New Business Direction LLCInternal control is a very special phrase in the accounting profession. Tactically, it’s the set of processes that help a company produce accurate data throughout the organization, follow reporting requirements and laws, and maintain consistency and accuracy in its operations. Strategically, it’s an entirely new way of thinking and doing business.
Internal control helps to reduce organizational risk. A blunt way of putting it is internal control is what you put in place to avoid mistakes, intentional or accidental, and to control accuracy and quality. It impacts every aspect of an organization.
As a small business, you’ll want to be familiar with the concept because it can help you reduce risks you might not realize you have. Here are some practical examples of good ideas that support internal control:
- When data is private and secure, provide access only to employees who need to know the data and restrict access of others.
- Have someone check that your bank balance matches the reconciled amount in your books, and that someone should be different from the person who does the reconciliation. This is an example of what’s called segregation of duties.
- Lock up paper checks and use the missing check number report to make sure none of the stock could be used for nefarious purposes.
- Have employees sign in and out equipment that they take home. This is part of asset management.
- Write and enforce a hardware and software use policy that includes items like employees should make sure their anti-virus software is active at all times, they should not bring in disks or CDs, and they should not download games or other unauthorized programs. This protects from computer viruses and helps to avoid catastrophic network failures.
There are literally hundreds of internal control procedures that should be implemented in small businesses as they grow into larger businesses.
Internal control is typically a big part of an audit or an attest function in accounting; it determines how many additional procedures an auditor needs to do in order to provide assurances about the reliability of the financial reports. But it’s also just good plain common business sense to implement as many internal control processes as are cost-effective for your business to protect it at the level of risk you’re comfortable with.
If you’d like to discuss the idea of internal control further, please feel free to reach out any time.
The Mt. Washington Valley Economic Council
FALL 2018
QuickBooks® Desktop Boot Camps
with Rhonda Rosand, CPA – Advanced Certified QuickBooks® ProAdvisor
Session #1 QuickBooks® Set Up – Do It Right the First Time
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2018, 9 AM -11 AM
Whether you are starting from scratch or starting over, there is a right way and several wrong ways to set up a QuickBooks® file. Learn how to do it right the first time.
Avoid some of the common mistakes we see people make.
QuickBooks® Solutions
Accounts and Items
Users and Permissions
Customers/Jobs/Vendors
Class Tracking
Common Pitfalls
Session #2 Customizing Forms and Templates and QuickBooks® Reports
Tuesday, October 16th, 2018, 9 AM – 11 AM
Learn how to customize forms and templates and create QuickBooks® reports that are useful management tools for your business. Understand the difference between profits and cash.
Customize Forms and Templates
QuickBooks Reports
Revenue Planning
Cash Flow Management
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018, 9 AM-NOON
This is a session designed exclusively for tax preparers, enrolled agents and accountants. We will cover advanced level topics to help you streamline the process and best practices for troubleshooting your client QuickBooks® file during this busy tax season.
What’s New in QuickBooks® 2019
In Product Demonstration of Features
Client Data Review and Accountant Toolbox
Common Issues and Troubleshooting
Hosting Platforms
3rd Applications
Courses are $35 each and held in the Community Room at Granite State College-Conway.
To register please call Susie at (603) 447-6622, email susie@mwvec.com, or register online.
A quick glance is all you need to check your fuel gauge, speed limit, engine temperature, and RPM when you’re driving down the road. Your car’s dashboard is designed to focus you on what’s important and what you need to know to have a safe trip.
Your car’s dashboard items, if they applied to business, would be called key performance indicators or KPIs. Unlike a car’s, the KPIs of your business vary depending on your business goals and what’s important to you. Common ones might include your cash balance, how fast you get paid, how much revenue is coming in, and whether you’re making plan. There are literally hundreds of them to choose from, and many of them are not derivable from your financial statements, such as number of orders, client satisfaction levels, and employee turnover.
Would it be useful to have a dashboard of KPIs for your business so you can know what’s working and get alerted to what needs focus? Here are the steps to creating a dashboard for your business:
- Decide on the KPIs you want to track. Selecting 6-10 to create and track is a good place to start.
- Select a tool that will provide you with the KPIs in the format you desire. There are many great add-ons to your accounting software that will instantly crunch the financial KPIs for you and present them in insightful formats, including charts, graphs, dashboards, and reports.
- Create any new processes to calculate the new KPIs and get them entered into the dashboard app.
- Hold a review meeting to go over the KPIs and determine any action based on the review.
There are many great KPIs available right in your accounting system, which might be plenty to get started with. And there are some real gems outside your accounting system that will take a bit of work to calculate. In any case, we can help you through this process. Feel free to reach out to us any time to discuss the possibilities of having a dashboard in your business.
If you have employees, you have the distinct honor once per year of being part of a worker’s compensation audit. You likely receive a form in the mail, an email request, or a phone call that will ask you about your payroll numbers and employees for the prior year.
Worker’s compensation is an insurance program that covers employees in the case they get hurt on the job. Each employee receives a classification code that describes the type of work they do, and a rate is figured based on the classification and its risk factors.
If you’ve hired anyone throughout the year, you might need to get a new classification by contacting your provider. If you have employees working in different locations (especially different states), that matters too.
The audit form will typically ask for gross payroll numbers by employee or by category or location of employee. That’s easy enough, but seldom does the policy run along your fiscal year, so the payroll figure needs to be prorated to match the policy period.
Your numbers need to tie back to the numbers reported on your quarterly payroll reports for both state and federal. The provider may also want copies of your 941s and your state payroll reports.
The auditor may also ask for subcontractor payments and certificates of expenses.
Once you’ve submitted your numbers, the insurance provider will calculate whether they owe you or you owe them additional fees.
You should do the math yourself to make sure their calculations are correct.
The worker’s compensation audit happens every year (even if you pay worker’s comp premiums each pay period, some companies still request an annual audit). It’s not difficult, but it is time-consuming. If this is something you’d like our help with, please feel free to reach out.
Fixed assets are special kind of assets in your business. They include land, buildings, equipment, furniture, and vehicles that your company owns. While we frequently look at expenses to cut costs, fixed asset management is another place we can look to find ways to better utilize our resources and, in some cases, improve our profits.
Fixed asset management is a discipline that requires keeping good records of the assets a company owns. In the case of furniture and equipment, many businesses place an asset tag on the item and assign it a number that goes in a spreadsheet where data is kept about the item. There are also software apps more sophisticated than spreadsheets that track all of the fixed assets for a company, including original cost, depreciation method and history, and tax treatment.
You never know how many of an item you might have until you record and count them. How many computers (and computer parts) do you have lying around your office? Extra desks and chairs? Maybe you even have extra office space or extra land.
Part of being a great entrepreneur is fully utilizing all the resources you have at your disposal. Where can you put to better use the extra assets you have? Could you sell the surplus items? Or donate them for a write-off? Do you have extra room to rent out to a tenant, earning rent?
Sometimes we’re so focused on operating the core of our business that we don’t see what else is a money maker right in front of us. In addition to focusing on income and expenses from operations, consider the resources you have in your fixed assets.
At the very least, consider developing a spreadsheet that tracks the major items your business owns. Or reach out to us, and we’ll help you develop a fixed assets schedule and tracking process for your business.
And if you do sell some of your fixed assets, be sure to reach out to us so we can help you record the transactions properly.
Social security is one of those topics that seems to be minimized by statements like, “You can’t count on it,” and “By the time you reach retirement age, it won’t matter.” Those statements are not only incorrect; they contribute toward a lack of education on what’s possible.
Social security is still a large part of how most seniors will be able to fund their final 20 to 30 years of life. The options we take toward claiming the benefits that are rightly ours are often permanent and can affect our lives and our finances significantly, often by tens of thousands of dollars.
No matter your age today, here are three things you’ll want to dive deeper into when the time is right for you.
Claim date
For retirement purposes, most people will claim their social security payouts any time from age 62 to age 70. It’s your choice to decide when you make the claim and start your benefits. But, and it’s a very big but, the amount you get each month will vary depending on your claim date. Generally, the later you wait, the higher your payout will be.
The federal retirement age for social security purposes depends on when you were born and creeps up a little each year. If you were born in 1954, your retirement age is 66 years old. If you file your social security claim on your retirement age, you’ll get 100 percent of your benefit. If you claim at 70, you’ll get 132 percent of your benefit, which can make a huge difference in payout over your lifetime: tens of thousands of dollars of difference. If you claim early at age 62, you’ll get far less.
Taxability
Your social security income may be taxable if you earn income in the same years you are collecting social security and if you surpass an earnings threshold. This takes many seniors by surprise. There are ways to plan for this, and they are so specific to each family circumstance and often so complicated that software has been developed to calculate all of the situations.
Eligibility
The amount of your social security payment is affected by dozens of factors, including family members’ ages, how much they paid into social security, pensions, previous marriages, and disabilities, to name a few. If any of your family members are disabled, there are payments for that in some cases.
If you are divorced and were married for more than 10 years, you are eligible for spousal benefits. And if you are married, you are also eligible for spousal benefits. If your spouse has passed away, you are eligible for survival benefits, which could increase an existing payment if your spouse earned more than you did.
Social security is clearly a topic where you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s so complex at this point that most people should work with an advisor who has software that can show multiple claiming options that optimize their lifetime payout or meet their financial retirement goals. If we can help, please reach out.
Learn How To Add & Edit Multiple List Entries in QuickBooks with Rhonda Rosand CPA and Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor!
Learn How To Write Off A Bad Debt In QuickBooks with Rhonda Rosand, CPA, Advanced Certified QuickBooks Proadvisor of New Business Directions, LLC.
The income statement of any business is probably the most utilized report of all. It is a snapshot of the financial performance of your business over a period of time, such as a month or year. You might also hear it called the Profit and Loss Statement, or P&L.
The income statement can give you all kinds of insights as to whether you are bringing in enough sales, if your prices are generating enough profit, and how your expenses are running. Let’s take a look at the report, step by step.
Revenue
The report starts by listing the revenue for the period of time covered. Revenue includes all sources of income, including sales from operations and any other source of revenue. In most small businesses, sales will be the largest part of the revenue, if not all of it. In some countries, the term used for sales is turnover.
If you sell more than one item or have more than one location, it might be a good idea to be able to view the sales detail from these categories. This should not be detailed on your income statement, but you should be able to get a drill down report on your sales detail behind the scenes.
Look for exceptions to what you expect to see. There can be some decisions you can make and actions you can take from the insights you discover.
Cost of Goods Sold
This section of the income statement includes costs you incur directly on items you sell. If you maintain an inventory, it’s the cost you paid for the inventory items that you sold during the period. If your business is a manufacturer, cost of goods sold, or COGS, will include costs of materials and labor to produce the items.
If you’re in construction, COGS will be Materials, Labor, Subcontractor Expense, Equipment Rental, and General Conditions.
If you own a service business, COGS will typically be zero. As a service business, you may incur direct costs when providing services, and these costs can be booked in a variety of expense accounts, including supplies.
Gross Profit
Some income statement formats will include a gross profit number which is sales minus cost of goods sold. This number is important for businesses with inventory or job costing.
Expenses
The expenses section of the income statement is your company overhead. It includes all of the expenses you incurred in your business, including advertising and marketing, rent, telephone, and utilities, office supplies and meeting expenses, travel, meals, and entertainment, payroll and payroll taxes, and several more.
Other Income/Expenses
These are non-operational revenues and expenses. Other Income includes interest and investment income, revenue from insurance claims, and sales from assets or other parts of the business. Other Expenses include depreciation, amortization, interest expenses, and taxes.
To review your expenses, check line by line to see if anything looks out of sorts, and take the appropriate action.
Net Profit or Loss
The final number on your income statement represents whether you made or lost money in the period the report covers. The formula is simple: revenue less COGS less expenses plus other income less other expenses equals net profit or loss.
Net profit/loss can go by many names, depending on the size of your business and your accountant’s vernacular. You may also see EBITDA: Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Earnings is another word for net profit.
Perspective
It’s a good idea to compare your income statement numbers to other periods in your business. Common comparisons include last period, last several periods, and same period last year.
It’s also a great idea to have a Revenue Plan that sets goals for your income statement numbers. Then you can compare budget to actual numbers and take action on the variances.
If your business falls into a standard type of business, you may also be able to see how it is doing compared to others in your industry. This is called benchmarking, and the income statement is a very common format that’s used in benchmarking.
Do spend some time each period reviewing your business’s income statement. It can help you make a faster course correction in your business so you can be even more successful than you already are.
Please let us know if we can help with any of this!
The field of accounting has its own vocabulary, which can sound like a foreign language to some people. Your financial savvy will increase by learning a few new accounting terms. You’ll be “speaking accounting-ese” in no time, and you’ll become a smarter entrepreneur too.
Trial balance
A trial balance is an accounting report that simply lists the current balances of your accounts in your chart of accounts as of a certain date. It can also be called working trial balance. Another way to look at the trial balance is it’s a very informal version of a balance sheet.
Entity
Entity is a generic term for a company or organization. There are many types of entities: nonprofit, corporation, partnership, and sole proprietor.
Going concern
Going concern is an accounting principle. An entity is a going concern if it’s expected to continue operations in the near future.
Double entry
A double entry bookkeeping system means that when a transaction occurs, two accounts are impacted. For example, when an invoice is generated, entries are made to both the sales account and the accounts receivable account. It was invented in the 1400s and is widely used in modern accounting today.
Retained earnings
Retained earnings is an account in the equity section of the balance sheet. It’s the amount of earnings that is reinvested in the company after dividends are paid out. It’s computed by taking the retained earnings beginning balance, adding income or subtracting loss for the period, and subtracting any dividends paid.
Realization
A business transaction has many stages. It starts with an idea, may progress to a promise, then it actually happens. Accountants need to figure out when it becomes “real,” when to record it on the books. This is the concept of realization. A transaction is realized and put on the books when there is a contract, a legal obligation, an exchange of products or services, or an exchange of cash. There are many complicated principles and rules to help accountants determine this timing.
Cost principle
The cost principle is a foundational accounting principle. It means that when a transaction is booked, it is booked at cost and not market or current value. So even though an asset may have gained in value after you bought it, your books will still reflect the cost of the item, not the current value.
Client portal
A client portal is a software application where client files can be stored and retrieved securely. Both the accountant and the client have access to the portal.
Engagement letter
An engagement letter is the contract that defines the relationship between the client and the accountant. It is typically signed before the work starts and can be renewed once a year. It can also be changed if the scope of the work changes.
Matching
The matching principle is another basic accounting principle. It says that for any particular transaction, all aspects should be booked in the same accounting period. For example, let’s say you incurred expenses on an order in November. The order wasn’t delivered or invoiced until December. To meet the matching principle, the expenses should be deferred until December when they can be matched with the revenue that relates to the expenses.
Adjusting entry
An adjusting journal entry is made when account balances need to be corrected. An example is depreciation expense, which is typically booked with an adjusting entry. Accountants will make several adjusting entries like this at year-end.
Reversing entry
A reversing entry is a form of adjusting entry that is made in the period following an adjusting entry. It reverses the adjusting entry. One example of this is a cash basis taxpayer that is tracking accounts receivable. The accounts receivable balance is adjusted to zero prior to year-end and reversed on January 1.
How many terms did you already know? Now you can talk with your accountant about these concepts.
