From the category archives:

Record Keeping

Track small deductibles

by Norma

Start a 2010 paper trail now

Like most of you, we run our busi­ness on a cal­en­dar year rather than a fis­cal year so we are start­ing to close the books for 2009 and begin a new year. Each Jan­u­ary, we label fold­ers for each month. These will hold all phys­i­cal invoices, records, receipts and state­ments as they accu­mu­late. Since every scrap of paper related to the busi­ness goes into a monthly folder, you may need twelve boxes. Dupli­cate checks attached to receipts, deposit slips sta­pled to paid client invoices and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion print­outs clipped to our bank state­ments before they go into the cor­rect folder. We make copies as needed to file with each client’s indi­vid­ual records.

Elec­tronic book­keep­ing, invoic­ing and online bank­ing put every­thing at your fin­ger­tips. Well, here’s the thing — for Uncle Sam and our accoun­tants, that’s just not enough. They demand a paper trail of phys­i­cal records to sup­port the elec­tron­ics. If a busi­ness is audited, we have to quickly locate those var­i­ous snip­pets of paper — up to 10 years later.
Here are some busi­ness expenses IRS allows you to deduct if you have doc­u­men­ta­tion:
See List

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Record Keeping

by Norma

Why New Busi­nesses Keep Records

NewBusinessRecordKeepingGood record keep­ing shows how a busi­ness is doing – it’s prof­itabil­ity, items sell­ing, and ser­vices being used for instance. Busi­ness own­ers uti­lize records to ana­lyze sta­tus and pin­point what changes or improve­ments to make. Keep­ing good records is vital for your busi­ness success.

Before the paint dries and the doors open, a small busi­ness starts to leave a paper trail of doc­u­ments and busi­ness oper­a­tions – receipts, bank trans­ac­tions, pur­chase orders, maybe even rev­enue. Before long, you’ll be called on to show your income sources and expenses, as well as employee-​related records, includ­ing all employ­ment taxes. OSHA also has record keep­ing require­ments. Before the year end, you’ll start to won­der how your busi­ness is fair­ing – are you still on track or got­ten off course some­where along the way? [Read More]

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