Quick Tips: Small Biz Tax Prep and Keeping Your Fees Low!

Reading Diana Ransom's article, Quick Tips: Small Biz Tax Prep on the SmartMoney Small Business site inspired me to take a few of her thoughts and expand upon them.

As a CPA, here are a few tips to help keep your accounting fees as low as possible:

1) Opt for QuickBooks over Quicken, Peachtree, any industry-specific accounting programs, or any lesser-known accounting programs. Today, just about every CPA out there is at least familiar, if not well-versed, with QuickBooks and we can simply import your data into our system. This eliminates the data-entry portion of our services and allows you to only pay us for our expertise...tax planning and tax preparation.

2) When filing your expense receipts, keep them in two separate envelopes:
Envelope #1 - Everything you paid for with cash, a personal check, a personal debit card, or a personal credit card

Envelope #2 - Everything you paid for with a business check, business debit card, or business credit card

This way, all you need to do is take Envelope #1 to your accountant at the end of the year (he will already see all expenses in Envelope #2 when reviewing your business credit card & bank statements.

3) If your business is inventory-intensive, do not rely on the QuickBooks inventory module. It is by far the weakest component of the QuickBooks program. Your best bet is to track inventory through separate software or use a program that interfaces with QuickBooks, such as Fishbowl.

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