Extensions - Should I?

Should you do an extension? There are a couple questions that you must ask yourself if you should do an extension:

• Do I have all of my information together and ready to file my taxes?
• Does my tax professional have time left on his schedule to do my tax return?

There are several misconceptions regarding extensions. One is that you will be flagged for an audit if you extend your tax return. This is false. Statistically you have a 2.5% less chance of being audited if you file later in the year. Another misconception is that you don't have to pay tax. An extension is just request for a longer period of time to gather information, you are not given a longer time to pay your taxes. Payment of taxes should be made no later than April 15. The last misconception is that you have to go in (to your professionals office) to sign the extension. This is not true as you don't have to sign anything. Your professional can do it with only a small amount of information.

If you need help with your extension, please feel free to call. Don't put it off!!

QuickBooks Can Help Fix Problems

QuickBooks can help fix problems in your business, as well as improve cash flow and help productivity. By using Quickbooks custom fields, classes, and job names, you can find out which clients are making you money and which clients are costing you money. Here are a couple of ways to zero in on your problem areas:

-Aging reports tell you who your slow payers are. You can also include credit limits so you can avoid bad debts. You can find this report under Reports/ Customers/ Aging Summary or Aging Detail.

-Reminders can be used to trigger phone calls you need to make, notes about your customers, and bills that might need to be generated and mailed.

-Time tracking can be used on employees to see which employees are helping your bottom line and which employees are costing you money. You can also assign their time to a job to show the overall profitability of a client.

QuickBooks can also help speed up your cash flow. Time and expense tracking helps you bill your clients faster. You can also use progress invoices to produce invoices ahead of time. Collection letters can also be generated from QuickBooks to help with collecting.

Finally, QuickBooks can also be helpful in helping you find transactions that you think might be lost. Let's say you are trying to find every transaction in QuickBooks dealing with a certain project. You can download the QuickBooks search which is powered by Google search. Type in the name you are trying to find and the search engine will produce all the transactions with that word in any transaction in your database. However, this capability takes up a lot of space, so make sure your computer can handle it.

With these tips, QuickBooks can help you build your business and make you more efficient. Please call us if there is anything we can help you with!

Use QuickBooks for Contact Management and Organization

QuickBooks can be very useful as a contact management tool when dealing with customers. In Quickbooks, open a customer and choose the Additional Info tab. You will see a box labeled "Custom Fields." Click on the define fields button and you can customize what you would like to name these boxes. Such fields that might be useful to you would be spouse's name, membership anniversary date, call-back dates, referral source, birthday, shipping date, renewal date, etc.

You can then customize reports to include the information you have added to these fields. In the customer contact list which is located under reports/ customers, you can include the spouse's name as a column so that you can have this information for thank you notes or other various items you would send. You could also include the contract date or renewal date or other items that might be relevant to your business. You can also memorize this report so that it will be handy next time you need the information quickly.

QuickBooks will also include this information on labels (File/Print Forms/Labels) or letters that you can print from QuickBooks. In order to create letters, choose company then prepare letters with envelopes. Here you will find a list of predefined templates for various letters including collection letters, customer letters, etc.

QuickBooks can be a great tool for managing customer relationships. Many users do not realize they do not need to purchase additional software such as CRM software to manage this information. If you need additional information, or would like further training on QuickBooks, please do not hesitate to call our office.

How to Pay LESS to Uncle Sam

I always get clients and friends that always ask me, "How do I pay less taxes?" For me it is simple, here are several easy, proven techniques to pay LESS:

• Get a professional to prepare your taxes. This gives you a chance to "pick" their brain for additional deductions
• If you don't know, Bring it and Ask...I have had countless clients just ask one simple question that will get me down a path (that I did not know existed) unless they asked
• Always and I mean Always try to itemize. If it saves you an extra $200 in tax savings, and it only took you an additional hour to get the info together...I would love to be paid $200 per hour to look for items
• File on time...or get the extension on time, millions of people do not extend their tax return timely, thus costing penalties when they do file, and
• Plan...Plan...Plan...Last year is gone focus on the current year so you can take full advantage of the tax laws. Pay for an hour of your accountant's time, it may be well work it. (One of my clients bought 3 hours of my time last December, we were able to save him over $20,000 in taxes...very nice trade-off).

Put these proven techniques to use, and pay Uncle Sam LESS.

Itemized Deductions

As you may know you get to take the greater of either The Standard Deduction ($10,700 Married Joint) or The Itemized Deduction. So what is an Itemized Deduction then? The most common deductions are:

• Out-Of-Pocket Medical Expenses (limited)
• Real Estate Taxes
• Sales Taxes (Florida has no Personal Income Tax)
• Home Mortgage Interest
• Charitable Contributions, and
• Non-Reimbursed Business Expenses

These are a few deductions. If the items above are more than $10,700 (Married Joint), then you can itemize. You should always get your tax preparer to check to see if you qualify for itemized deductions. If you would like to get a checklist you can take to your Tax Man, you can download a checklist from the "Forms" section of our website. You can always call if you have questions regarding itemized deductions.