Archives for Bookkeepers category
With your bookkeeping, do you find that it’s always a last minute thing?
Taking that approach can be a costly gamble. With end of financial year for 2009 - 2010 fast approaching, it’s a good idea to get your bookkeeping upto date.
By being ontop of your bookwork, you can have a chat with your accountant and make sure that you have the correct strategies in place to reduce your tax liabilities.
Failing to be prepared can be costly when you come to lodge your tax return after 30 june 2010
There’s many reasons why you should get your bookkeeping upto date before the end of the financial year on 30 June 2010.
Often clients are devastated when they discover how much tax they have to pay because they didn’t plan for the FYE (financial year end). Leaving it until after 30 June is too late.
We are not tax agents or accounts, but our team of mobile Sydney bookkeepers can certainly help you get your paperwork upto date so that you can at least have three quarters of the 2009/2010 financial year upto date and ready to visit your accountant before the end of June 2010
When cash flow is tight, you want to do everything you can to ensure that you are not paying invoices twice
A bookkeeping client in Bankstown asked whether he should pay his supplier from the invoice, or the statement. A common bookkeeping mistake made by many small business owners is to pay an invoice twice.
Why would you pay an invoice twice?
Here’s a common example: One day the business owner sees the invoice come through the mail, and he gets around to paying it a couple of weeks later.
Meanwhile the supplier sends out the monthly statements, which the business owner then places in his intray with the intention to pay some bills in a few days time.
The next day, one of his sales staff requests a product that is out of stock, so the business owner picks up the phone to the supplier, who says that there is some money outstanding which needs to be settled before another order can be placed.
In a panic, the business owner pays the total amount that is shown outstanding on the supplier’s statement - not realising that one of the invoices listed had been paid two weeks earlier
This simple error would have never occurred if the business owner followed our advice, which is, as bookkeepers we always say pay from the invoice - NEVER pay from the statement.
Why not pay from the supplier’s statement?
When you always pay from an invoice, then there’ll be no risk of wondering whether you’ve paid that invoice or not - and when your bookkeeper comes to enter the data into the accounting software package, be it MYOB or Quickbooks, the bookeeper will know what you’ve paid and what you haven’t.
When you receive a statement, it may list invoices that you have since paid, and you could end up paying them twice. But surely the supplier would tell you that you’ve paid the invoice twice. Maybe, or maybe not.
By sticking to the rule of always paying from an invoice, and never a statement, you can see what the invoice relates to.
Why do your suppliers issue a statement?
The supplier will send out a statement advising you of which invoices have been paid and which are outstanding in that reporting period.
Nothing wrong with attaching the invoices that you are going to pay, and put them with the statement - as long as you ensure that the amount you pay is not the amount requested on the statement, but the total amount of the invoices that are attached to that statement.
When cash flow is tight, you want to do everything you can to ensure that you are not paying invoices twice - and one way of doing that is never to pay from a statement.
Last week we were flooded with enquiries from small business owners around Bankstown and Panania asking about MYOB Bookkeeping for the December quarter BAS that’s due 2 March 2010
If you are a small business owner in and around Revesby, Panania, Padstow, Picnic Point, and suburbs to Liverpool and Bankstown, we encourage you to focus on what you do best, and we’ll do the rest
contact our Panania Bookkeepers, your local mobile bookkeeping service today
Savvy business owners around Bankstown have contacted our Bankstown Bookkeepers, looking for a mobile bookkeeping service.
Rather than you struggling and getting stressed out over it, give us a call, and we’ll come to your premises and review your MYOB data files.
Our Panania bookkeeping service can help you with reconciling your bank account statements. We’ll run various checks and reports to ensure that all the data has been entered correctly and allocated in the correct accounts
The Australian Taxation Office [ATO] advise that almost 80% of BAS forms are lodged incorrectly - as many small business owners are challenged with the task of completing their Business Activity Statements
With Christmas out of the way, and many small businesses returning to work, it’s time to get all your paperwork together and get it to your bookkeeper or outsourced bookkeeping service- to report on the 2nd quarter (1 September to 31 December 2009) to get your BAS lodged on time.
Maybe the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) does have a heart, after all. Rather than asking for lodgements on 28 January, they automatically give everyone an extension to the BAS lodgements to 2 March.
However, don’t be fooled by their grace, because there is NO WAY that they’ll consider granting an extension after that date. So you need to ensure that you have your Business Activity Statement lodged by 2 March 2009
If you are struggling and need help, if you do not have a bookkeeper, or are looking to outsource to a mobile bookkeeping service, then contact us now
Our bookkeeping Service has clients in and around Campbelltown, Bankstown, Sydney CBD and Northern Beaches, Australia. Contact us here for details
How would you know that your bookkeeper is doing the right thing?
There’s a bookkeeper in San Francisco that’s facing a life in prison for fraud, after he pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding investors in excess of $20million
The bookkeeper had been running a ponzi scheme – not quite the same scale as Madoff, but for longer. Apparently the bookkeeper had been promising clients that the money they invested with him would earn huge returns through a series of commercial loans. He’s been doing this for the last thirty years!
Simply, he persuaded new investors to get on board, and used those funds to pay out existing investors, or for his own personal use
A bookkeeper in Chicago, USA has been accused of stealing more than US$500,000 form a spring manufacturing company.
Apparently the bookeeper was falsifying invoices as she entered data into the accounting software as an account payable to a legitimate vendor when doing the bookeeping.
The book keeping software system allowed the bookkeeper to print the cheques in her own name, then she’d change the name on the cheque details recorded in the system.
The prosecution also alleged that the book keeper would intercept bank statements and destroy copies of the cheques she wrote to herself so that no-one else could discover her farudulent book-keeping activities
Is your paperwork in order, have you got your bookkeeping up to date ready for the BAS due on 28 October? If you are a small business owner in and around Revesby, Panania, Padstow, Picnic Point, and suburbs to Liverpool and Bankstown, we encourage you to focus on what you do best, and we’ll do the rest
With less than three weeks away before the first quarter Business Activity Statements [BAS] are due for lodgement, there’s not much time to get your bookwork organised
Cash flow has certainly tightened up in the economy. As bookkeepers, we’ve seen that invoice payments are being dragged out longer and longer, as suppliers wait to be paid by customers, and service providers wait to be paid by their clients
For small businesses in and around Revesby, Panania, Padstow, Picnic Point, and suburbs to Liverpool and Bankstown, we have a mobile book keeping service that can come to your office and do the work on-site, or we can take the paperwork away with us and complete your bookkeeping work in our offices
Either way, it’s not a good idea to leave your bookkeeping until the last minute and risk a fine from the ATO for a late lodgement Call us today on 0415 453 536 for more information
We are often asked whether MYOB is better than Quickbooks.
Like many large companies these days, MYOB are not interested in their end users, they are only interested in their bottom line.
Do they care how the end users, Read more… »
Had a call from a lady asking about Panania Bookkeeping Services. Her husband is a sole trader in the construction industry, with an ABN.
Does he need a Bookkeeper? Good question. He’s got an ABN, and he’s only got one client. In effect he’s a subcontractor. He’s providing labour for a construction company. He doesn’t provide any materials - he simply shows up for work on the job site.
We are not registered tax agents, so we cannot give advice in such matters. We are bookkeepers servicing clients in Revesby, Panania, Padstow, Picnic Point, and suburbs to Liverpool and Bankstown.
We cannot give advice on whether this subcontractor can claim fuel for going to his different jobs. He needs to speak to his accountant or tax agent.
It would seem that he really has no expenses, no suppliers, and only one customer. The Australian Taxation Office have a checklist on their website to determine whether he’s a sub-contractor or an employee.
If he’s only got one client, and only providing labour, then chances are that he’s entitled to Superannuation.
Going back to the original question: As a tradesman in these circumstances, does he need a bookkeeper to do his book keeping?
Maybe the best thing he can do is to get himself a cash book from the local newsagent and just write down his expenses each month. At the end of the year we can then collate his records and produce the necessary reports for him to take to his tax agent.
As his business grows, then he may need some bookkeeping. It’s not really worth his while (or ours) to be outsourcing his bookkeeping under his present circumstances.
4th Quarter: 28/07/10
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