With year end quickly approaching, bookkeepers all over the nation are gearing up for tax season. Every year we get an influx of potential clients who are: 1. New in business 2. Don't keep records 3. Hired the wrong person & have a mess on their hands 4. Outsourced their books to a non-performing company 5. Missed a bookkeepers Cheltenham prior year income tax deadline 6. Didn't file quarterly sales tax returns 7. Didn't file quarterly employer returns 8. Didn't make timely tax deposits 9. Mixed personal receipts with business 10. Have received letters from the IRS and have gone into panic mode As a bookkeeper, I've become very adept at doing things "on the fly" when a business lags behind or waits until the last minute. But at the end of the year, with so many new prospects, it's first come, first served and the work piles up until I find myself working 7 days a week, 16 hours a day. From the beginning of the year, until April has come and gone, I have no life and this becomes my schedule. January ~ reconcile payrolls, prepare W-2 forms, file year end employer returns and annual returns for federal and state. Hunt down taxpayer ID numbers and addresses for subcontractors and get the 1099 forms in the mail. February ~ start work on new clients' projects ~ last year I had 11 new clients whose books had either never been touched, had not been completed, or were totally messed up by the person doing them. If not already mailed, W-3 forms need to be filed.
March ~ still working on new clients books. By this time I have the majority of them ready for taxes but am still fielding calls for prospective work. 9 times out of 10, I have to turn the work down or refer it to another bookkeeper because, if I know I can't get it done before the tax deadline, I won't commit to doing it. April ~ putting the finishing touches on all my client accounts and making sure the income and expense accounts are in order for the tax preparer. I do prepare returns for most of my clients but when I'm overloaded, I outsource the returns to 2 trusted and reliable sources. April also has a deadline of the 30th for the 1st quarter employer and sales tax returns [Jan through Mar] so, after filing business returns I have 2 weeks to file the the other returns. By May I'm exhausted and ready to take a month off. But by that time I'm become so involved in getting everything ready and getting taxes and returns out of the way that I've managed to fall behind on the regular monthly maintenance and have to play catch up. Here are some things to consider before the end of the year: 1. If you don't get your paperwork to a bookkeeper before too long, you may find that no one is available after the first of the year. 2. If you wait until mid-March and later to find a bookkeeper, you'll almost assuredly need to file an extension. 3. If you've already placed your work with a bookkeeper or an outsource service, you will definitely want to get a progress report from them as to how far along they are to make sure you're going to be ready on time. 4. Filing extensions are not without risk. If you file an extension believing you owe nothing, then find out you do, you can be penalized. If you know you'll have 1099 forms to issue, get your W-9 forms to the vendors and get them back ASAP. The sooner you start, the better. Not everyone will get it back to you in time and some may never respond at all. Sending and receiving W-9 forms is time-consuming. The best way to ensure compliance is to have the contractor sign a W-9 form before they receive their very first check from you. If you have employees, give them all an update form before the end of the year in case they've moved since they started working for you. This will alleviate or reduce the amount of forms that will be returned to you if they're all mailed. If a W-2 is returned for a terminated employee, however, you can place the unopened envelope in the terminated employee's file until he/she calls you for it. There's no obligation to locate them on your part if the envelope is returned. It's their responsibility to notify you before W-2 forms are mailed of any change of address. Here are a few ways you can save your bookkeeper time and you the money. [BTW ~ not every bookkeeper uses the same guidelines, but these tips should still save you money in the long run.] 1. Organize your receipts by bank or credit card account, not by category.
2. Have your bank statements and credit card statements available for data entry and reconciliation. 3. Keep cash receipts in one place and be sure to label the expense type if it isn't obvious. 4. Forward 1099, 1098, and any other miscellaneous forms to your bookkeeper on receipt. 5. If you're tracking income by customer, please note the customer's name or account number on the deposit. 6. If you use PayPal, please have each of the monthly reports printed to a PDF along with the financial statement PayPal provides for use in reconciling the PayPal account. 7. If you collect and pay sales tax and your website can generate a taxable and non-taxable sales report, either print the report out in PDF format or print each of the sales orders out that tax was collected on. Part of a bookkeeper's job is to get to know who you are and we typically find this out by interviewing at the same time you interview us. Unless you've decided the bookkeeper you're interviewing won't work for you, be open. Most important of all, just be yourself and share with us what your concerns are, if you have any personal deadlines, and keep us posted if you leave town so that we can get our questions answered and don't have to hold up your project. Just remember, we've got holidays coming up that will cut down on the time you'll have to prepare for year end so getting started now would be a really, really good idea! If anyone has questions, contact me when you get the chance and I'll be happy to help. http://crosscountry.hubpages.com/hub/CrossCountry-2