Goode Bookkeeping & Consulting Blog

If you’ve always run your business on a cash-only basis, now is a good time to rethink your options. Like all local business owners, you’ve probably been working through some pretty tough times. If you’re up and running, that means you’ve made the necessary changes to...

If you’ve been in business for a while, you’re probably paper-addicted. If you’ve considered breaking your paper habit but just couldn't do it, you should know that there is always hope. Paper-addicted business owners rely on paper... everything! You send paper bills...

If you’ve ever gone through an IRS audit, you know that it’s often a hand-wringing experience. The IRS’s goals are no mystery. The examiner wants to verify that your tax return is valid and to substantiate your deductions. He also wants to know that you’re properly...

How can you tell if you need a bookkeeping service? Is size the primary measure? What if you’re a small but very busy business? Do you need a bookkeeper if you’re an artsy/creative type with a small but profitable customer base? Yes. Yes. Yes. That’s the answer to all...

How Hard is it to Keep Your Bookkeeping Up-to-Date?   As a business owner, you work long days and sometimes you work into the night. Even when you have the best of intentions, there’s no way to keep up with everything. At least you stay on top of the important...

When you run a small to medium-sized business, DIY is often your go-to way to get things done. For a number of important reasons, bookkeeping shouldn’t be on that list. When you DIY your bookkeeping, you can keep an eye on your financial bottom line. That’s a good...

You work hard to keep your business up and running. During the day, you manage employees, make sales calls, and you fill in where necessary. At the end of the day, instead of heading home, you document and track financial data, manage invoicing, and evaluate your...

Bookkeeping is a love-it-or-leave-it responsibility. If you don't love doing your bookkeeping, you should probably leave it to a professional. If you do it because you feel you have no choice, it's perhaps the least engaging, most tedious task of your day. It's no...

Are you a DIY business owner? (When you have a task and no one to do it, you just do it yourself.) Like many entrepreneurs, you DIY whether or not it's not the right thing to do for your business. You DIY even when it’s not what’s best for you. Maybe you skip lunch...

As a small business owner, you plan for every detail. You budget for major operational costs. You cut expenses by taking on many tasks yourself. Unfortunately, you need a crystal ball to predict the time and effort it takes to perform back-office tasks such as...

Are you one of those hardworking DIY people who does your small business bookkeeping? If you do, you probably spend nights wading through invoices, reconciling bank statements, tracking down lost receipts, and performing other tedious tasks? That makes sense when your...

If you’re a business owner, you can get just about anything you need without leaving the building. Outsourcing makes it less expensive to hire the experts you need. The cloud made it easier to work with your experts, even if they’re a thousand miles away. Bookkeeping...

As a business owner, it’s your job to get things done so that’s exactly what you do. Running payroll and keeping your accounts receivables up to date. You also reconcile your bank deposits and payments and make sure you have enough cash to pay the people you owe. Even...

One of the nice things about being in business is that you can hire your cousin when he needs a job. Your relative gets a career. You get a dedicated employee who you’ve known your whole lifetime. Your auntie and uncle will think of you as their favorite nephew. It’s...

As a small business owner, you get to decide how to handle your bookkeeping and financial documents. If paper checks and snail mail invoices give you peace of mind, you should hang onto them. But before you shun important digital bookkeeping alternatives, here are a...

Just imagine. You’ve had a productive Friday morning. Everything is running on schedule. But just as you decide to take a break, a crowd of employees begins gathering outside your door. You can’t imagine why until you have a painful flashback. You didn’t finish...

Before you order products, hire a new employee, or make any financial decision, you must understand how much money is flowing into your business. Keeping up with your accounts receivables is critical to that process. An Aging of Accounts Report helps by compiling all...

Stop thinking and start acting You spend your days thinking about the best ways for your business to earn money. Monitoring fraud is the last thing you want to think about but it's important to know where your money is going if you want your business to grow. If you...

They're not just numbers Let’s face it, financial numbers are boring. If your business is all about fixing cars, creating art, or making clients beautiful in your salon, you have more exciting things to ponder. The thing about all those boring financial numbers is...

If you’re a small business owner who doesn’t delegate, you probably have a few good reasons for that. It could be that you’re simply great at multitasking. Perhaps it’s because you’re a hands-on kind of boss. Maybe you do everything yourself because you understand...

Working at your personal capacity. A blessing? Or a curse? If you’re working hard to make your business successful, you don’t have time to do every task that needs to be done. But sometimes you do it anyway. However, that’s the small business owner’s curse. In...

When your customers make a purchase, do they pay with cash or plastic? But when they're buying an inexpensive item, many of your customers probably use cash. When they decide to buy something a bit pricier, they probably expect to pay with a credit card. What does...

When you run a small business, you might not intend to do everything yourself. Sometimes it just works out that way. To maintain your cash flow, you cut back on the professional services you consider nonessential. You do your own marketing calls, product development,...

Goode Bookkeeping & Consulting professionally manages your QuickBooks account. If you’re already our client, you understand what that means for you and your business. We set up your QuickBooks app. We customize it to your operation, and we make it perform the way...

Cutting Corners When you operate a small business, you cut corners wherever you can. As long as you can avoid IRS problems, an independent contractor strategy will help you meet your cost-saving goals. When properly selected, independent contractors can do the work...

Letting Go When you give up a critical small business task, it can feel like personal torture. Even if the task requires professional skills that you don’t have–bookkeeping, for example–it’s hard to let go. Once you realize you have a bookkeeper who listens when you...

How much can you handle? If you run a body shop or a hair salon or you own any other small business, you probably don’t know much about financial reports. If you’re like most small to medium-sized business owners, you spend so much time growing your business, you...

As a small business owner, you probably have plenty of reasons why you've never considered the outsourcing vs hiring question. Perhaps you believe your operation is too small. Maybe you think of outsourcing as sending work overseas to get a cheaper labor rate. Could...

If you’re trying to cut your business expenses, you might be tempted to try DIY bookkeeping with free accounting templates. The idea behind free accounting templates is that they'll make bookkeeping easier and cheaper. Although that sounds like a winning idea, when it...

If you’re reading about tax tips mere days away from your filing deadline, you’re probably in the middle of a low-grade panic right now. Don’t get too stressed. Lots of people wait until the last minute and it usually turns out just fine. As a small business owner,...