How Do You Get Started?

Last week we discussed the benefits of going paperless. Not only could it save you time and money, but it can be a much more convenient way of doing business.

Rest assured it’s not too difficult to start a paperless trail. But you should approach the process thoughtfully in order to avoid the trouble spots many have stumbled in to. Here are a few steps you can take to get started.

Choose your document management software
Research and pick the document management software that will work best for your business. There are many valuable packages out there, including Acct1st, Cabinet NG, CCH, Doc.It, Easy Access Data, GoFileRoom, Intuit Lacerte, Intuit ProSeries, and Thomson Tax & Accounting. Some document management companies offer training with their software, a service that may cost more upfront, but save more money in the end. Consider all your options before committing to one package.

Buy a quality scanner
It’s important that you get a quality scanner before you begin converting all those paper documents into electronic files. And because a scanner is a significant investment, you should do your homework to ensure that the one you purchase matches your needs. An article entitled “Paperless Payoffs,” published in this year’s June issue of Accounting Technology, advices paperless hopefuls on things to look for when purchasing a scanner. They include:

• Paper feed: How many sheets can it handle at a time and does it accommodate multiple paper sizes?
• Speed: How many sheets does it scan per minute? DeFelice recommends 30 to 50 per minute for smaller firms.
• Smart scanning: This feature enables scanners to recognize certain forms (like tax forms) and populate the forms with corresponding data.
• Resolution: How important is it for your business to scan quality images? In some instances it may be beneficial (presentations, etc.) but in others it may slow down your scanner and use too much memory.
• Service: Is the scanner packaged with a service agreement? Maintenance costs can be excessive, but if your scanner comes with a good service agreement you can expect timely service when necessary.

Develop a document scanning process
To ensure that you get all your documents scanned in the order in which you want them to be, you should develop a process beforehand and follow it. Feel free to revise the process as you learn more.

Revisit your business processes
Once you’ve scanned all your documents and it’s business as usual, you should take the time to evaluate your businesses processes. Now that you’re working in an electronic environment there are changes that need to be made; some steps need to be eliminated and some steps need to be added. But in order for you to reap the benefits of a paperless office you must be willing to assess your procedures and make the necessary changes.

Back it up
Once your files are managed and stored electronically, you need to take the proper measures to protect those files by backing them up. You have lots of options, including flash drives, web-based storage, and external drives. Pick your method and back up your files frequently.

Going paperless can be a worthwhile endeavor as long as you don’t approach it haphazardly. Do your homework and evaluate each step you take to ensure that you are indeed creating a more convenient, time-saving, and money-saving process.

References
DeFelice, Alexandra. “Paperless Payoffs: Rewards from Document Management Systems.” Accounting Technology. June, 2007: 19-26.

Additional Services - Additional Income

Don’t Ignore The Services Traditionally Offered by a Company’s Accountant

It wasn’t really that long ago. Only a few years ago most accountants/bookkeepers offered a complete service to their clients. Bookkeeping services included monthly reports and analysis, quarterly tax reports and year end tax filings. All of these services were traditionally provided by the company’s bookkeeper.

It’s no surprise that a tax accountant is the perfect choice to help make decisions throughout the entire year that will affect year end tax results. And a qualified bookkeeper who is in the books on a monthly basis knows more about the financial workings of a small business than anyone else. If the bookkeeper and the tax accountant were the same person, he or she would be a powerhouse that would be invaluable to any business.

Create Profits For Your Practice by Offering Savings to Your Clients

Over the past several years, the day-to-day bookkeeping functions, the year end tax accounting and even payroll have been separated and provided by specialized services. Because the need for correlating information is critical to the business owner, if all of these services are provided by different third parties, it makes it more complicated for a small business owner to make informed decisions regarding his total financial situation.

For most small businesses, it makes sense for one accountant to do the monthly bookkeeping functions, the tax filings and even payroll. By offering all these services, you not only save your clients the collective billings of each specialist, you create a more complete financial picture for your tax clients and additional income streams for yourself.

This Makes Sense… How do I Make it Happen?

Once you are doing the tax accounting for your clients, adding bookkeeping services is really quite simple. Because you are already familiar with their particular tax situation you are in a position to not only offer consultation during tax time, but have very valuable counsel to offer throughout the entire year. What’s more, they already trust you with what they consider one of the most important issues they deal with all year… their year-end tax filings.

When you show your clients the benefits of bringing all of their accounting functions under one umbrella, you will be able to really have an impact on the bottom-line of their company and your tax preparation and accounting practice.

It Makes Sense for My Clients but Why Does it Make Sense for Me?

Making a shift from a “year-end” tax professional to a “year-round” tax professional is the first step. A client who is interested in using your bookkeeping services as well as your tax advice will be happy to compensate you on a monthly basis for your services. In fact, you’ll increase the amount you charge for tax planning and prepartation services.

How does this work? In conjunction with providing bookkeeping services, by offering tax preparation services, you will have the opportunity to earn more income over the entire year than by a single year-end tax filing alone. Let’s take a look at the potential numbers.

The graph above represents the income potential of combining a tax preparation practice with a bookkeeping service. The average small business will generate an income of around $300 to $400 per month for a freelance bookkeeper. This will amount to approximately 8-10 hours of work each month for the bookkeeper/accountant. Of course these are just averages, but that adds up to anywhere from $30 to $60 per hour. And you will experience this every month for every customer.

The average business tax return is billed at $950 and amounts to 7 or 8 hours of work for a skilled tax preparer. However, by charging for your service at a monthly rate of just $100 (That’s $1200 a year), you’ve increased the tax billing to your client by $250 per year, and by adding additional services your clients will be willing to pay that extra $250.

You are now in a position to offer valuable tax advice all year long. By doing all the bookkeeping functions, you have the numbers at your fingertips every single month to provide that valuable advice. What’s more, it will make year-end taxes much easier for you.

Your Monthly Billings Just Went Through the Roof!

Take another look at the graph and see what happens at only 5 clients. Your billing for that month is $2000. At 10 clients you’re billing $4000 per month! This is exciting. A year-round, profitable and rewarding business and all you need to do is add a few additional services and adapt your billing cycle.

How Would You Like to Semi-Retire in 12 Months?

Working with 10 clients or 20 hours per week will earn you around $4000 per month. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a pretty good semi-retirement. Working with 20 clients at 40 hours per week will earn an average of $8000 per month. That’s $96,000 per year!

Serving You with Our Free Newsletters

We enjoy sending you information that we hope improves your work as a freelance bookkeeper or accountant. Our three newsletters, AB Tips, Tax Tips, and Career Tips, are intended to help professionals like you advance in whatever their current position in the financial field. The AB Tips Newsletter is designed to share accounting and bookkeeping tips with subscribers. Intended for individuals with their own accounting practice or for those who would like to start their own practice, we specifically include tips on how to market your services, how to streamline tasks, how to organize your office space, etc. Our Tax Tips Newsletter is for tax preparers or those interested in tax preparation. We provide tax news, information on starting your own business, tips on building your clientele, etc. And finally, we have our Career Tips newsletter, for those who work or would like to work in the accounting field. In this newsletter we include information on getting the right job, advancing in your field, moving into management positions, etc.

As we learn more about your needs, we alter our approach in order to better serve you. We’re adding a few things to the newsletter that we hope you enjoy. Here’s a breakdown of what’s included and how we hope it helps you.

Two articles

Since we began running our free ezines over two years ago, we have included two articles every issue that offer accounting and tax information, tips on running and marketing a small business, career guidelines and promotional pieces. The newsletters provide us with the opportunity to share our products and services with those we believe they best serve. Universal’s programs are top of the line and life-changing; we promote them because we know they help people like you achieve career goals and realize your business dreams.

We also use the newsletter as an opportunity to expose you to our many free resources, including personalized information from our President and CEO, Allen Bostrom in Allen’s Blog, UAC’s accounting and tax forums, the newsletters, and the Universal video tour.

Recently we’ve responded to requests for purely informational pieces as well. Last summer we asked newsletter subscribers to tell us what you wanted to read about. For the past six months we’ve tried to include articles on all suggested topics. Each newsletter contains one, if not two, informational pieces. We continue to welcome your feedback as we write articles intended to help you improve your financial services. Please visit our forums for a chance to give us feedback on past articles and suggestions for future articles.

Press Releases and New Products

We want you to be in-the-know about everything Universal, so we include all press releases, enrollment offers, and information about new products in our newsletters. From our new interactive testing center to our customized Professional Bookkeeper Program for Canadian residents, we want you to be the first to know what’s happening at Universal Accounting Center.

Quotable Quote

Everyone could use a little inspiration now and then, so we like to include a quotable quote in each issue of our newsletters. Funny quotes, somber quotes, quotes that make you want to get up and accomplish something, we try to include a variety that inspire and uplift.

“The Bottom Line”

And last but certainly not least is a new addition to our newsletters: a video clip we call “The Bottom Line.” In the serious world of financial statements, taxes, and projected profits, the bottom line is that we like what we do and can enjoy a good laugh now and then. The humorous clip is intended to help lighten your load and improve your day. We hope you look forward to this new feature and share it frequently with coworkers, family, and friends.

We want our newsletter to help you move forward in your goals as a financial professional. So stay tuned as we continue to improve our newsletters so that they can better serve your needs. We appreciate your support.

Don’t Get Laid Off -
Recession-Proof Your Job

The Best Career Advancement Tool is Also Your Safety Net

Don’t be nervous. Next to getting fired, nothing makes employees more uneasy than hearing that their company is in the middle of a merger. Depending on your particular place in the company, this may or may not mean that your position is in danger.

It may be difficult to determine the vulnerability of your particular job, but you have a lot of options. At Universal Accounting, we meet people every week who have been the victims of corporate mergers, downsizing or layoffs.

Many people have successfully chosen our program as the option for their future. There is good news. An accounting and tax preparation education from Universal Accounting provides a safety net for you and your family. Whether you want to improve you chances for staying in your present job or want to strike out on your own with an Accounting and Tax Business, Universal Accounting has a program that makes it possible.

How Can I Say This?

We informally surveyed 100 of our graduates last year at their one year graduation anniversary. Of those 100 people, 75 of them were working in the field of accounting or had been promoted to a management position.

Many of these people had no experience in bookkeeping or accounting until they purchased our course. As they worked through the practice sets of books in our course, they built a solid foundation of experience and knowledge that helps them contribute on a fundamental level to the profitability of the small businesses they work with.

The economic climate for small business is so competitive today that businesses all over the country are realizing that without a complete and thorough understanding of the accounting process, they are crippled. Those who take the opportunity to learn these valuable skills contribute to the profitability of those small businesse. Their potential for earning a great income and creating a wonderful lifestyle is just there for the taking.

I Don’t Have a College Degree… Does That Hurt My Chances?

Absolutely not. Colleges and Universities don’t prepare you for working with the accounting issues that face small businesses. (Despite the fact that 85% of our economy is wrapped up in small business.) They focus on teaching corporate accounting and analysis.

Universal Accounting has been teaching small business accounting since 1979… that’s over 25 years. We’re the small business experts. Our graduates all over the country help small businesses from dry cleaners to bicycle shops. These graduates contribute to these businesses’ financial bottom-line every day. And as your clients become more profitable, they will happily do the same for you.

“You Never Know What’s Going to Happen.”

Brad Karsh, president of JobBound, a Chicago career-counseling company says. “The situation is highly volatile.”

Conventional wisdom used to be that if you were part of the company making the acquisition, you were safe, but that isn’t the case any more. There is no way to know for sure if you will be a casualty of a merger, regardless of which side of the merger you’re on.

In today’s uncertain economy, you can protect yourself and your family from the uncertainty that follows a corporate merger. Of course, it takes a proactive approach… an investment in yourself.

The “Right” Investment in Yourself Protects You and Your Family

Whether you plan to stay in the corporate world or start your own business, a complete education in accounting and tax provides a great safety net. Skilled and qualified bookkeepers and accountants will always be in demand regardless of the industry. And these skills enable you to create a wonderful part-time income working out of your home as well.

As long as the government requires companies to maintain accounting records and file income taxes, the profession of bookkeeping and accounting will not go away. For job security that has existed since before the Italian Renaissance, I have not found a better opportunity available anywhere.

Don’t Miss Out on a Great Deal for the Most Complete Small-Business Accounting Training Available Anywhere!

Having a solid understanding of the Accounting and Bookkeeping methods and procedures is a great first step in learning the concepts behind Financial Business Analysis. You will learn to do books for small to mid-sized companies and how to analyze the books to prepare reports. You will learn to interpret reports so that you can advise your your current employer and future clients on how to reduce costs and to better understand their financial standing and profitability. Your clients will look to you as an invaluable source of information about the financial health of their organization.

You know the axiom: the only thing constant is change. Resisting change, especially when you run your own business, is lethal. As technology and the business world continue to plow forward you must maintain a steady jog in order to keep up. What can you do to avoid getting lost in the wake of change? Here are a few tips:

1. View change as opportunity

Many people fear change, and as a result, experience a reflex action against it. Before you can let change work to your advantage, you have to see it as a positive force. Make a concerted effort to think and talk about change in an upbeat way. Consider the surfer who uses the force of a wave to propel him forward, opposed to the tired swimmer who finds himself drawn further from the shore with each swell. In order to ride the wave of change, you must expel your fear of it.

2. Remember the client

The client is king, and if you don’t consider his/her needs as you respond to change, you may find yourself loosing touch with royalty. I once read about a great little coffee shop that had a loyal customer base. But all that changed when the coffee shop changed. Their prices rose drastically and the once-friendly servers became grumpy. The shop’s quaint atmosphere altered to a tense environment, and that loyal customer base began looking around for another quaint coffee shop. What was this small business’s big mistake? They didn’t remember their client as they began making changes. Perhaps they had to raise prices, but their approach was off-putting. Every time you make a change, or respond to one, ask yourself how it will affect your clients. It might even help to ask for a client’s opinion regarding impending changes; you may get great advice on how to approach them.

3. Anticipate the future

You don’t want to be blind-sided by significant industry changes. You’ll be better prepared for change if you can anticipate it. This requires you to do a little research and uncover general business trends as well as trends specific to accounting. Once you foresee a change, you can make strategic business decisions. You can also prepare your family and/or staff for necessary modifications.

4. Release the past

Too many people live by the motto, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The horse-drawn carriage still works, but it won’t win any races against a bullet train. The past was good; it got you to the present. But holding on to it will only hold you back. Acknowledge the things you learned in the past, change what you need to change, and move forward.

5. Involve others

It’s important that you involve family and staff in your business decisions. Hold staff meetings where you discuss imminent changes and how to approach them. Talk with your family about them. It’s important for you to get feedback that will help you respond to the change well. Involving these individuals will also help you get buy-in from team players; they will be more invested in the changes if they were involved in making these crucial business decisions.

6. Design a plan

Now that you have talked to your family and/or staff, it’s time to design a plan to manage the change. List all necessary steps and the tasks associated with each. If you have a staff, be sure that each member knows which tasks they are responsible for.

7. Over-communicate with your staff

Over-communicate this plan with your staff. Remind them of what these changes will look like and how everyone is to deal with them. Sending one quick memo will not likely do the job.

Bill Gates is quoted as saying, “In three years everything my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we’ll make them obsolete or somebody else will.” The most important thing you can do is be more aware of change. Embrace it; view it as an opportunity to grow your business. Because if you don’t respond to change well, chances are your competition will. Good luck riding that wave of change. You may be surprised at how much you’ll enjoy it.

Take What You Have and Make It Better

Under the Universal Business Model (UBM), there are three business functions that must work well together in order to increase profits: accounting, marketing, and production. Any of these business functions that act independently from the other two can doom a company.

The function we would like to focus on today is production; production is the internal workings of a business. Production is the profit center of a business, and when the profit center is running well, the entire business has profit potential.

In order to improve production, and in turn improve profitability, you must look at ways of taking what you have and making it better. Here are three things you can do in order to improve your services:

Ask critical strategic questions of your employees, clients, and economic forecasters

If you’re content sitting on your haunches enjoying your current success, then you’ll never be able to increase profitability. In order to build upon your current success and improve your business, you need to question how things are currently running and how they could be improved. Many of the people you work with and for could answer a lot of key questions for you. Questions like: Where is the market headed? What types of new technology might you take advantage of? What types of synergy might you introduce to production? How could you be better, faster, and cheaper all at once? How might you improve the quality of your services and better meet your clients’ needs? If you are constantly looking to improve your business, you’ll ask and eventually answer many of these questions, improving production and profitability.

Hire people smarter than you!

If you’ve gotten to the point where you need to hire employees to increase efficiency, then you realize that you’ve grown your business beyond your own capacity. You can no longer do it all, so why not hire the best and brightest to do some of it for you? The thought may be intimidating, but the truth is your business will be better off if you can hire staff that will make a significant contribution to profitability. Be willing to partner with your employees, allowing them to contribute to your success and rewarding them when they do.

Develop products and services that will sell without having to educate clients

Your cost to market a product or service that already exists will be a fraction of the cost to market something clients don’t yet know they need. For example, all your current and potential clients will recognize the value of tax preparation services without you having to educate them. This will minimize the cost of marketing this new service to clients.

The best way to determine the products and services your clients are looking for is to ask them directly what they need. If you have employees, ask them what clients are looking for. You may be surprised at the new and innovative ways you can improve your products and services.

“Take What You Have and Make it Better” is just one of 9 principles that will make your business more profitable. Allen Bostrom, president of Universal Accounting Center, has written the book In the Black: 9 Principles to Make Your Business Profitable to help small business owners like you succeed. If this one principle has helped you, order the book to read 8 more tried and true principles that you can apply immediately! For less than $20, you can take the necessary steps to build a more lucrative business today.

“Where did the time go? I wish there were more hours in the day!”

If you’ve ever found yourself echoing these sentiments at the end of a long workday, consider this: You may not need more time. You just need to find ways to eliminate less profitable tasks that rob you of the ability to complete the tasks that matter most.

Understand What Robs You of Time

How can you get the most out of every minute on the job? Audit your time.

The best way to do this is to create a time log. With this log, you’ll monitor your current work habits–both good and bad–for 10 days.

To set up such a log, divide a blank piece of paper into three columns. From left to right, label the columns “Hours,” “Activities,” and “Improvements.” In the first column, list all the hours you work in a day. Beneath each hour, draw a line across the page to create a row.

Where Did All My Time Go?

Each day, take a few minutes every hour to chart your activities in the “Activities” column. At the end of the day, examine the activities you’ve jotted down and the amount of time each one took. Then ask yourself some questions:

• Which jobs got done smoothly today, and why?
• Which jobs hit a lot of snags, and why?
• What time-use patterns do I see?
• What were my biggest time-wasters today?
• What part of my day was the least productive, and why?
• What didn’t I finish today that I should have finished, and why?

Streamline Your Day

After you’ve assessed your activities by using these questions, jot down ideas in the “Improvements” column on how you might have used your time more efficiently. By the end of the 10 days, you’ll have an excellent idea of exactly how effectively (and ineffectively) you’re using your time. You’ll be better able to target the areas that need most improvement and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you’re making every minute of your work time “quality time.”

Techniques To Make Your Accounting Work More Efficient

The Professional Bookkeeper program teaches time-proven techniques to help you get done quicker and make more per hour. The more that you do a job, the more efficient you get at it. Universal Accounting has captured and refined the best ways to get more done and get home quicker. Over 25 years of real-world accounting and bookkeeping know-how is distilled into 40 hours of training that teaches you accounting skills with a focus on small business, the most profitable market for freelance accountants.

Learn How to Earn $30 to $60 Per Hour Helping Businesses Be More Profitable

Are You Leaving Money On The Table?

We are often asked how a business owner can minimize costs, and time while maximizing the potential profits from an account. This, quite frankly, should be the object for any “for-profit” business anywhere, but for each of us in the Accounting and Bookkeeping business, this can take on a special significance because literally our time equals money in our pockets. And if we can spend less time doing the same services while still maintaining the quality of the services, we need to look for such tools to add to our business.

When you go into a meeting with a client or a prospective client your object should always be: How may I turn the most profit for my company with this account? Keep in mind that you always want to strive to provide to those you do business with a value-added service that makes you invaluable to them, and as you keep their books you’ll become an invaluable ally in their achieving their business profitability goals.

While providing this essential service, however, you need to keep asking yourself, “Is there more I can do with this client?” and, “Am I leaving money on the table that could easily be captured?” In every working relationship, there is an area of profitability where on one end gives you the work, but doesn’t make you the profit, and on the other side where it makes you the profit and has little or no benefit to your client. We’ve all experienced those “work-no-profit” accounts and projects in our professional careers. Although it is fun to take on one or two of those, it’s even more fun to have the profitable ones to keep your business viable and growing on those accounts and projects that make you money.

This line of profitability questioning leads to similar types of question of how well you are doing in what you are doing. As a business owner, you have to always be measuring how well you are doing in business. Questions like, ” How well am I accomplishing my goals? How can I be doing better? How can I bring in more income with less effort?” In a nutshell, is there a better way for me to accomplish what my business is doing in more efficient, time-saving, cost-cutting methods to realize bigger profit margins? There most certainly is.

Times-Savings = Cost-Savings = Higher Profits

Universal’s program for QuickBooks Training, The Professional Bookkeeper’s Guide to QuickBooks, is what you need to work in less time and get more done. As a corporate accountant, or a freelance accounting professional, QuickBooks is the perfect vehicle to get done what you need to, for each of your accounts in a quick and efficient way. Universal’s QuickBooks Training is for you! By becoming a QuickBooks Specialist, mastering the software with our training behind you, maximizing your profits can become a reality. Its streamlined workflow helps you get what you need accomplished done more quickly and its easy-to-use desktop features will put what you need at your fingertips. Add in the hands-on practice our QuickBooks Training gives you and you are cutting hours off the time it would take you previously.

Just think about it; let’s say it is taking you to do the books of one of your accounts about 2.5 hours each week. That’s 10 hours a month at $30 an hour would equal $300 per month. As we have said before, $30 an hour is a great wage for most of us. Let’s add to this equation the QuickBooks Software, Universal’s comprehensive training and complete hands-on practicing and see what we get. Let’s be conservative and say that QuickBooks cuts your per week time on an account down to 1 hour ( in reality it could bring it down to as little as 35 to 45 minutes per account per week). So for the sake of round numbers you are doing in 4 hours what used to take you 10. Does your profitability go down as well? No! Reverse engineering your monthly billing of $300 divided by the 4 hours per month it takes you to do the books for the account and you get a whopping $75 per hour! Hey, you just gave yourself a raise!

Now, let’s grow this big. Let’s say you have 10 total clients, bringing you a total of $3000 per month. At your old way of doing things, for those 10 clients it would take you 100 hours a month to do their books, or 25 hours a week. A pretty good part-time money maker for you. Let’s take that same 10 accounts, and add in the Universal QuickBooks training and reverse engineer it once more. For $3000 per month, you are doing 10 hours of work per week instead of the 25 hours. Your new “QuickBooks Specialist” way of keeping your accounts’ books is saving you 15 hours a week that you could use any way you would like!

Let’s grow this bigger still. Let’s say you like the extra 25 hours of work per week and just want to maximize your time with your profitability. If you get out there and get 15 more clients to fill in your per week allotment, you gain an extra $7500 billable dollars per month. A grand total of $10,500 per month on a part-time basis of 25 hours per week. Just think of going full-time with this, at 35 to 40 hours a week? I know that time factors are absolute here and that this is maximum profitability, but even if you edge this down by 20% for human nature and down time who wouldn’t want to make $8400 a month part-time? There’s a lot you could do with that, couldn’t you?

Coming Full Circle

There certainly is a way you can realize the money that is on the table in your profits. By working more efficiently and effectively is the way you can accomplish that! Universal’s Professional Bookkeeper’s Guide to QuickBooks is designed to do just that. We teach you how to streamline your processes so that you can do the work more efficiently, more accurately, and more effectively than before.

Here’s a brief rundown of what you get with each session:

Sessions 1-3

The fundamentals of daily bookkeeping tasks, and gaining a better understanding of the tasks that a bookkeeper performs. You will learn the key indicators of a company’s financial health, how to calculate them, and what they mean to your company. You will learn to interpret financial data to turn it into actionable business wisdom.

Session 4-6

You will learn the must-know principles of marking down assets and how to depreciate them for the largest tax advantage in as little time as the law allows. You will learn methods of depreciating fixed assets and how to calculate allowance for bad debts. You’ll learn the benefits of each business structure and which form will legally allow you to pay the least taxes possible.

Session 7

Master the technique that will enable you to navigate the debit/credit maze and learn to use the accountant’s troubleshooting tool. You’ll be introduced to preparing financial statements and how to interpret them into practical steps to take to increase your profitability.

Session 8

You’ll be introduced to gross profit, what it is, and what it means to the financial condition of your company. You will learn how the income accounts connect into the balance sheet.

There’s no better time than now to get started on the QuickBooks Training that will be the difference in your profit margins in your work. Part-time, to full-time or even as a hobby you will be able to turn out more quickly the cost-savings you need, with less time dedicated to doing it. At the same time, widening those sweet profit margins that make you and those you provide for happy.

Kick-Start the Year with 6 Practical Goals:

2008 New Year’s Resolutions

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important
than any other one thing. –Abraham Lincoln

About this time most of us feel obligated to make a few New Year’s resolutions. And while you may have your own resolution to loose a few pounds, cut credit card debt, or spend more quality time with your family, your business could probably use a few resolutions of its own. It’s difficult to increase your success if you don’t have a target to shoot for. Here are a few things that can help you create a list of realistic business goals for the New Year:

Organize all contact information
If you’re like most small business owners you have business cards, scraps of paper with contact information, and maybe even a notation or two in your planner of potential clients. They’re doing you no good scattered around; you need to gather them all together and organize them into a rolodex or electronic file that makes it easy to look up individuals and actually contact them!

Contact potential clients regularly
Now that you’ve organized all your contact information, it’s time to devise a plan for actually contacting these people. For some reason or other you thought they qualified as potential clients; now it’s time to give them the chance to request your services. Determine the method of contact you feel most comfortable with: phone calls, mailings, lunch appointments, gift calendars. You need to remind these people, without being pesky, that your services will enhance their lives. Once you’ve contacted them two or three times you can rotate them off your contact list. But the good news is that you should be able to find a few new clients this way, increasing your client base and your bottom line.

Backup your hard drive
While this is a boring resolution, it’s definitely something that you can check off in one day. Hopefully this is a task most of you perform regularly, but if you don’t, today is the day to start; don’t wait until your computer crashes to regret not performing this resolution. You have lots of crucial, financial information that clients expect you to manage. If you loose it, you also loose your credibility, and that can cost you more than you can imagine.

Increase your staff
When you think of this resolution, all you might see in your mind are dollar signs. But if you hire right, you can train an employee to perform monotonous accounting tasks for less than you charge your clients. This means that if you pay your employee $15/hour and you charge $40/hour to do those tedious jobs, you make a $30 profit each hour this employee works; now you can spend your time doing the more significant accounting tasks. And if you use a son or daughter to do this work, part of their salary is tax-deductible! The point is, if you can hire a reliable, efficient employee to help manage some of the easier tasks, you have more time to take on more clients. This enables you to grow your business.

Cut costs
We’re guessing you advise your clients on ways they can cut costs. It’s time you take a look at your own books to see if there are ways you can cut costs and save yourself some money. Regardless of how frugal and efficient you think you are, chances are there are ways you can cut some of your costs and channel that money into more productive channels.

Better manage client information
Whether it’s your filing system or the electronic method you use, you may want to find something that helps you better manage client information. Can you easily run reports that give you a birds-eye view of your clients’ finances? Do you have a quick method of accessing client information from multiple views? There are numerous software packages that attempt to make your job as an accountant easier. You may consider purchasing one that could help you. And because 80% of small businesses use Intuit’s QuickBooks Pro, that’s the software package we suggest.

UAC’s Guide to Quickbooks Pro
Universal Accounting Center (UAC) has a training program that will teach you QuickBooks quickly, and painlessly. UAC’s Guide to Quickbooks Pro is a self-paced program that enables you to complete the parts that interest you and skip over the parts that don’t. Even if you have used the program for years, the program teaches you shortcuts and methods you may not have known. You will be impressed by the simple flow and completeness of this program. So why wait? In just a number of hours you could be ready to better manage your own finances, and add new services to your own practice, increasing your bottom line.

The retail cost of UAC training coupled with the QuickBooks Pro software is $485, but for a limited time you can get that for just $385. And if you already have the software, or are just interested in a trail version, it’ll just cost you $285. Don’t wait; order today!

Regardless of what resolutions you choose, it’s important to set goals for your business. If you don’t make plans to increase your success, you’ll be lucky to get by. Don’t wait until the end of January to take steps to improve your business. Regardless of how small, take steps to move your business forward today!

Welcome to the Newsletter . . .
Here’s Your Copy of In The Black

This book is written for business owners, operators and managers. No matter what your position in your business, no matter what your product or service, and irrespective of your talent, skill, or experience, the principles presented in this book can make your business more profitable!

Every chapter is filled with principles and concepts that you can use immediately to become more profitable in your business and to enhance your expertise and wisdom in business decision-making.

Allen B. Bostrom, CPA

President of Universal Accounting Center based in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has over 30 years experience working with businesses of all sizes and has taught over 25,000 people different aspects of Accounting and Business Management.

A much sought-after speaker and presenter promoting the importance of using accounting information in business decision-making. He has taught and practiced the Nine Principles presented in this book in many industries, in all economic conditions.