You didn’t start a business to learn about compliance with federal and state employee compensation rules. Yet here you are, wearing out your calculator twice a month as you try to stay current with tax tables, government regulations, and worker benefits. One small mistake, and you’re paying penalties, making employees and a whole lot of agencies, or benefits providers unhappy.

Isn’t your time better spent managing your business and planning for its growth? Automating payroll will give you those hours back and reduce the possibility of costly errors exponentially. There are countless websites that provide these services. They can help you:

Maintain comprehensive employee profiles

How do you store and retrieve your employee information now? On time cards, in folders or Microsoft Word files? However you do so, it can be cumbersome just looking up details. Payroll websites let you create online records for each employee that contain everything you need to know, including:

• Contact information
• Compensation
• Required tax form data from the W-4 and W-9
• Benefits
• Direct deposit authorization

Set up multiple pay schedules

Do you pay some employees weekly and others semi-monthly, for example? Payroll websites accommodate such an arrangement. They also allow off-cycle payroll runs.

Define multiple earnings types

You might pay some workers by the hour while others get an annual salary, but payroll websites go well beyond these classifications. They can support bonuses, commissions, etc., and even let you set up custom earnings types. You can also automate withholding, like garnishments.

Calculate state, federal, and local payroll taxes

This step is probably the bane of your existence if you’re processing your company’s payroll manually. The online solutions available not only calculate payroll tax withholding, but most of them actually submit those taxes and any filings necessary by the prescribed deadlines.

Add deductions for pre-tax benefits

If you offer your employees benefits like health insurance and retirement plans, calculating and incorporating those payments and any matching contributions you make can also be quite the challenge. Payroll websites automate this step.

Track sick and vacation time

Once you define your PTO policies, you will always know when an employee is eligible to take time off.

Prepare W-2s in January

Using the data they’ve collected through the year, most payroll websites take this task off of your to-do list, too.

Set up all of this

These online applications usually offer step-by-step tools to setup and get ready to run payroll. Company onboarding specialists are also always available to help.

Run payroll

Actual payroll processing generally only takes a few minutes. If your payroll is often the same, you may be able to put it on autopilot.

If you’re already doing your payroll manually, you should be able to make the transition to online fairly easily. But if you’re struggling with or new to employee compensation, we can help you get up and running, or even take over this element of your accounting completely. Contact us, and we can discuss your options.

You trust your employees or you wouldn’t have hired them. Still, when someone other than you has access to your company’s accounting records, strong safeguards are critical. You store customer profiles, credit card numbers, payroll details, and other information that could hurt you—or someone else—if in the wrong hands.

If you are still doing your accounting work on paper, the best you can do is to lock all accounting files up and restrict access. Computer-based records are another story.

Built-in Security

QuickBooks provides a way to restrict users to specific areas of the software and to the activities performed there.  To explore it, open the Company menu and click Set Up Users and Passwords, then Set Up Users. The window that opens will list you as the administrator. Click Add User and enter the name and password for the employee, then click Next.

Tip: Click F2 and look in the upper left corner to see whether you can Add this user to my QuickBooks license.

QuickBooks then displays a multi-step wizard that will help you define the employee’s role within QuickBooks. You have three options here. You can give the user access to:

• All areas of QuickBooks. Be cautious here, as this means everything, including customer credit card numbers and check-writing privileges. If you click Yes and then Finish, your setup is complete.
• Selected areas of QuickBooks. When you choose this option, you’ll be able to assign individual access rights to multiple areas of QuickBooks, including Sales and Accounts Receivable, Checking and Credit Cards, and Sensitive Accounting Activities. Your choices for each are No Access, Full Access, and Selective Access. If you choose the latter, you will be able to select the level of activity that the user can engage in (Create transactions only, Create transactions and create reports, etc.). The final question asks about changing or deleting transactions. QuickBooks then displays a table that shows that user’s permissions.
• External Accountant. You can give your accountant access to all areas of QuickBooks except for sensitive customer data like credit card numbers.

Helpful Reports

If the worst happens and you suspect an employee may have somehow gained access to a restricted area (for example, by discovering your password) and altered data, there are tools in QuickBooks that can help you assess the damage and learn who is responsible. One of these is the Audit Trail report (Reports | Accountant & Taxes | Audit Trail), which tracks changes to your company’s accounting records, who made them, and on what date. You can also see how a specific transaction has been edited by opening it and clicking Reports | Transaction History.

You have to know what you are looking for to use these methods, though. If you have concerns about the security of your company’s data, please contact us. We have experts in both QuickBooks and technology who can work with you on building protections into your accounting workflow – and other areas of your network.

Business plans aren’t just for big companies. Your small business needs one, too – perhaps even more than large enterprises. Even if you’re an entrepreneur working in a spare room in your home, having a written framework for your strategy and long-term goals can help you make smarter, more targeted business decisions in the short run.

Your business plan can be one page, or you can do it by the book, filling it with voluminous text, financial statements and organizational charts (you will need the latter if you’re approaching banks and investors for financing).

You don’t have to be a brand-new venture to benefit from a business plan. Existing companies will find that this critical document can be useful in numerous ways. You will be able to:

Know when to grow.

Growth costs money. As your company continues to expand and prosper, you’ll need to make decisions about property and people. When is it time to: Take on a new employee? Buy an expensive piece of equipment? Move to a larger office space? Perhaps acquire another business? If you’ve built a detailed, realistic business plan, you’ll be better equipped to decide on expansion based on your short- and long-term goals and projections.

Paint a detailed picture of your company that can be shared.

Think about the individuals and companies in your orbit. Who could benefit from knowing, for example:

• What problem(s) are your products and/or services are trying to solve?
• How do you plan to create those?
• Who are your target markets – and who is your competition?
• Who is your managerial team?
• What are your projected milestones?

Provide a written roadmap for other employees (and for yourself).

If you’re building a complex business plan with a lot of sensitive and financial data, you may want to have two versions. One would be comprehensive, available only to staff in managerial positions. Those individuals would see your entrepreneurial vision spelled out in terms they could apply to their own work, the decisions they make every day, and the way they prioritize their schedules. This also makes them feel part of the “bigger picture.”

Better Planning

Noted business plan expert Tim Berry talks about the theory of displacement: Whatever you do is something else you don’t do. An effective business plan will help you schedule your weeks and months more strategically so your time is spent on activities that support your mission and goals (as much as possible).

We could get involved here in a number of ways and help you shape your business plan based on why you need it. For example, are you planning to sell your company, or do you need a business valuation for another purpose? Are you looking for funding? Or, do you just need help creating a document for your own purposes? Whatever the reason, we are ready to help. Contact us, and we’ll set up a consultation.

Do you and/or your employees submit expense reports for business travel? Are you still doing so manually? If so, you know how time- and labor-intensive this process is – and how error-prone it can be. Employees sometimes expense items and services that aren’t in line with your policies. They may even lose receipts or forget to document important expenditures.

Unfortunately, though it’s equipped to record expenses and pay bills, QuickBooks does not provide an easy solution to this problem. You will need a separate application for that, one that integrates easily with QuickBooks. Several good apps are available. Here are some of the features that many of them offer:

Tight integration with QuickBooks’ account structure.

To ensure that this partnership results in accurate data in your QuickBooks company file, the apps help you “match” things like customers and vendors, items, and employee records in QuickBooks to their own classifications.

Easy employee access.

Your staff members probably live on their smartphones or tablets when they travel. These apps allow them to record expenses as they go, even taking pictures of receipts and assigning them to line items in their expense reports. When they’re back in the office, reconstructing their trips and submitting the actual reports is a simple, automated process.

Powerful administrator tools.

Your employees’ travel expense data will flow directly into your own administrator account, which offers many tools, including the ability to:

• Set expense policies so no unapproved expense types (or amounts) get accepted.
• Orchestrate cash advances.
• Create reports that provide information about past and current trips so you can make better business decisions about future travel.

Travel itinerary assistance.

One of the most popular apps serves as a travel agent, too. You will be able to search for flights, hotels, etc., and book them.

Fast, easy reimbursements.

Once you approve expense reports, you will be able to reimburse employees quickly – sometimes as soon as the next day.

Full visibility in QuickBooks.

Of course, data collected by the app will become part of your QuickBooks accounting records – in real time.

A Precise Process

Intuit maintains an online directory of apps that can be integrated with QuickBooks; you will find it here. It’s organized by category, so you might take a look sometime and see if there’s an area of QuickBooks that needs amplifying for your business. There are a number of expense-tracking solutions included here; three of the most popular are Expensify, SAP Concur, and Tallie.

If you decide to invest time and money in a travel expense solution, we can help you get it installed, integrated with QuickBooks, and running smoothly. Connecting apps to QuickBooks Online is usually fairly intuitive, but desktop QuickBooks connections can be more complicated. Contact us to schedule a consultation, and we’ll help you automate and streamline your expense reporting – minimizing costs and work time in the process.

If you’re still doing your accounting on paper, you know how challenging it is to create reports. You might be able to cobble together a simple report using Excel, but even that takes time and skill.

QuickBooks makes that critical process easier. It comes with dozens of pre-formatted report templates. You simply choose one, and the software fills it with your company’s own data. You can even modify it to target the exact slice of data you need.

Here’s a simple example. Let’s say you want a list of residential customers who are 60 days or more in arrears. You would open the Reports menu and select Customers & Receivables, then A/R Aging Detail. The report will open; by default, it lists all transactions. Click Customize Report in the upper left corner, and the Modify Report: A/R Aging Detail window opens.

Click the Filters tab. The list that displays under CHOOSE FILTER contains all of the data types you can choose for your customization. Click Account. The middle column will provide your options here. Open the drop-down list in the middle column and select All accounts receivable. That filter will appear in the third column.

Go back to the first column and select the second filter listed there, Aging. The middle column actually gives you four options. Choosing Any wouldn’t pare down the list. The next line lets you enter a number that is equal to, greater than, or less than a specific number. You want to see the customers who are 60 days or more past due, so you would click in the radial to the left of >=  and enter 60 in the box.

You are limiting your search to residential customers, so you would go back to the first column and scroll down to Customer Type. Open the drop-down list in the second column and select Residential. The next filter in the first column is Date. Click on that to highlight it, then select Today in the second column. And there’s one more: Select the Paid Status filter and select Open.

As you continue to select filters, you’ll notice that they appear in the third column. At this point, you’ve selected five, and you could choose more if you wanted to, but that’s not necessary for this customization. If you’ve made a mistake, simply highlight the incorrect filter in the third column and click on Remove Selected Filter. When you’re done, click OK. Your modified report will appear.

You can see from scanning the list of available filters that you could set up very complex searches. You could also modify the report’s column structure, its header and footer, and the way fonts and numbers appear. We are happy to help you customize your reports and explore any other QuickBooks features that can help you make better business decisions. Contact us anytime to schedule a consultation.