A lot of accounting and tax firms talk about serving small business but many of them are functionally new to it themselves. Add to this the attractiveness of an industry that has one of the highest Returns on Investment in the US combined with owners who are themselves just learning the ropes of ownership and it’s clear why there is so much advertising geared towards you.
Small businesses need people who can invest in their goals as much as the owners themselves are. We think about your business as much you do but in different ways. The advantage to you is that you can focus on what drives your business – making sales, managing growth, serving your customers – while we handle the distracting minutia of reports, taxes, and payroll. It’s that simple, we promise!
There are many kinds of taxes a small business will encounter depending on the nature of the business and the complexity of the industry you produce in. Small business, especially new small business, can get mired in the maze that most taxing authorities believe are clear. What is the difference between sales tax and use in Washington state? Why am I required to file a 941 or 944 form? What other state payroll taxes am I responsible for? What if my employees are unionized? What if I have sales in several states? These questions don’t even cover your business income taxes for IRS forms 1120, 1120S, 1065, or 1040’s with Schedule C’s while many small businesses aren’t even invoicing correctly simply because they don’t know the rules that apply to them. We frame the maze of tax reporting so that it’s clear, concise, and simply amazing!
Accounting is both a skill and an art. The skills involved are as basic as knowing how to fill or empty buckets while the art is about knowing which buckets to fill or empty depending on the financial event being recorded. That’s why just buying a copy of QuickBooks and importing transactions isn’t the same as either the skill or the art of accounting. We’ve taken the sometimes complex descriptions of the flow of accounting data and converted it into simple, repeatable, and predictable transactions that help you manage your accounting rather than being managed by it. We can show you how to use QuickBooks as your complete system or as the record of truth without engendering an audit.
We also offer a three-tiered service approach to your accounting.
Payroll is an area of business that everyone has some experience with – we’ve all had at least a few paychecks in our lives – but if we’re honest, we don’t really know all the parts that make up what amounts to our paychecks. This gets even more confusing when an owner has to part out the employer expense from the employee expense. QuickBooks’ default setup is also confusing because it dumps all the parts into a single liability account and a single expense account making it very difficult to manually reconcile either of them if there’s a problem or a question.
If you’re a Tier 1 client, we’ve built in those details to create clarity and we’ve taught you what they are. If you’re a Tier 2 client, we’ve done that as well as done the filing and reconciling for you. If you’re a Tier 3 client, you don’t even know we’re doing it outside of paychecks and tax payments being made on your behalf.
In either case, there’s a clear workflow for you to add employee hours and pay rates, process payroll, direct deposit for employees and subcontractors, schedule state and federal tax payments, and file your quarterly and annual reports on a predictable and timely basis.
