 |
E-NEWSLETTER
Sign up for our newsletter and receive the latest Tax Updates, QuickBooks Tips, and Due Date reminders.
|
|
Know the Top 5 Customer Warning Signals?
May 19, 2012 Rarely do customers provide notice of their intention to take their business elsewhere. Learn to recognize these 5 warning signs early and you may save your Arizona Business the headache of losing a customer.
Read the article »
10 Mistakes That Can Cost You Your Business
May 12, 2012 Even the smartest small Arizona business owner can do dumb things now and then. Unfortunately, some mistakes can kill a company. Here are 10 examples of common, but potentially deadly, errors committed by otherwise brilliant small-business owners. Don't make the same mistakes.
Read the article »
Awesome Customer Service Strategies
May 7, 2012
An awesome customer service experience can help you set your Arizona Business apart from your competition. Don’t just boast about your awesome customer service - create a system and take the steps to show you really mean it!
Read the article »
High Performance Business Tools
April 10, 2012 Key Performance Indicators have long been regarded as vital for business success. But with so many to choose from, which ones are best for your Arizona business?
Read the article »
Use Short Term Goals for Long Term Success
March 14, 2012 Long-term goals are crucial for a successful business. Mission statements, business plans and marketing campaigns all contribute towards achieving your goals for your Arizona business.
While long-term plans help you to keep an eye on the overall goals, short-term goals are necessary on a day-to-day basis to ensure their delivery.
Read the article »
New Tax Breaks for Arizona Business
March 3, 2012 Keeping track of tax changes for your Arizona Business these days is quite a task. Congress is constantly tweaking the tax laws in an effort to stimulate the economy and deal with the budget deficit. The following is a compilation of recent changes to keep you up date.
Read the article »
An Entrepreneur’s Reading List
February 22, 2012 In a fast changing and challenging business world never underestimate the value of a continuing education. Often our success is based on setting goals, implementing the necessary strategies, achieving those goals and then setting some more.
Read the article »
Avoiding A Cash Flow Drought — Recognize Early Warning Signs
February 15, 2012 A successful Arizona business is one that is well managed. Being adaptable and flexible before major fluctuations occur can greatly assist you in hard times. Recognizing problems before they arise can minimize the fall out and pave the way to a faster recovery. Learning to identify potential cash flow problems is critical to your success as a business as without adequate cash flow it may be on its way to becoming a statistic.
Read the article »
Independent Contractor versus Employee Status – IRS Focus
February 11, 2012 If you are a small business owner, whether you hire people as independent contractors or as employees will impact the amount of taxes you withhold from their paychecks, as well as how much and what types of taxes you pay. Furthermore, it will affect how much additional cost your business must bear, what documents and information must be provided to you, and what tax documents must be given to the individuals you are hiring. The obvious advantage to treating an individual as an independent contractor is avoiding the added expense of payroll taxes and employee benefits. Unfortunately, the decision is not optional, and employers must be careful when making the decision, lest they set themselves up for a payroll audit and back taxes, penalties, and interest.
Read the article »
Getting Your Head in the Clouds
February 3, 2012
It can be a Catch-22 on whether economic, technological and management trends are good for small business or not. They certainly require an investment in time and money to keep abreast of the never-ending developments. However, to ignore them is to provide your competitors with the opportunity to grow their businesses at your expense.
If there is one technological trend that should command your attention for its ability to help you to respond to your business environment it is cloud computing.
Read the article »
Arizona Use Tax Reporting - Ready?
January 29, 2012
This is the first year individuals will be asked to pay “use tax” on qualifying goods you purchased out of state on your income tax return. The tax has been around for nearly 50 years. You’ll need to complete a short worksheet to list the qualifying amount of use-tax items that were purchased during the year. The tax applies to items you purchased without paying sales tax (Arizona’s state rate is 6.6%) that were consumed in the state. Here are the details
Read the article »
3 Critical Success Factors For Improving Profits
January 17, 2012 You've likely heard it said that “what you measure you can manage” and “what gets managed gets done”. When it comes to achieving greater profitability, truer words can't be found. So, what the heck does that really mean and how do you get started? We often talk to Arizona Business owners about the importance of focusing on 4 Profit Improvement Strategies or The 4 Ways To Grow Your Business. Simply, they are:
Read the article »
Are You Driving Your Business Or Is It Driving You?
January 10, 2012 The New Year is always a good time for reflection. It's often a time when we look back and wonder where the time went. The question that often comes to the mind of Arizona business owners centers on what has really been accomplished over the year. We often say that a business is nothing more than a vehicle to get us to our destination and that destination is a personal one. Chances are that when you first set yourself up in business you did it with a personal goal in mind. That goal may have been about spending more time with the family or having a higher level of disposable income or even more independence.
Read the article »
It's Tax Time! Top Tips to Get Ready.
January 3, 2012 If you’re like most taxpayers, you find yourself with an ominous stack of “homework” around TAX TIME! Unfortunately, the job of pulling together the records for your tax appointment is never easy, but the effort usually pays off when it comes to the extra tax money you save! When you arrive at your appointment fully prepared, you’ll have more time to:
Read the article »
What's Your Pricing Strategy?
December 19, 2011 For many small and mid-sized Arizona businesses pricing products and services is more a matter of guesswork than logic. Mindful of competitor pricing, they make the mistake of simply undercutting to win business rather than carefully working out the price they need to charge – a price that not only covers the cost of doing business, but makes all the hard work worthwhile by returning a reasonable profit.
Read the article »
5 Ways to Improve Your Cash Flow
December 3, 2011 Most businesses function in a give and take fashion - while you may be providing a service, you are most likely always paying someone else to supply a service to you, and so on. This chain of supply and demand means that you understand the need to pay on time, and therefore, in theory should be given the same courtesy by your suppliers. Unfortunately, getting paid on time, every time, is a rare luxury, but with a few simple strategies you can attempt to make it a more regular occurrence.
Read the article »
Don’t Try to Be Everything to Everyone
November 22, 2011 In order to thrive it is not enough to survive but grow. But a growth strategy doesn't necessarily have to be a high risk strategy. Too many business owners embark on an unnecessarily dangerous journey by trying to be everything to everyone. A highly esteemed business professor at Harvard by the name of Michael Porter expressed the view that there are only two ways a business can gain a competitive advantage.
Read the article »
It’s Time for Year-End Tax Planning
November 11, 2011 We have compiled a checklist of actions based on current tax rules that may help you save tax dollars if you act before year-end. Regardless of what Congress does late this year or early next, solid tax savings can be realized by taking advantage of tax breaks that are on the books for 2011. For individuals, these include:
Read the article »
Advice on Firing Staff
August 29, 2011 The process of letting an employee go is uncomfortable and upsetting. However there are a few guidelines that can help soften the blow called the five Ws - who, what, when, where and why: Start with who - think about the employee and what you know about them. Be sure to empathise with their personality: this helps you to feel secure, as well as putting your employee at ease and making them feel less like a disposable entity.
Read the article »
Handing Over the Family Business
July 20, 2011
According to the Small Business Administration in the USA, only a third of family-run businesses make it to the second generation. What are the strategies to ensuring your business is one of those that survive? The key is succession planning.
Succession planning can limit dissemination and downfall, and can be a simple step-by-step process that will ensure future success. It requires a long term approach: investing in mentorship and leadership can reap benefits as many as 20 years down the line.
Read the article »
Get Your Team Out of the Office!
May 18, 2011
Your bookkeeper calls in one morning to say her daughter is sick and cannot go to school. She will have to stay home and look after her.
In some firms, that would mean writing off the productivity of that employee for the day with possible knock-on effects for meetings, projects or appointments. What if the employee could still contribute at least half a day to get crucial work completed? Or they might want to avoid using up a day of leave?
Read the article »
Key Skills for Entrepreneurs
March 23, 2011 The desire to start your own company can have several motivations. A desire to make money or to change the world, the urge to be in control of your employment, or the ambition to test out a great idea. Unfortunately, becoming an entrepreneur takes more than a single good idea. Motivational speakers come up with favorite lists of essential qualities of successful entrepreneurs but within those there are some basic requirements.
Read the article »
Why You Need a Business Bank Account
February 19, 2011 Whether you are working on your business part-time, operating as a sole proprietor, or starting a business with a more formal structure (such as a partnership or corporation) – it’s vital that you keep your business banking separate from your personal finances. Keeping the two separate not only provides your business with credibility, it reduces your personal liability (a must if you are incorporating your business as a distinct and separate legal entity under its own name) and helps you to manage your taxes, bills, and other payments.
Read the article »
Time To Let Others Know How Good You Are
January 14, 2011
Advertising to your target market the products or services you sell is a great way to inform potential clients of what you have to offer. But every claim made in your advertisement is coloured by the knowledge that you are spruiking products for financial gain. Accordingly, a potential client will keep in the front of their mind that the promised relationship is between a seller and a buyer. As the famous saying goes, caveat emptor - “buyer beware”. You can’t trust everything that you read in advertising.
Read the article »
Putting Together a Pricing Strategy
January 28, 2011
For many small businesses pricing products and services is more a matter of guesswork than logic. Mindful of competitor pricing, they make the mistake of simply undercutting to win business rather than carefully working out the price they need to charge – a price that not only covers the cost of doing business, but makes all the hard work worthwhile by returning a reasonable profit.
Read the article »
The Solution To Healthier Sales.....
January 4, 2011 - Happy New Year!! Good times always feel like they will last forever. However, there will come a time when clients might be harder to find. The global financial crisis and its consequences showed that when an economy sours, firms without robust processes tend to flounder. Falling sales is a typical sign.
Read the article »
Overview of the tax provisions in the 2010 Tax Relief Act
December 17, 2010
The recently enacted “Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010” is a sweeping tax package that includes, among many other items, an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for two years, estate tax relief, a two-year “patch” of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), a two-percentage-point cut in employee-paid payroll taxes and in self-employment tax for 2011, new incentives to invest in machinery and equipment, and a host of retroactively resuscitated and extended tax breaks for individuals and businesses. Here's a look at the key elements of the package:
Read the article »
Qualified Real Property Expensing for 2010-2011
November 11, 2010
For the first time in history, expensing provisions under IRC §179 now extend to qualified real property in 2010 and 2011. Historically, real property has been exempt from expensing provisions under Section 170 of the Internal Revenue Code. To be precise, real business property is depreciated over 39 years using the straight-line method of depreciation, and land is not allowed to be depreciated. Note, however, that land improvements and qualified real property are allowed to be depreciated over 15 years under pre-2010 Small Business Act law. Land improvements include improvements such as sidewalks, roads, bridges, fences, docks, landscaping, and drainage facilities. Qualified real property, per IRC §179(f)(2), is:
Read the article »
10 Steps for Getting Paid on Time
August 20, 2010
If we don’t get paid, we go out of business. So with more debtors delaying payment in these tough times, taking action to collect money should be a top priority for small companies. Few small businesses can afford to turn customers away, but being timid about stretched credit terms puts your own company in danger. If you’re not being paid on time it’s harder to find money to settle your own outstanding debts.
Read the article »
2010 Small Business Jobs Act
September 26, 2010 On Monday September 27th, the President is expected to sign into law the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. Once codified into law, this legislation will provide many benefits to businesses for tax years 2010 and 2011. Interestingly enough, other provisions of the legislation will help pay for these tax cuts beyond the life of the cuts. Understanding this legislation is important in knowing the benefits and consequences for the tax years 2010 and forward.
Read the article »
Top 10 Cash Flow Tips
July 23, 2010
1. Know your business’ balance sheet thoroughly.
This may sound obvious, but, as your accountant can confirm, many business people don’t know how cash flow works and its significance to keeping their operation afloat. Many owners focus on their business’ profit and loss statement alone. It’s a potentially fatal mistake because healthy profits can mask an impending cash flow crisis. Profit and loss statements don’t usually contain the information required to make an adequate cash flow projection. For that, you’re going to need a structured balance sheet that includes all the influencing factors including debts, interest payments, inventory and so on. This is the basis for your cash flow projection which represents an “educated guess” at the likely incomings and outgoings over the period of time you have selected to map out.
Read the article »
Small Employer Simple Cafeteria Plans
June 11, 2010
For years beginning after Dec. 31, 2010, small employers (average of 100 or fewer employees on business days during either of the two preceding years) may provide employees with a “simple cafeteria plan.” (Code Sec. 125(j)) Under such a plan, the employer is provided with a safe harbor from the nondiscrimination requirements for cafeteria plans as well as from the nondiscrimination requirements for specified qualified benefits offered under a cafeteria plan– o including group term life insurance, o benefits under a self-insured medical expense reimbursement plan, and o benefits under a dependent care assistance program. Note: Once the Simple Cafeteria plans have been established, the employer is deemed as having met the small employer requirement until such time as the average number of employees exceeds 200 on business days during any year preceding any such subsequent year. Tracy Cobb, CPA
New Employee Hiring Incentives
May 6, 2010 There are some important tax benefits that you may be able to take advantage of if you need to hire new employees. The “Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act of 2010,” more commonly referred to as the HIRE Act, was passed by Congress and recently signed into law by the President. The Act provides employers with incentives to hire unemployed individuals. The provisions of this new legislation apply to workers hired after Feb. 3, 2010, but only for wages paid after March 18 (the date the legislation was signed into law). For more information on this topic and other business-related issues, please give this office us a call at 480-517-0988 or email us for an appointment at Cobb CPA PC. Tracy Cobb, CPA
|
|
