Tips Guides

Almost any small business can use advice on how to improve its collection cycle. The first line of defense against late payments is a complete invoice. Your bills should be accurate, detailed and easy to understand. If difficult to understand, then your client will need to call for additional information. That translates into “you have been added to their to-do list,” which increases the time of your collection cycle. Include on each invoice:

- Your company’s contact information: name, address, tax id number, phone and contact person
- The date the invoice was prepared
- The customer’s name and address
- A description of the goods or services sold to the customer - itemize, if possible (An itemized bill is harder to contest.)
- The amount due, with sales tax amount broken out
- When the invoice is due

Once prepared, send invoices promptly. Another piece of small business advice is the longer you take to bill a customer the less likely you are to receive payment for the goods and services provided.

Many of my business mentoring clients are surprised to learn that the step requiring the most amount of time in the cash conversion process is the time it takes to collect on a customer account. The cash conversion process begins the moment they make contact with the customer, and ends when they have received and deposited payment from that customer; hopefully this cycle repeats itself each month.

The time it takes my business mentoring clients to collect their accounts receivable is measured by the average accounts receivable collection period. The average accounts receivable collection period is an important indicator for determining when their business will be paid for the goods and services it provides.

This simple calculation gives you a powerful tracking tool that helps you adjust your cash in-flow on an as-needed basis:

Step 1: Calculate your average collection period by dividing your total sales for the previous year by 365. This gives you your average daily sales volume.
(Total Sales / 365 Days = Average Daily Sales Volume)

Step 2: Then divide your average daily sales volume into your current accounts receivable balance to get the number of days it takes to collect a bill.
(Average Accounts Receivable Collection Period = Average Daily Sales Volume / Current Accounts Receivable Balance)

Now that you know your average accounts receivable collection period, you then need to interpret that number as it relates to your business by asking four important bookkeeping service questions.

Bookkeeping Service Question #1: Is your average accounts receivable collection period in line with the company’s credit policy? If your credit terms provide your customers with 30 days to pay their bills, then you should expect that your average collection period will be somewhere around 30 days - maybe a little longer. If your average collection period is 60 days then you need to examine other factors that affect billing.

Bookkeeping Service Question #2: Are you billing your customers consistently? Look at your Accounts Receivable Aging Report, the report that summarizes all of your outstanding invoices by client and number of days outstanding. Are the outstanding invoices on that report related to products and services sold within the last 45 days, or are they related to products and services you provided three months ago and just got around to billing? Create a procedure to bill customers once a week or each time you have a completed sale.

Bookkeeping Service Question #3: Are you billing your customers effectively? Are your customers calling you with questions about your invoice? Perhaps you didn’t have that important upfront conversation with your client about how you charge for your products and services. By having this conversation, confusion and anxiety over wondering if the customer is going to pay you can be eliminated.

Bookkeeping Service Question #4: Are you tracking overdue accounts and taking consistent action to collect past due accounts? Do you have an effective tool in place to track when an account comes due, and knowing who has paid their bills and who has not? When a customer’s invoice goes past its due date, is there a procedure in place to follow-up with that customer? Sometimes sending customer statements and making friendly reminder calls is all it takes.

By answering these four basic questions, implementing a few bookkeeping service procedures and heeding this small business advice, you’ll soon be running a fine-tuned collection machine.

Laurie O’Neil is the co-founder of The Bookkeeper’s Referral Network Inc., the place where business meets great bookkeepers. To get your copy of The 9 Disastrous Mistakes Most Freelance Bookkeeper’s Make in
Business (and How You Can Avoid Them!) visit http://www.bkpr-network.com

My least favorite thing is ’selling’ my services to potential new clients. It makes me uncomfortable. Then a few years ago, Beth my business coach said, “Linda, why not describe the reasons why someone needs good bookkeeping? Talk about that during your initial meeting.” I was skeptical; I didn’t believe it would work. She encouraged me to try the approach at my next meeting with a potential bookkeeping business client.

Well, I did, and much to my surprise her bookkeeping business advice worked! Not only did that client hire me, but also referred me to two colleagues. The approach I used - and still use - is simply to explain why it is so important to have good records.

Here are nine reasons why it’s important for businesses to have good financial recordkeeping systems. Use one, two or all of them with your next potential new client. Whether your potential client is devising or revising their bookkeeping routine, remind them that the purpose of your bookkeeping business is to help them manage their business tasks.

#1 Reason for Retaining Bookkeeping Services: Monitor the Financial Success or Failure of Your Business
It’s hard to know where you are going if you don’t know where you’ve been. The same is true with your business - it’s hard to know how your business is doing without a clear financial picture. A good financial system provides answers to the questions: Am I making money? Are sales increasing? How do expenditures compare to sales?

#2 Reason for Retaining Bookkeeping Services: Provides the Information You Need to Make Decisions
Evaluating financial consequences should be part of every business decision. Without accurate records and financial information, it’s difficult to forecast the impact of any given course of action. For example, financial information gives insight as to whether or not it pays to hire another salesperson. Accurate records reveal the profitability of any line item.

#3 Reason for Retaining Bookkeeping Services: Obtain Bank Financing
The best time to seek financing is when you don’t need it. The bank will want to see your income statement, balance sheet and tax returns for the most current and prior years, as well as projected statements showing the impact of the requested loan.

#4 Reason for Retaining Bookkeeping Services: Obtain Other Sources of Capital
If your business has reached the point where you need to take in a partner or investor, any prospective associate will want to become intimately familiar with your financial picture. Suppliers and other creditors may also ask for certain financial records. The source of this information is based on your day-to-day recordkeeping.

#5 Reason for Retaining Bookkeeping Services: Prepare a Budget
All businesses should use budgets for planning purposes. Budgets keep businesses on track by forecasting cash needs and controlling expenditures. When companies seek financing, bankers or prospective investors look for budgets as evidence of planning and stability.

#6 Reason for Retaining Bookkeeping Services: Prepare Your Income Tax Return
No matter what your business entity, you must file an income tax return and pay income taxes. With good records, preparing an accurate tax return will be easier and filing will more likely be done on time. Poor recordkeeping may result in underpayment or overpayment of your taxes. If your CPA prepares your tax return, poor records could result in higher accounting costs.

#7 Reason for Retaining Bookkeeping Services: Comply with Federal and State Payroll Tax Rules
If you have employees, you are aware of the myriad of rules and regulations relating to payroll taxes. Payroll tax must be deposited according to strict deadlines. Late payments of payroll taxes result in severe penalties, including jail time!

Payroll tax returns must be filed quarterly, and must reconcile with payroll deposits made during the quarter. At year end, you’re required to give employees and the government W-2 forms, which must agree with your quarterly payroll returns. Sound bookkeeping practices, even if you use a payroll processor, will make compliance with payroll rules easy. Poor records will make it impossible.

#8 Reason for Retaining Bookkeeping Services: Submit Sales Taxes
If you collect sales tax, good records make it easy for you to compute the tax due and prepare the required reports. Sales tax must be deposited according to strict deadlines. Late payment of sales taxes can result in severe and unnecessary penalties and interest.

#9 Reason for Retaining Bookkeeping Services: Distribute Profits
If your business is a partnership, you will need good records to determine the correct amount of profits to distribute to each partner. If you’re operating as a corporation, profits that you’ll be paying out as dividends to the shareholders must be determined.

I encourage you to try this approach. It’s one of the best pieces of bookkeeping business advice that I can pass onto you.

Laurie O’Neil is the co-founder of The Bookkeeper’s Referral Network Inc., the place where business meets great bookkeepers. To get your copy of The 9 Disastrous Mistakes Most Freelance Bookkeeper’s Make in
Business (and How You Can Avoid Them!) visit http://www.bkpr-network.com

Many accountants, especially the younger generation, have heard of SaaS by now, and no we’re not talking about Statements on Auditing Standards(SAS)–though they are a delightful topic as well. SaaS stands for Software as a Service and basically means instead of having a physical copy of your software, everything is run through the Internet.

This means that it isn’t absolutely necessary to go to the store and buy Quickbooks, you can actually just use online software that will store all of your information. This somewhat recent technology has advantages and disadvantages over the traditional method.

Advantages

The biggest advantage of accounting SaaS is that you can access your accounting information/software from anywhere in the world and from any computer in the world. Before SaaS, accountants were still able to access their accounting information from anywhere in the world as long as they had their laptops with them. With SaaS, the accountant no longer needs to bring a laptop along, all the accountant needs is access to the Internet from any computer.

You can think of accounting SaaS as being like checking your email. All you have to do is log in and you have complete access to all of your accounting data (pretty unbelievable). You can even use your phone to update/check your accounting system as long as the phone has Internet capabilities.

Another big advantage of accounting SaaS is that someone else is responsible for the upkeep of your data(this is also the biggest weakness, but more about this in a minute). With SaaS the accounting data is hosted by the company providing the software. They are responsible for its integrity and security which can save accounting organizations a lot of headaches and time. Having the information hosted on another server also frees up room on the organization’s personal system.

Weaknesses

Did we mention that someone else is hosting your precious, invaluable data? With accounting SaaS they are, and it can be scary to think that years worth of important invoices, payables, and other ledgers are in someone else’s control. If the company that is hosting your information is not established, they could simply go out of business and with them all of your data.

A simple suggestion is to make sure that you have physical backups of all of the accounting data. You can request these regularly from the companies hosting your accounting data.

Inherent risk of the Internet. Accountants know all about inherent risk and the nature of the Internet can be a little risky. Your data is being stored online and could be stolen or ruined by bored hackers or eager competitors. Set inherent risk to “very high” when using the beloved audit decision making model.

Accounting SaaS is a very valuable tool that offers flexibility that was previously unknown in the accounting world. Deciding whether the benefits of accounting SaaS outweigh the costs is a decision that shouldn’t be taken lightly. We suggest picking up some more work on the way by having your accounting company audit the hosting company to check for proper internal controls (wink, wink).

Kimberlie is a Masters of Accounting Student and an author. Come find out more about church accounting software and free church accounting software

There is probably a million ways for you to improve being a baseball player. And there are also a million things for you to do every single thing. I have not met any player who denied wanting to be better than they already are when in fact, they are already better in the first place. Perhaps, it is everyone’s wish to be able to play fair and square and to be the best that they can be in order to win many games and perhaps improve their career as baseball players. It is alright to think this way and they have to really work hard on it. Let us look some of the ways a baseball player can become the best that he can be.

Have an instructor who will guide you in your training and who will direct you to the right and correct way of training. However, not everyone can hire their personal trainer except of course those big league people who have salaries for a month that is enough to buy a house. But for those who can’t do not worry because all you need to do is search among your friends who has in depth knowledge on baseball and you are as good as have gotten yourself a personal trainer for that matter.

Hitting tees for your hitting training can be the best there is for you to practice basic hitting and swinging that bat on. Most major league baseball players make use of hitting tees to maintain their hitting and be consistent in how they swing the bat. You can learn from players who have made use of this very effective tool and hone your abilities toward perfection, well maybe not perfect but almost because once you do this, I assure you will hit that ball from one end to another with perfect timing. Maintain this kind of training and you are on a good way to go.

Obtain maximum power of speed and consistency. There are exercises that will help you obtain maximum power with your speed and consistency of hitting and one of them are plyometric exercises which can increase significantly your speed and consistency. Some instructors or perhaps even skilled trainers can give you a specific routine for you to be able to achieve that maximum power for yourself and for you to be able to work on it on your own. Learn from them effectively. If you practice the routine they give you on a constant and regular manner, you will achieve that maximum power of yours in no time at all. All you need is to believe.

What I have mentioned are just pointers and not necessarily the exact way for players to improve their skills as baseball players. They could help but not the direct path towards success. How you do it will really make a big difference above all else. These pointers are a guide and it is entirely up to you if you follow them religiously or not. But I assure you, you will really make a difference in your ball game.

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Love is the most precious feeling and also a bittersweet one at that. Once you find it, you will have to hold on to it as if it will end your life if you lose it. As women of modern times, we kind of fall in love with head over heels over one guy at some point in time. The biggest problem that we must face however is if they do not feel the same way towards us or they can’t reciprocate the love we give no matter how great it is. But here are few things you can do to get a guy fall in love with you and stay that way.

Build up your self-confidence. Love yourself more because this is what most guy find attractive. Your self-confidence will radiate to anyone looking and will become evident on how you treat yourself and how you carry yourself when confronted by many situations. If you tell your man that you will change yourself for him, chances are you will lose his affection rather quickly because most men find this not flattering at all. They would not want to love someone who has not tried to love herself first. If you love yourself more, he will realize that you are a contented woman and will stick by you no matter what happens.

Learn how to be independent. This is also one thing that men find attractive in women. It does not mean that you should be someone who has the authority and power running your own company or have a job enough to feed a whole family. Instead this independence simply means that you can take care of yourself and not fussy about things involving the gender issue. If you do not depend on others for care, affection or even money then you are a self-sufficient woman worthy of a guy’s attention.

All of us women have past relationship as well as all men do. But bringing past relationship failed issues into the new one is surely the quickest way to lose your guy. Men considers the past as past and leaves them there, so they more appreciate you if you leave the past behind and begin a new chapter with them. While it is true that you must have been cheated in the past, men do not like to be stereotyped so they do not want you to accuse them of being the same as the guy before them. Also do not complain about your last guy more than allowed because your guy might think that you also talk about them to someone else.

You reap what you sow and this pretty much is true in every relationships. If you sow love, you will reap love in return no matter how little or how big it may be. Do not get overwhelmed by the fact that some guys can sometimes be blind that their treasured other halves is already in front of them. This simply is because not all can have the same appreciative eyes and heart as you are. Just be true.

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Women loves to cross legs and this is also the most popular way of developing varicose veins. Varicose veins are the veins found behind your calves that have distinct purplish color characteristics usually knotted that can be seen on the skin surface. Veins have valves like those that are found on the calves. They become varicose if these valves malfunction which will normally help in the circulation of blood from there towards the heart. By law of gravity, the blood that is supposed to go back up to the heart gets stuck or gets harder to be pumped up. When this happens, your veins get distended or will swell up. To fight this you need to improve your blood circulation.

1. Exercise: Working out or physical activities will help improve your circulation. Simple walking or jogging can help move that blood from and to wherever they had to. If you work out your legs for example, this will mean you will need more oxygen to that area thus the heart will push more blood towards that direction and deliver the oxygen it needs. As the muscles in that area takes up oxygen, the end result of metabolism is the emission of carbon dioxide which will be taken by the blood back to the heart then will be transported to the lungs to be oxygenated again. The cycle will repeat itself. So move that legs on and the blood will keep moving too.

2. Appropriate shoes: Very high heeled shoes can add to your glamour and height but they also add strain to your legs. If you don’t strain your legs too much with low heeled shoes then your veins will not endure so much strain and work too. You need to know that everything when too much becomes a bad habit. If you really care about beauty and fashion, you better take good care of your body the way it is supposed to be taken cared of.

3. Have a break: If you have been doing something for very long, take a break. In the same manner, if you have been sitting too much, stand up and stretch that slender legs of yours and vice versa. Your body has limits and you need to be aware of this. So why don’t you start thinking what your body really needs?

4. Weight loss: If you weigh heavier than normal according to height and age, chances are that you will give too much pressure on your leg. If you put pressure on your leg, this will also cause pressure and strain on to your veins. Losing weight does not also give you the benefit of not having varicose veins. You will also have healthy knees and bones of the lower extremities for that matter and so many more benefits as far as health is concerned.

5. Release pressure. If you got used to crossing your leg perhaps it is about time that you uncross those beauties up to release the pressure. This is done to avoid distention of the veins, which will eventually become one of the factors for varicose vein development.

Whatever you do to your body is entirely up to you. If you want to enjoy this beautiful blessing by taking care of it is your choice. After all, we are given such gift to love and cherish, not destroy.

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