Point of Sale Goes Mobile

Here’s some exciting news for retailers looking to grow! QuickBooks Point of Sale software now integrates beautifully with GoPayment, ensuring that you never miss a sale — whether you’re in or out of your brick and mortar location.

QuickBooks Point of Sale gives you the powerful tools needed to manage your store and make better business decisions. It enables you to track inventory, set automatic re-order points, manage customer contact information, send personalized customer communications and access detailed business reporting.  And now you can keep inventory and sales in sync no matter where you get paid, thanks to GoPayment.

So whether you’re at a tradeshow, having a sidewalk sale, or simply want to step out from behind the counter to get that line moving, your inventory and sales data will match up, which means no more manual data entry when you need to be on the go.

QuickBooks Point of Sale can manage data for up to 20 locations. In addition to the features mentioned above, it also helps you track employee hours and commissions.

Check out pointofsale.intuit.com to learn how you can get set up to get on the go.

Checklist New Businesses

Overview of major steps critical to planning and starting a business People start and operate businesses for many reasons. Regardless of why you are interested in starting and operating your own business, you want to be successful. The act of forming a business is not particularly difficult. However, planning for and developing a profitable, growing business is a complex, ongoing process. Adequate planning, attention to details, and realistic expectations are critical to your success, especially if the business grows rapidly.

step 1:

Examine your motivation for business ownership 

Although hundreds of businesses are started each day, owning and operating a 

business is not for everyone. Many businesses are started without a realistic evaluation 

of personal objectives, individual talents, and personality traits. If you open a business 

without an honest evaluation of your motives, you may find yourself unhappy and 

disillusioned. 

step 2:

Choose a business suitable for you 

A question often asked is "What kind of business should I start?" No one can answer 

this question for you. Your choice is a highly personal matter. Businesses of all types 

are both successful and unsuccessful. A particular business generally succeeds or fails 

based on the customer market, the skills of the owner(s) and workers, and the quality of 

the products; not because of the type of business. Personal Areas To Consider When 

Choosing Your Business: your experience, your talents and your interests. 

step 3:

Evaluate the feasibility of your chosen business 

At this point, you have examined your personal motivation for business ownership and 

chosen an interesting possibility. Most likely, you are anxious to run to the bank, get a 

loan, and open your business. STOP! 

A common mistake made by many individuals is to blindly pursue business ownership 

without adequately evaluating whether their idea is actually feasible. Before you go any 

further, you need to examine your idea for feasibility. A good feasibility evaluation 

involves a detailed examination of financial, personal, and market realities 

step 4:

Consider start-up requirements and common pitfalls 

Become aware of the legal forms of organization you may choose. Learn which permits, 

licenses, rules and regulations are applicable to your proposed business. Determine the 

types of records you will have to keep for local, state, and federal tax purposes. 

Determine the types of record keeping and control systems you will need for internal 

management purposes. Determine the steps you must take to establish a legal Checklist for Starting a 

business entity. Consider your professional needs, such as marketing and advertising, legal, 

accounting and tax, insurance, and banking. 

step 5:

Develop your business plan 

Many people talk about a business plan when they really mean a financing request. If 

you are seeking significant private investment, the two documents will require much of 

the same information. However, if you are going to seek traditional commercial 

financing, which is much more likely, the financing request will usually be less 

comprehensive. 

 • A Business Plan Is: The strategic plan for the development and operation of your 

business for your internal management use. 

 • A Financing Request Is: A document you prepare for raising capital based on 

information in your business plan. 

 • A Business Plan Is a Management Tool You Should: Use to help you think 

through the development of your business and ensure that you have considered 

options and anticipated potential difficulties; Use to evaluate your progress 

against your planned business goals; Update and modify for operational and 

strategic planning purposes as the business environment changes; Use in the 

development of financing proposals. 

step 6:

Develop your financing request and obtain initial capital 

In reaching this step, you have determined you have enough personal money to cover a 

"down payment" or the "full cost" of starting your business. If should do an honest 

analysis of your financial position, without doing so you could invest a lot of your 

personal time only to learn that you are not going to be able to borrow the money 

necessary to start your business. 

Facts you should know about borrowing money to finance your business: 

 • Most businesses are started with money from personal savings, family, or 

friends. 

 • Only approximately 20% of new business owners start their business with money 

borrowed from commercial lenders. 

 • No conventional lending source, private or governmental, will make a commercial 

loan for 100% of the funds you need to start your business. 

 • As a rule of thumb, your personal investment will need to approximately 25% the 

total start-up costs of your business. If you have less than this, your chances of 

obtaining outside financing are not as good. 

 • Your "sweat equity" will not be considered relevant by the lender. As a general 

rule of thumb, you will need $1.50 in quality collateral for every $1 you want to 

borrow. Checklist for Starting a Business   

Although you may think your collateral's true worth is its appraised value or its original 

cost, its worth to the lender will be far less than either of these values. Your financial 

projections must show that any loan proceeds plus interest and other business 

expenses can be repaid from business revenues. The assumptions that you base your 

financial projections on will be examined carefully for reasonability. Simply having 

adequate collateral will not override the business's inability to generate positive cash 

flow when the lending decision is being made. 

Acquiring a loan will be more involved and time-consuming than you think. In the best of 

circumstances, it will normally take 60-90 days to close a loan. If you have a complex 

situation or if the lender needs additional information for any reason, the time span may 

be significantly longer. 

Caution:

Do not assume your loan request will be approved. Be realistic. Lenders are in 

the business of making money, not buying ideas. 

step 7:

Finalize all start-up requirements. You have completed your planning and have acquired the funding 

needed to start your business. Now is the time to sign contracts and lease agreements, pay various 

licenses, permits, and fees, obtain utility services and complete all other requirements.

Spring Cleaning Never Throw These Important Papers Away

Spring is a great time to clean out that growing mountain of financial papers and tax documents that clutters your home and office. Here's what you need to keep and what you can throw out without fearing the wrath of the IRS.

Let's start with your "safety zone," the IRS statute of limitations. This limits the number of years during which the IRS can audit your tax returns. Once that period has expired, the IRS is legally prohibited from even asking you questions about those returns.

The concept behind it is that after a period of years, records are lost or misplaced and memory isn't as accurate as we would hope. There's a need for finality. Once the statute of limitations has expired, the IRS can't go after you for additional taxes, but you can't go after the IRS for additional refunds, either.
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The Three-Year Rule

For assessment of additional taxes, the statute of limitation runs generally three years from the date you file your return. If you're looking for an additional refund, the limitations period is generally the later of three years from the date you filed the original return or two years from the date you paid the tax. There are some exceptions:

• If you don't report all your income and the unreported amount is more than 25% of the gross income actually shown on your return, the limitation period is six years.
  
  
• If you've claimed a loss from a worthless security, the limitation period is extended to seven years.
  
  
• If you file a "fraudulent" return, or don't file at all, the limitations period doesn't apply. In fact, the IRS can get you at any time.
  
  
• If you're deciding what records you need or want to keep, you have to ask what your chances are of an audit. A tax audit is an IRS verification of items of income and deductions on your return. So you should keep records to support those items until the statute of limitations runs out.
•  

Assuming that you've filed on time and paid what you should, you only have to keep your tax records for three years, but some records have to be kept longer than that.
Remember, the three-year rule relates to the information on your tax return. But, some of that information may relate to transactions more than three years old.

Here's a checklist of the documents you should hold on to:

1. Capital gains and losses. Your gain is reduced by your basis - your cost (including all commissions) plus, with mutual funds, any reinvested dividends and capital gains. But you may have bought that stock five years ago and you've been reinvesting those dividends and capital gains over the last decade. And don't forget those stock splits.
   
   You don't ever want to throw these records away until after you sell the securities. And then if you're audited, you'll have to prove those numbers. Therefore, you'll need to keep those records for at least three years after you file the return reporting their sales.
   
   
2. Expenses on your home. Cost records for your house and any improvements should be kept until the home is sold. It's just good practice, even though most homeowners won't face any tax problems. That's because profit of less than $250,000 on your home ($500,000 on a joint return) isn't subject to taxes under tax legislation enacted in 1997.
   
   If the profit is more than $250,000/$500,000, or if you don't qualify for the full gain exclusion, then you're going to need those records for another three years after that return is filed. Most homeowners probably won't face that issue thanks to the 1997 tax law, but of course, it's better to be safe than sorry.
   
   
3. Business records. Business records can become a nightmare. Non-residential real estate is now depreciated over 39 years. You could be audited on the depreciation up to three years after you file the return for the 39th year. That's a long time to hold on to receipts, but you may need to validate those numbers.
   
   
4. Employment, bank, and brokerage statements. Keep all your W-2s, 1099s, brokerage, and bank statements to prove income until three years after you file. And don't even think about dumping checks, receipts, mileage logs, tax diaries, and other documentation that substantiate your expenses.
   
   
5. Tax returns. Keep copies of your tax returns as well. You can't rely on the IRS to actually have a copy of your old returns. As a general rule, you should keep tax records for 6 years. The bottom line is that you've got to keep those records until they can no longer affect your tax return, plus the three-year statute of limitations.
   
   
6. Social Security records. You will need to keep some records for Social Security purposes, so check with the Social Security Administration each year to confirm that your payments have been appropriately credited. If they're wrong, you'll need your W-2 or copies of your Schedule C (if self-employed) to prove the right amount. Don't dispose of those records until after you've validated those contributions.
   
   Contact us by phone or email if you have any questions about what records you need to keep this spring.
   

QuickBooks 2012: New Paths to Better

As it usually does this time of year, Intuit has introduced new versions of its Pro and Premier products. QuickBooks 2012 promises to help you get better organized, save steps, and acquire more in-depth financial insights.

The new Express Start is designed for businesses that want to blast through setup and start entering customers and invoices. You have two other options, though: Advanced Setup is the old EasyStep interview that solicits more details. You can also open an existing file or convert data from Quicken or other accounting software.

Express Start requires minimal input: company name, industry, company type, tax ID, and contact information. After you save your company file, it lets you start adding or importing customers/vendors/employees, products/services, and bank accounts.

Figure 1: Express Start simplifies company setup.

An Activity-Driven Calendar
QuickBooks' Reminders keep you apprised of each day's tasks, but they don't provide any information about the past or future. QuickBooks 2012 solves this problem with its new Calendar. When you enter an appointment, to-do, or key business task (invoices, bills, purchase orders, etc.), it appears in the calendar. You can display a graphical view of the month that tallies activities for each day and lists them below. Daily and weekly views are in list form. And links open the original documents.

Figure 2: The new Calendar displays daily, weekly, and monthly views of your financial transactions.

Save Excel Formatting
Once you've formatted a QuickBooks report in Excel, it's frustrating to have to reformat it each time you run it for different time periods and/or with your ever-changing content. Excel Integration Refresh simplifies this process. You can now export a report to Excel, make formatting changes and save them, and then reapply them later to the same type of report using different date ranges and your updated QuickBooks data. Acceptable alterations include:

• Row and column header font formatting
• New formulas
• Renamed column and row headers, and report titles
• Resized columns
• Inserted columns and rows
• Inserted formula text

You can do this by opening your report in QuickBooks and clicking Update an existing worksheet, or by launching your report in Excel and clicking the QuickBooks tab on the toolbar, then the Update Report button.


Figure 3: This window opens when you click Update Report in Excel.

A New Report Community
There's always room for more report formats. QuickBooks 2012 offers a library of Contributed Reports, variations created either by Intuit or your fellow users. You can select one of these, like Customer Sales By Quantity By Item Detail and instantly populate it with your own data.

You can sort these templates by industry and rating, and view them as a list, in a grid, or in the Report Center's Carousel view.

Centralized Operations
QuickBooks 2012 also saves you time with its new Centers. The Inventory Center works similarly to those available for customers, vendors, and employees. It's a clearinghouse of item records and transactions that can be viewed and sorted. You can also do inventory housekeeping tasks here, like adding items and launching transactions.

The Lead Center helps you carefully track new leads that you either paste in from Excel or enter manually. You can add to-dos and notes to contact records, and convert them into customers.

Upgrading Can Be Tricky
Intuit has included other, smaller time-saving organizational and reporting tools in QuickBooks 2012, like One-Click Transactions, which lets you create related transactions from existing ones (i.e., invoice to credit memo) with one click.

There's nothing especially difficult about using most of QuickBooks 2012's new features. But upgrading and setup are sometimes quirky, and the Excel Integration Refresh tool has a learning curve. We're happy to help you start your company file on the right foot or get acclimated to this latest version.

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