Basic Accounting

If you win any kind of Federal contracts, including government grants, you are subject to a number of audit requirements. Audit requirements for not-for-profit companies, including universities, are defined in OMB Circular A-133. For-profit companies are governed by the agency providing the award, meaning that each agency has its own audit rules.

All DoD agencies (Army, Navy, Airforce, etc.) follow the same accounting rules. The Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) oversees auditing the DoD contracts. They evaluates contractors’ policies, processes, procedures, controls, and actual performance.

For SBIR grants, their specific tasks include the following:

• Accounting system compliance review - If you win a DoD SBIR (or any DoD contract) and you have not previously had an accounting system compliance review, the DCAA will come and review your accounting system.
• Financial capability review - The objective of a financial capability review is to determine if the contractor has the financial resources to perform the services detailed in the Government contract. (Not standard for SBIRs, but can happen)
• Audit of proposal costs - The contracting officer can request that the DCAA audit all or part of the proposal to assess the validity of cost — fair and reasonable price for the work proposed.
• Audit of indirect cost - You will submit an indirect cost rate with your proposal. Every year, you must submit a “Model Incurred Cost Proposal” backing up your indirect cost spending. The DCAA reviews the costs entered in the model to determine the acceptability of the indirect costs assigned to the contract. The model must be submitted every year of the contract and may be audited each year.
• General audit - This happens at the request of your P Read more
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If you win any kind of Federal contracts, including government grants, you are subject to a number of audit requirements. Audit requirements for not-for-profit companies, including universities, are defined in OMB Circular A-133. For-profit companies are governed by the agency providing the award, meaning that each agency has its own audit rules.

All DoD agencies (Army, Navy, Airforce, etc.) follow the same accounting rules. The Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) oversees auditing the DoD contracts. They evaluates contractors’ policies, processes, procedures, controls, and actual performance.

For SBIR grants, their specific tasks include the following:

• Accounting system compliance review - If you win a DoD SBIR (or any DoD contract) and you have not previously had an accounting system compliance review, the DCAA will come and review your accounting system.
• Financial capability review - The objective of a financial capability review is to determine if the contractor has the financial resources to perform the services detailed in the Government contract. (Not standard for SBIRs, but can happen)
• Audit of proposal costs - The contracting officer can request that the DCAA audit all or part of the proposal to assess the validity of cost — fair and reasonable price for the work proposed.
• Audit of indirect cost - You will submit an indirect cost rate with your proposal. Every year, you must submit a “Model Incurred Cost Proposal” backing up your indirect cost spending. The DCAA reviews the costs entered in the model to determine the acceptability of the indirect costs assigned to the contract. The model must be submitted every year of the contract and may be audited each year.
• General audit - This happens at the request of your P Read more
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Book keeping is fundamentally one of the most important factors of running a small business. It not only produces end of year accounts, essential for the tax man, but more importantly for a small business helps keep control on expenditure and therefore maximise profit. Recent surveys have suggested that up to 50% of small business owners in the UK fail to give there end of year accounts into their accountant on time. This normally results in late submission to the Inland Revenue, and as a consequence the small business owner is fined. The longer the delay the heavier the fine. It is estimated that in 2008 about 20% of small businesses in the UK will hand in there tax returns late netting the Inland Revenue a staggering 200m.

There are still many small business owners who still use manual book keeping, which can be time consuming. Others out source their book keeping which allow them to focus on running their business day to day. So why would book keeping accounting software benefit a small business owner?

The main purpose of book keeping accounting software is to streamline the process. In most cases it will enable you to do your accounts in hours instead of days. The most valuable aspect of these packages is the information and reports they produce. At a glance you will know your sales, who are your customers, have they any outstanding debts or exceeded their credit. Your list of suppliers and purchases,any outstanding invoices, calculate VAT for you. Stock control and even forecast your cash flow. With this information small business owners can make those vital decisions in controlling their business weekly or even daily, without waiting for their quarterly or half yearly accounts. To run a successful business is to keep tight control on your expenditure and captialising on sales, and to have the information at hand is vital. Book keepi Read more

Whether your business is small or huge, you need a good a bookkeeping service in order to keep it running smoothly. Do not risk your sales by opting for an accounting and bookkeeping software which lets you down during a time when the customers keep on coming in. If you are not able to handle your business well, there is a huge possibility that you will not be able to cater to the needs of your clients as well. When your clients are not satisfied with your services, you might end up losing your business. There are various ways for you to cope up with the demand of providing services and merchandise to people. One of these is hiring more staff to meet with the endless demands of your customers. But the more you hire other personnel, the more you will have to spend for their salary. On the other hand, when you opt to use dependable software, business management reporting will be really easy.

There are a lot of software which are used for accounting and bookkeeping service. One of these aimed at owners of small businesses is QuickBooks. When you are running a small business firm, the outsourcing bookkeeping service using a remote outsourcing firm is the perfect solution for easy management. This software is relatively easy and simple to use. There are several versions which you can avail of. What is more, there are add-on software applications for third parties.

The bookkeeping outsourcing approach provides business owners various benefits. It has a feature which tracks time; allowing you and your workers to be bill the clients by the hour. This bookkeeping software has activity logs and audit trails which allow you to keep each of your transactions properly tracked. What is more, these features keep each of your workers accountable for every transaction that has been made. Through more than 65 customizable business reports, you will be able Read more

Cash Flow Projections, also called Pro Forma’s, predict the income and expenses for your business in the future. Expenses are probably pretty straightforward, based upon historical expenses and the projects and marketing campaigns you plan to run in the future. The struggle for most small business owners is in predicting income — but with these tools, you should be able to create projections that will be useful to your business.

Your cash flow projections should be made on a month to month basis, but you may also want to prepare quarter-by-quarter reports. I find for my business, the month-to-month income and expenses fluctuate greatly, but quarterly, trends are obvious.

1. Expenses

First, get expenses out of your way. Using both your historical expense figures and your business & marketing plan (specifying expenses for the future), determine your average monthly overhead, and how that overhead is spread out over months. For example, some overhead is the same from month to month, like your internet access bill, your virtual assistant retainer, or your rent. Even overhead that fluctuates from month to month, like long distance and office supplies, has a monthly average.

Other overhead only occurs occasionally, like your Holiday card mailing, trade shows, and insurance bills. For those expenses, record when the payments will become due in a particular month, since you will need to set aside funds ahead of time to pay for those larger-than-normal bills. You may want to set aside money for these bills every month in a separate account, so when the bill arrives you already have the cash on hand. For instance, if you have a $2000 once-a-year payment, set aside $166.67 each month in your business savings account to pay the bill.

Once you have your expense reports done you can determine your true monthly overhe Read more

Bookkeeping is definitely one of the most important aspects of any given business. Whatever the size of the business may be, the bookkeeping department or in other words, the accountancy department plays a major role in giving a shape to the business. Therefore, after knowing all these facts, it is important that a business owner should try to employ competent professionals for this division or department of a business. However, many a times it happens that even after employing competent people, who are thorough with their work and know about all the various divisions of this huge and important department, the department does not flourish and work in the right manner. Therefore, in such situations the best thing that a business owner could probably do is to take bookkeeping help from an established bookkeeping firm.

Resorting to bookkeeping help could probably be one of the best things for any business owner because in such situations, the help could prove to be one of the best supports to any business. Accounting is a huge aspect and involves many intricate things like maintaining ledger books, tallying the daily incomes and expenditures, preparing the balance sheets, preparing journals and many more things. Therefore, it is essential that the person who works in this division or department knows about all the various aspects of this important aspect of any business. Bookkeeping help definitely proves to be a major profitable thing for any business because this helps the business to go in the right direction and helps the business to curtail all the expenses, which brings in more profit to the organization.

Bookkeeping help proves to be one of the best decisions by any business owner. With the concept of outsourcing popularizing with time, these days, it has turned out to be a major development that is being accepted by all kinds of busi Read more

Conduct of the organization were not never an easy job. Certainly it requires a lot of hard work and focus. Everyone knows that the administration and management of a successful business is not a game for children, and one needs to be competent enough to do so. Therefore, for all that, one needs to have knowledge about the various aspects of business management. One of the main aspects of a business is the accounting and management of the Organization. Given that this section of many important because it is one section of the organization that has the capacity to provide business successful. One needs to account properly and financial needs to understand what must be done with it, so can be more profitable and less earned could lose incurred. In this way, one can earn more profit for the organization and get rid of loses being incurred at the outset. Therefore, one does not need to adopt sound accounting help because this can only help the company grow and earn more profits.

Obtain proper accounting can help a little problematic. Everyone knows that the accounting work is difficult, and therefore, persons who are hired for this administration need to be thorough in their work and the need for good knowledge on the different aspects of this work. This is certainly nothing great, and therefore, one does not need to be careful when people because they are renting this administration to do the work of the Organization. But, if they can not get on the efficiency of people to do the work, and that can be outsourced to some other service companies specializing in this area of work. Taking into accounting help these companies will certainly mean better work and a better distribution of funds and better rise in the funds of the organization. Therefore, this is indeed a good thing to do for business owners.

Accounting is something huge and includes Read more

One of the most popular ways for people to pay you when you own a small business is with a check. It’s certainly worth your while to accept checks, since they have lower fees than credit cards and can’t be charged back.

But there are potential dangers to accepting checks, including the possibility of fraud or someone writing a bad check. Bad checks, in turn, can come about because there aren’t enough funds in an account, because the account has been closed or because the individual has put a stop payment order on the check.

While dealing with bad checks can be a pain, there are technological advancements that can make it easier for you to weed out the bad checks before they happen.

The easiest thing you can do that might prevent some bad checks is to accept debit cards. Debit cards look like credit cards, but they pull directly from the person’s account. If they don’t have enough money to cover the payment, you’ll know it because the payment won’t go through.

Accepting debit cards is also a great option because there’s very little danger of a debit card transaction being fraudulent since the person using the card has to know the PIN number for the bank account.

Offering the option of paying with debit cards won’t take care of all your bad check writers, however.

Another option is hooking up with a payment processing provider who can guarantee your company protection from bounced checks. A check guarantee program allows you to accept checks from anywhere in the United States and Canada with confidence.

This system lowers you risk of having to pay fees or lose money because of bounced checks or insufficient funds in an account. You can sign up for a program like this and forget your worries about bad checks almost overnight.

Having someone else to take care of the hurdles involved in getting payment for a Read more

One of the most popular ways for people to pay you when you own a small business is with a check. It’s certainly worth your while to accept checks, since they have lower fees than credit cards and can’t be charged back.

But there are potential dangers to accepting checks, including the possibility of fraud or someone writing a bad check. Bad checks, in turn, can come about because there aren’t enough funds in an account, because the account has been closed or because the individual has put a stop payment order on the check.

While dealing with bad checks can be a pain, there are technological advancements that can make it easier for you to weed out the bad checks before they happen.

The easiest thing you can do that might prevent some bad checks is to accept debit cards. Debit cards look like credit cards, but they pull directly from the person’s account. If they don’t have enough money to cover the payment, you’ll know it because the payment won’t go through.

Accepting debit cards is also a great option because there’s very little danger of a debit card transaction being fraudulent since the person using the card has to know the PIN number for the bank account.

Offering the option of paying with debit cards won’t take care of all your bad check writers, however.

Another option is hooking up with a payment processing provider who can guarantee your company protection from bounced checks. A check guarantee program allows you to accept checks from anywhere in the United States and Canada with confidence.

This system lowers you risk of having to pay fees or lose money because of bounced checks or insufficient funds in an account. You can sign up for a program like this and forget your worries about bad checks almost overnight.

Having someone else to take care of the hurdles involved in getting payment for a Read more

Budgeting in a small business is a neglected area. It is only when business plans are required that the business owner will prepare a cash flow forecast or budget.

Most businesses divorce the budget from the cash flow forecast. In fact, the cash flow forecast is only furnished when requested by the bank in most cases. Businesses have yet to learn that the cash flow forecast is a valuable tool for analyzing internal finances.

Collapse a budget and cash flow forecast into ONE. And allow the cash flow forecast to serve as your business’s financial map, for the next 12 months. Budgets are vigorously implemented, only when a business starts shedding cash. And major expenses are cut, drastically, when the owners and their accountants draw up budgets.

A budget will target, run away expenses, in an attempt to bring it under control. The main expenses to normally go would be staff costs (lay offs), insurance, advertising and stationery. Telephones are barred and transports costs are reduced radically. So the budget is expense focused.

Furthermore, if a budget was drawn up for previous years, it is highly likely that, sales could have been too optimistic, and cognizance was not taken of credit sales and its impact on cash flow. Hence my departure from accepted practice, and proposing combined cash flow and budget.

Overheads/ Cash outflow

I concede, that high overheads, is a killer for many small businesses. But the obsession with overheads is not going to save your business. You in business to grow sales and not to be bogged down by high overheads! If phone calls are barred, or the advertising budget is slashed, more problems would be created, than solved. Evaluate carefully if an expense is linked to business growth, and think twice, before slashing that expense. Say you incur an advertising cost of $ 10 000.00 per year, a Read more