Time Management Tools for Small Business

Time Management

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Time management is very important for small business owners and entrepreneurs. In fact, one of the biggest problems is when the owner is working 90 hours a week on a consistent basis. Many business owners can't figure out how to manage their time properly. That is why they are overworked and miserable. Here are some time management tools that can help you manage your time better.

Salesforce.com

This is one of the best CRM (customer relationship management) systems out there. Now, I understand that many business owners may not need it because they are not customer-facing themselves. But most business owners interact with customers on a daily and hourly basis. In fact, if you're not interacting with customers a lot, then it means your business may not be going well. In any case, Salesforce.com is a great tool that will allow you to save a ton of time. It will also enhance your customer relationships. It will enable you to load in contact information, create opportunities for your sales and deal pipeline and will allow you to set tasks so you know when and how to follow up. It's much better and easier to work with then keeping all of your customers in an excel spreadsheet or some other static database.

Synced Computer, Tablet, and Smartphone

I've noticed that the business owners who are the most efficient leverage the technology they have. Most sync their computer, tablet, and smartphones together. That way, they can manage their schedules and their projects on the go or when they're out of the office. It can be a bit of a pain to set it up so you can sync everything together. Outlook is a good standard schedule, email and project management tool. The great thing about it is that you can easily sync it with any tablet or smartphone.  If you own Apple products, may apps auto-sync such as Notes, Reminders, and Calendar...all helpful in time management.

Dragon Dictation App

One of the biggest time wasters is when you have a brilliant thought, you forget it, or have to spend hours figuring out the details. You could use the Dragon Dictation App. The basic app is free and very easy to use. You can speak into is and it'll dictate into text everything you say. That means you can take notes on the fly when you're out or on the road.

Basecamp

If you do a lot of project management, you really need to use Basecamp. It's a very useful tool that will support the management of projects. It's also great for teams to collaborate on projects. It collects all of the communications and schedules in one place.  You can try it FREE for 2 months to decide if it's beneficial for your business.

It's important for small business owners to manage their time properly. These are just some time management tools that can help you do that and maximize your productivity.


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Time Management for Business

Time Management for Business

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The common thinking when it comes to business is "time is money."  In order for a business to be successful, it has to be well-organized and efficient with its time.  Proper time management in business is often the key to being successful with both customers and employees, and putting time management strategies to use can have an immediate impact on a business.  If a business is having trouble managing time efficiently, the following time management tips may help.

When analyzing time management in business, one of the first steps is to decide what has the highest priority at that moment and for the upcoming week.  One of the best time management tips for this is to develop an Action Plan for the upcoming week.  This plan should be thought about at the end of each week, and developed in time to be implemented the next week.  Friday is often a good day to develop the next week's Action Plan.  A staff meeting can be held to find out what got done, what didn't get done and what is the most pressing assignment still awaiting completion.  Employees and management can work together to develop an Action Plan, listing the top three items that need to be completed the next week, what day they will be done and who will be in charge of seeing them be completed.

After settling on an Action Plan, the next of the time management strategies is to prioritize.  Take a close look at the items on the Action Plan, and see which of these is most urgent.  Ask yourself how each task will impact the business, and will it have a negative impact if put off too long?  Do the same with the second and third items, and soon the Action Plan will not only have what items need to be accomplished, but in what order as well.  Learning to correctly prioritize for a business is much like triage for a hospital, where the most serious problems get done first and so on until everything is finished.

The next and perhaps most important step in time management for business is learning how to stay focused on the task at hand.  No matter what type of business a person is involved in, there are always distractions trying to intervene.  Some of the biggest problems with distractions come from people who are self-employed and working from home.  With family and friends always wanting to stop and talk for a few minutes, it's much too easy to let the day slip by without getting much work done.  The best way to handle this is to have a regular work schedule, such as 8-5 Monday through Friday when you are officially working.  While hard to initially implement, it can work wonders once followed.  By staying disciplined and keeping distractions to a minimum, much more work can be completed and much more money made.  By using these time management tips, an individual or organization can find themselves being much more productive.

Rent Out Your House

Who says Commies don't get capitalism?  This week Russian punk rock group, Pussy Riot, was back in the news.  They may not be good at music, but they are great at branding.  If they were named Ruptured Spleen Riot, would we have heard about them?

So you want to move to a bigger house but can't, because your current house is so far underwater the zip code was changed to Atlantis.  How will you ever manage to fit four wives, ten children, and fifteen cats into your three bedroom townhouse?  You're in luck, because I have the answer.  It might not be a good answer, but you aren't paying anything for this advice.  So you'll get what you pay for.

There are three things to know about taxes on rentals before you advertise your house on Craigslist: 1. How your rental will affect your tax situation, 2. What you can deduct, and 3. How you report the income and expense on your tax returns.  Let's start out with #1.

You might reasonably think renting out your house puts you in the rental business, not really from an IRS perspective.  Unless you are a real estate professional, meaning a real estate agent or involved in a real estate trade, your rental is considered a passive activity.  With a normal trade or business, if you make a profit, you pay taxes on the profit.  If you incur a loss, you can deduct the loss against other income such as wages.  This isn't true with rental real estate.

With rental real estate, you pay taxes on any profit you earn, but you do not get to deduct any losses you suffer unless your adjusted gross income is less than $100K.  If your income is less than $100K, you can deduct up to $25K in rental losses.  If your income is between $100K and $150K, you get a prorated portion of the $25K.  If your income exceeds $150K, you get no immediate deduction at all.

You don't lose any rental losses that you can't immediately deduct.  You carry the losses forward to future years until you either have a rental profit, which you can then offset dollar for dollar, or until you sell the house.  Then you can deduct any remaining losses that you have not been able to deduct.

If you make more than $150K and a buddy tells you to invest in rental real estate for the tax break, he is full of......full of something foul and smelly.  Rental real estate can be a good investment, but not for an immediate tax break.  It can be good for price appreciation potential, which can be taxed at the lower capital gains tax breaks.  Real estate can be a great part of a retirement plan, just don't put it in an IRA.  You'll lose the capital gains tax rate that way.

If you aren't planning on holding a property for five years or more, your investment will likely be a bad deal.  Yes, I know about flippers, not the amphibian kind, the stupid kind, who believe they can outguess the real estate market.  I prepare their tax returns.  Here's how they go:  small gain on the first deal, small gain on the second deal, then total loss on the third.  Losers don't brag, liars do, however.  You've been warned.

You might also ask, "Frank, how do I become a real estate professional?  That way I can deduct my losses regardless of my income."

There are two requirements to be considered a real estate professional.  First, you must have at least 750 hours in real estate activities.  That seems simple enough to meet.  However, the second requirement is that more than half of your work hours must be spent in a real estate related profession or trade.  That's the tough one.  If you have W-2 income from a non-real estate job, you probably can't qualify.

"But Frank, how will the IRS know whether I spend more than half my time in real estate?"

Here's how to find out. Try deducting a rental loss when you have substantial W-2 wage income.  You will likely get a personal invitation to your local IRS office.  You'll need a log of your hours to prove more than half your time was in real estate.  No log, no deduction.

Think broadly about the potential expenses you may be able to deduct against your rental income.  Let's start with this partial list:
a. Mortgage interest
b. Real estate taxes
c. Utilities
d.  HOA dues
e. Repairs
f. Depreciation
g.  Travel to the rental
h. Professional fees
i.  Landscaping and maintenance
j. Management fees and rental commissions
h.  Cleaning supplies

For depreciation, you depreciate the building, not the land, using the straight line method over 27.5 years.  Why 27.5 years?  Why not?  Tax law doesn't have to make sense.  How do you separate the building value from the land value?  Look at your tax appraisal.  That will give you the proportion of the total property value that is building.  You then apply that percentage to either your original cost of the property or the market value when you make the property available for rental.  You use the lower of the two values.  You do include settlement costs in the original purchase price.

You also get depreciation deductions for improvements and major replacements.  Improvements attached to the structure of the building are depreciated over 27.5 years.  Replacement appliances are depreciated over five years.  IRS publication 527 covers expenses related to residential rental real estate.  You can get it at www.irs.gov.  It's great bathroom reading, guaranteed to cure constipation.

There are three primary schedules you'll use to report your rental activity on your personal tax returns, schedule E, form 4562, and form 8582.  Schedule E is the main form where you list the rental income and expenses.  Form 4562 is the form where you calculate depreciation.  Form 8582 is where you determine how much of your rental loss is deductible and how much carries forward to future years.  You can also get these forms at www.irs.gov.  This site's porn for tax preparers.  Sad, but true.  At least it's free.

Good luck in renting out your house.  You'll need it.  The tax complications are the least of your worries.  You'll face idiot tenants.  You'll get to pay moron contractors to repair your property.  All of this is pure joy.  Trust that I know this from experience.  We just received a contract to sell our rental property.  If I had to make a choice between that sales contract and sex with Jennifer Aniston.....well it's a close call.

Thanks fro reading!  As always for real tax and accounting advice, visit the main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com.  Also, please like the "How to Screw Up Your Small Business" Facebook page.  I post snarky and helpful business advice several times each day.

Until next time, let's do it to them before they do it to us.

The Five Stages of Grief in an IRS Audit

Death and taxes share more than just a cliche'd phrase about inevitability.  They share a common process when it comes to an IRS audit, the five stages of grief.  Few events cause as much grief as an IRS audit.  How you handle the five stages determines your eventual audit outcome as surely as the quality of your documentation.

The first stage is denial.  "This isn't happening to me."  "There must be some mistake."  Denial often manifests itself through procrastination.  Some people don't open the IRS envelope with the audit notice.  Some open the notice, but never respond to the scheduling information.  They lose precious weeks of preparation.  If you need to produce bank statements, you can't make the bank respond overnight.  You can't find a competent professional to represent you overnight.

Denial, in the form of procrastination, is the first step to a bad audit outcome.  When you get the dreaded IRS notice announcing your audit, gather all of your tax records for the year being audited, and immediately contact a CPA or attorney to represent you.  Your professional representative will schedule the audit.  Audits are about credibility, and nothing establishes credibility with the IRS like a professional representative.

The second stage is anger.  This is the "How dare they?  I'm a God fearing, honest American.  They have no right to audit me."  stage.  An audit is a legal proceeding.  You are legally obligated to participate.  There is an alternative minimum tax but no alternative minimum audit.

Anger, during an audit, never works in your favor.  IRS examiners face angry people every day.  You and I might have trouble handling personal rejection, but IRS employees face it every day.  They develop immunity, or they don't last long.  Remember, audits are all about credibility.  Anger costs you credibility.  An auditor, who likes you, might give you the benefit of the doubt in a gray area of tax law or documentation.

The third stage is bargaining.  "If I just tell the auditor..... he has no choice but to take my word."  Yes, he has a choice.  As much as audits are about credibility, they are about documentation.  The auditor has a checklist for every issue selected for audit.  If he's auditing real estate taxes, you need mortgage interest statements and mortgage documents from your bank.  Nothing else will work.  Your aim in the audit is to help the auditor complete his checklist.  If he feels you aren't cooperating, he can increase the scope of the examination.  If you're caught in a lie, he can place additional years under audit.  Again, your credibility determines your outcome.

In one audit, one of my clients was caught in a lie in the first half hour.  What looked to be a half day audit covering one year turned into a three month nightmare covering three years of not just his personal tax returns but also his corporate tax returns.

The fourth stage is depression.  "This audit will never end."  "I never have enough documentation for the auditor."  "He's not being fair."  "I can't possibly pay the taxes he is going to assess."  You will get through the audit.  I have never seen one last forever.  The IRS takes a cost benefit approach to audits.  An audit is done when the auditor believes that any additional efforts will yield little in additional taxes.

Combat your depression by helping he auditor complete his checklist.  You don't have to agree with his conclusions.  That's not your aim here.  Your aim is to get him through his procedures and to an assessment.  There are lots of inexperienced auditors at the IRS.  they make a lot of factual mistakes.  Arguing with the field auditor wastes your time and doesn't get you any closer to the end of the audit.

Once you have the tax assessment, you get to argue your case before a more experienced supervisor.  Many times, I have been able to knock out almost all of the field auditor's conclusions in a telephone call with the supervisor.  They have the experience to know what they'll lose in a formal appeal or in tax court.

The final stage is acceptance.  If you made mistakes in your tax returns, or can't support the deductions you claimed, you will have to pay additional taxes.  If the assessment is large, the IRS will work with you to arrange a payment plan.  Of course, I don't recommend handling the payment negotiation or any part of the audit yourself.  An audit is an adversarial procedure.  The auditor represents the interests of the IRS, not you.  You need someone knowledgeable representing your interests or you may face payments you can't afford.  That's bad not only for you but the IRS.  If you're broke, they can't collect their taxes.

If you legitimately owe more taxes, sometimes the best thing your representative can do for you is negotiate down any penalties.  If you're assessed an accuracy related penalty, a good representative can make a case that you acted in good faith and shouldn't face penalties.  If you and your representative have established credibility with the auditor, you'll get the benefit of the doubt here.  The auditor has a lot of discretion with this penalty.  Removing or reducing it is your reward for being a decent human being during the process.

Thanks for reading!  For real tax and accounting advice, visit the main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com.  Also please like the "How to Screw up Your Small Business" Facebook page.  I post there several times a day.

Until next time, let's do it to them before they do it to us.

Five Benefits of a Small Business Website

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Despite the nearly universal opinion that internet marketing boosts the income and profits of businesses of all sizes, a disturbingly large number of businesses out there don't actually have a website. The following list includes several vital reasons why a small business should create a small business website. It's important to note that this list represents only a sampling of why it's great for all companies to create websites and that it doesn't take a degree in web design to get a terrific website launched.

1. Advertising is quick and easy

When a company that lacks an internet presence needs to advertise a sale or new product, a lot of time must be put into the marketing strategy for things like billboard advertisements, radio spots, and even television commercials. This is a pricey endeavor for a small business. A small business website offers a much less expensive way to let everyone know about something new and is particularly effective when paired with a social media campaign.

2. Website creation is not expensive or time consuming

There are several resources that will help a small business to create a beautiful website, and whether a web design professional is hired for the job or whether the process is handled internally, utilizing web-based tools for creation requires almost zero technical expertise. Although it is beneficial to have a website specifically designed to be unique for a small business, it's fine to launch the initial website with a simple template approach and automated website design software.

3. Web presence makes customer service easier

Placing a focus on customer service helps all companies, but small companies might have to spend a lot of time on the phone answering questions that could be handled less expensively online. Not only will a website offer a "Frequently Asked Questions" display to take care of most basic customer inquiries, but many customers these days prefer handling their customer service through the internet because it doesn’t require time spent on hold on the phone.

4. Improves company image inexpensively

Refurbishing a brick and mortar location takes a lot of time and money and can't be done particularly often. Making a professional and updated small business website, however, is a much easier process. Today's customers will very often have their first experience with a company through the internet, and so that first impression from the company's website represents a prime opportunity to show the professionalism and polished appearance of the company brand.

5. Increases selling power

The effort put into creating a website and proper web presence that includes things like social media and branding opportunities provides a significant opportunity to increase sales. A website may increase sales through online purchases, or it might allow a company to hit that elusive sales goal that was decided upon at the beginning of the year.

The internet exists as a significant equalizer in making it appear that a business is actually larger than it is, and this means that even the smallest companies can use the internet to create brand growth, increased sales, and higher customer engagement. Creating a website offers far too many benefits to pass up.



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Jute Bag Making Machine for Small Business at Home

Jute Bag Making Machine is very good idea for Small Business at Home.

Demand and Market Jute Bags:

The demand of jute bags is found in the market and shops all throughout the year. With the Jute Bag Making Machine you can make fashionable jute bags and can sell it in the market.

How to make Jute Bags with Jute Bag Making Machine:

At first you have to buy the roll and thread of jute. You may buy these from the market of Barobazar and Chandnichak in Kolkata. If you want to make various types of fashionable bags, you have to wash the jute in various chemicals. Now, you have to cut the jute roll in indicated size as you want. Then put the piece of jute on the indicated place of machine and put the jute thread on the machine and start the machine.

It needs ½ hp motor and 220 volts to operate the Jute Bag Making Machine.

Price of the Jute Bag Making Machine:

The price of the Jute Bag Making Machine including motor is approximately Rs. 30,000.

Where to buy the Jute Bag Making Machine:

Bharat Machine Tools Industries, 61, Ganesh Chandra Avenue,

Kolkata-700013.

You can find many companies manufacturing a wide range of Jute Bag Making Machine. Their machine matches high technology electronic control.

To read the reviews and buy the Jute Bag Making Machine visit websites

http://www.tyagienggworks.in/automatic-paper-bag-making-machine.htm

http://www.indiamart.com/guru-machine-company/bag-making-machines.html

5 June 13 KK