Always Know Your Cash – The Importance of Having Cash No business can survive without cash. Even with monumental profits on the books and the promise of growing future sales, a company without cash will not make it. If you don’t have enough money to pay your bills, your vendors will stop supplying you with … Read more
Managing the Payroll – Still Want to Do It Yourself? There is no question that you can do the payroll yourself if you want to. The main benefit to that is saving money; both bookkeepers and payroll services cost money. However, figuring out the payroll can suck up a lot of time, even using dedicated … Read more
Managing the Payroll – Never Mess Around with Payroll Taxes One common and potentially business-crushing mistake made by new employers is using withholding taxes as a business bank account. Rather than make payroll deposits in full and on time, they cover their other cash-flow gaps by borrowing from the payroll tax account. Doing that is … Read more
Managing the Payroll – Payroll Tax Reporting and Filing The rules for reporting, filing, and paying payroll taxes are written in a lengthy and somewhat convoluted way. Just thumbing through the various federal tax instruction guides, not to mention the state versions, could turn off even the most enthusiastic numbers cruncher. What they really say, … Read more
Managing the Payroll – Calculating Take-Home Pay The first step in figuring out take-home pay is calculating the gross pay, which is how much the employee has earned during the pay period. For salaried employees, getting to this number is a piece of cake—it’s the same as last time (unless you’ve handed out raises). When … Read more
Managing the Payroll – Employee Benefits and Bonuses One way to attract and hold on to the best employees is to offer benefits, such as health insurance or a retirement plan. Another is to reward them for good work by bumping up their annual pay with a bonus. Most of the time, both of these … Read more
Managing the Payroll – All about Payroll Taxes As an employer, you are responsible for sending in two kinds of payroll taxes: the kind you deduct from paychecks, and the kind that you pay in addition to the payroll. There are three basic withholding taxes, two standard employer-side taxes, and unemployment insurance (also an employer- … Read more
Always Know Your Cash – A Big Pile of Forms Having employees can be pretty time-consuming all around. Paying them is no different. You have to deal with state and federal taxes, multiple report filings, unemployment insurance, and a whole lot more. Even if you have only one employee, you have to fill out every … Read more
Standard Operating Expenses – Recording Expense Transactions Expense transactions, just like any other, call for journal entries. The timing of your entry depends on which accounting method your company uses. Under the cash method, you record expenses only when you actually pay them. Under the accrual method, you record expenses as they are incurred. For … Read more
Standard Operating Expenses – Employees Cause a Lot of Transactions Employees are often the single biggest expense a company can have. Not only that, they also bring on a lot of transactions and add more accounts to your system, as you’ll see in Chapter 9. First, you have to pay them, and that’s usually a … Read more
