Options For Accepting Credit Card Payments For Your Business

How to accept payments for your business is always of great concern to businesses. Of course, you need to accept credit card payments so that you can offer your products or services to a broader range of customers. But there are many different options for accepting credit card payments. It’s important that you understand how the options compare with each other so you can ensure that you’re using the best choice for you and your customers.

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Should You Hire Your Spouse Or Children?

If you own your own business you already know the joys of being your own boss. You may even have thought about bringing your spouse and/or children into the fold. There are definitely some benefits to hiring your spouse or children. Here are some to consider.

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Mixing Personal and Business Finances

Don’t Mix the Personal and the Business; Keeping Finances Separate

When you launched your business you might not have paid much attention to keeping your personal and business finances separate. If a vendor needed to be paid you grabbed the closest checkbook and wrote out a check, even if it was a personal account. It’s not a big deal since it’s all yours, right?

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Helpful Tips For Getting Clients to Pay on Time

Does your company have problems getting paid on time? Certain industries are more vulnerable to this than others, but every business owner has experienced it at least once. There are effective strategies for always getting paid on time that really work. If you put these into place in your company, you may find that you have fewer and fewer overdue payment issues as time goes on.

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Benefits to Hiring a Bookkeeper

When most of us think about running our business, we think about the fun things like product development, marketing and customer outreach.  For most business owners, the idea of accounting is, to say the least, not exciting.  We know we need it, and moreover, we love to do everything ourselves. But at the end of the day. We need to look at the cost effectiveness of having our hands in everything versus hiring someone with the knowledge and skill to do it for us.  Bookkeeping is a very important part of your business.  It is what helps you determine areas of growth, where you need to trim back, how you market, how you staff, what taxes need to be filed, and will in general be part of every informed decision you make about your business.

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Tax Reform Twists Businesses Need to Know

With the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), tax professionals and businesses are beginning to absorb the massive changes and find some key twists in the new tax reform laws. The following information on these twists will help you navigate the new terrain.

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Steps For Compliance With The New Lease Accounting Standard

The new lease accounting standards will require some extra time and work for many companies as they race to satisfy the new requirements.

In these new rules, two leases (finance and operating) will be required on the balance sheets.

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What You Should Know About the New Lease Accounting Rules (ASU 2016-02 Leases – Topic 842)

As noted in recent reports, current US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) as prescribed by Accounting Standards Codification (ASC 840) focuses on whether the lease transfers substantially all of the risks and rewards of ownership. The new guidance, codified as ASC Topic 842, Leases, introduces a right-of-use model, which shifts from the risks and rewards approach to a control-based approach.

In short, ASC Topic 842 requires the need to capitalize all leases or have a plan to do so before 2019 (public companies) 2020 for all other non-public companies.

The following information provided by BMO Harris provides some insight into the impact from the new rules for accounting for leases. (ASU 2016-02 Leases (Topic 842):

“Under the new FASB rules, there will be a balance sheet requirement for operating leases. They will be considered a “right-of-use” asset that incurs a liability. However, the entire cost of the asset will not be required to be on the balance sheet—only the present value of your obligated payments.

In most cases, the asset amount of an operating lease will be lower than the cost of an outright equipment purchase, which means companies will still realize benefits in terms of lower capitalization than a finance lease or traditional loan structure.

There is no change to the way finance leases (previously known as capital leases) will be accounted for. Under FASB rules, these leases are treated as debt, like a traditional bank loan. The entire liability must be recognized on your balance sheet.”

For accounting purposes, there are two types of leases: finance leases and operating leases. The major change relates to operating leases, which has been a key financial instrument for many companies. These leases used to be entirely off-balance sheet.

Impacted companies should consider taking the following initial steps toward adoption of the new lease accounting standard:

  • Understand the accounting requirements
  • Understand the lease population (e.g., by type, system, and location)
  • Assess capabilities of existing technology
  • Perform a lease data gap analysis
  • Develop an implementation roadmap that includes all impacted areas

In conclusion, we highly recommend that if you already have, or are considering to acquire any leases, that you engage the services of a finance expert with an expertise in accounting for leases. A huge amount of time will need to be invested in the adoption project process and it only makes sense to engage the best possible resources available for your project.

Foreclosure Sale Basics

What is a foreclosure?

A foreclosure occurs when a property owner cannot service their mortgage (i.e. make principal and/or interest payments), usually leading to the property (distressed property) being seized and sold (foreclosure sale). Typically, the property in foreclosure is available for investors to purchase.

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Do You Have An Interest In Exporting?

Small businesses looking to increase sales and profit, reduce dependence on the domestic market and stabilize seasonal fluctuations should consider exporting. Consider these facts:

  • Nearly 96 percent of consumers live outside the U.S.
  • Two-thirds of the world’s purchasing power is in foreign countries.

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