Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Marketing Bookkeeping, Accounting and Financial Services - First in a Series

There is nothing more heartbreaking than to spend weeks and months, and thousands of dollars developing your bookkeeping, accounting or tax practice and seeing it languish as you struggle to attract new customers and clients.

You have knowledge and experience, and you have a passion that you wanted to share with the world but it was not necessarily what the world wanted to hear.

To avoid the waste of both time and emotional energy caused by failed projects you need to understand the mindset of a client. Your client doesn't care where your degree is from, or how good your grades were, they don't even care if you have a license or certification from the state.

All your client cares about is whether they can trust you to do your job.

And just exactly how do you get that across to your clients and your new prospects? How do they discover the trust you want them to have?

The easiest method is to become recognized as an expert. As an expert, you are looked up to and trusted.

But here, we're not just talking about being knowledgeable, we're talking about marketing yourself in a way that you are perceived as knowledgeable. We're talking about getting speaking engagements, writing reports, articles, and white papers. We're talking about becoming an author and getting published.

Sounds like a lot of hard work doesn't it? And then you’re faced with the problem of how to create all the papers, speeches and other work product you’ll need in order to appear to be a knowledgeable expert.

You could try to hire yourself a booking agent to get you speaking engagements, plus a ghostwriter to prepare speeches, articles and reports.

Since a booking agent works on a commission, you'll probably have a hard time convincing them you have any value as a commodity. The typical booking agent is going to be looking for somebody who can start at $2,000 to $3,000 per speaking engagement.

It's pretty easy to find a ghostwriter, but quite hard to find a skilled and knowledgeable ghostwriter, who can write about bookkeeping, accounting or taxes. If you find a writer who is skilled in these fields, then you're probably looking at something like $1,000 a page to write a typical report. Certainly not the $5-$10 a page you find people quoting on the Internet.

When you are presenting yourself to your local market, you need to be able to present knowledge and expertise, whereas on the Internet it's mostly about having relevant keywords that match the search engines spider's algorithm.

You try giving a speech full of keywords (commonly referred to as buzzwords) to the local Chamber of Commerce, you will absolutely lose any credibility you may have had.

Probably the easiest solution is to find yourself a mentor, possibly a retired accountant or financial professional, with a penchant for writing. If you get lucky, they may even have a drawer full of old reports and speeches they developed when they were in active practice.

If so, then they may be willing to let you use their materials as a resource. Be prepared to pay a small price, either by purchase or royalty, if necessary.

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Friday, March 20, 2009

Create More Revenue by Outsourcing Bookkeeping Services

Any organization whether big or small spends a huge amount of time, energy and resources on day to day bookkeeping, tax preparation and accounting services. This often adds little or no value to the organization's core development or requirement. By outsourcing bookkeeping services to India, businesses increase their profitability, improve company focus and enhance their flexibility to respond to key business issues. Businesses, CPA's and Accounting Firms who outsource their bookkeeping services and accounting work to Indian companies find that they have a virtual back-office right from set-up, support and maintenance to consultancy.

A few of the services offered are

•· Entry of transactions

•· Journal entry

•· General Ledger entry

•· Assets /Equipment Ledgers

•· Expenses Ledger

•· Accounts Receivable

•· Accounts Payable

•· Bank Account Reconciliation

•· Financial Statements preparation

•· Trial Balance

•· Income Statement (Profit and Loss)

•· Balance-sheet

•· Cash Flow Statement

  • Computerized processing of all checks and bookkeeping information
  • Bank statement reconciliation
  • Preparation and review of monthly financial statements
  • Maintenance of employee and sub-contractor earnings records
  • Preparation of all tax processing
  • Preparation of year-end W-2 and 1099 forms
  • Day-to-day bookkeeping and accounting
  • Quarterly balancing of books
  • Quarterly production of Management accounts
  • Quarterly production of Vat returns
  • Annual accounts and tax returns preparation
  • Submission to Inland Revenue
  • Expert tax advice to minimize tax liability
  • Adjustments to year-end accounts

With the use of up-to-date accounting software such as MYOB and SAGE, QuickBooks (all versions), Quicken, Peachtree, Intuit ProSeries, Intuit Lacerte, Net Suite, Creative Solutions Accounting, Master Builder, Business Works etc., Indian outsourcing companies offer their clients the choice of various accounting services at a much lower rate with the benefit of a highly productive work force.

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Sunday, February 22, 2009

Online Bookkeeping Service Gets $2 Million in Funding

Campbell, Calif. (Feb. 10, 2009)

By Michael Cohn

Outright.com, an online bookkeeping service aimed at self-employed small businesses, has snagged $2 million in seed funding.

The financing was led by two venture capital firms, First Round Capital and Shasta Ventures, with participation from Jeff Clavier of Softech VC and several angel investors. The company, formerly known as GoBootstrap.com, has been working in “stealth mode” prior to the funding announcement, but meanwhile has been signing up a variety of small business customers who have been trying out the system.

“We’re targeting millions of small businesses that are too small even for QuickBooks,” said Outright.com co-founder and CEO Kevin Reeth, who spent nine years working for Intuit. “When you look at the landscape of small businesses, there are 20 million of 27 million that have no employees, just one person filling out a Schedule C.” The other co-founder, Ben Curren, also worked for Intuit in its QuickBooks unit.

Reeth (pictured) contends that many small business accounting packages are too complex for many self-employed business people to use. “Their businesses are so small, they don’t even describe themselves as business owners,” he said. “They say, ‘I’m self-employed, I work for myself,” but they have tracking requirements like larger companies.”

The Web-based system allows users to keep track of business income, invoices and payments, and see a breakdown of income and expenses by category. Users receive reminders of quarterly tax deadlines, and contractors and freelancers can stay on top of their 1099 forms. The system calculates quarterly tax estimates, including self-employment taxes, and allows users to export the information to a spreadsheet. The software can also generate a Schedule C in a PDF file.

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Friday, February 13, 2009

A Bookkeeper Can Boost Bookkeeping Services by Networking

Increase the home bookkeeping services by netwroking, a crucial element for bookkeepers wishing to build a clientele of quality bookkeeping clients.

Networking The Bookkeeping Services

Establishing personal relationships with individuals and groups is undoubtedly the major area to build the client base. Businesses requiring accounting and bookkeeping services have a strong tendency to remain with their existing service providers which makes new start up businesses a prime target area.

The doors can open by contacting business link, discussing the services offered with a business link advisor and obtaining details of all enterprise groups and organisations within the desired business area. Personal contact is important, each organisation should be visited in person, regular contact maintained and where possible the opportunity to join local business groups taken up. Many members of start up groups have little or no experience of bookkeeping offering an ideal opportunity.

Obtain details and attend locally held business link seminars and conferences. Contact HMRC to attend a full range of seminars on all relevant subjects such as self employment, tax and payroll to both improve knowledge and establish contact with start up businesses.

Contact with professional accounting firms and fellow bookkeepers works best when the relationship is personal and two way. Sending unsolicited application forms may be largely ignored while telephone contact and arranging a meeting works better. At those meetings the target being to both present the application form stating qualifications and experience and also discuss providing the accounting firm with additional business by offering them new clients for advanced accounting, tax and technical issues from the bookkeepers existing clients.

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Friday, January 30, 2009

Bookkeeping Outsourcing: Need and Importance

Bookkeeping is an integral part of any business house. For this there is a special team of in house accountants... For some keeping the complete team of in house accountants can be very expensive. And also when your business is growing, the need for number of accountants also increases. So to get the accounts maintained at low prices by others, is something that can look forward to. This task of bookkeeping can also be outsource to a professional firm. To avoid discrepancies in the data and for smooth running of the business activity, it is wiser to take the help of bookkeeping outsourcing services.

A good bookkeeping outsourcing service will keep into account various gains and expenses of your company. This further will help you in making quick prompt decision. For example, if your sales are increasing but you find the profits not rising at the same rate then here your Bookkeeping accountant takes care of all your needs. They will help you in knowing in detail on which aspect you need to do cut down the cost and give an idea on how to go ahead and manage various things...

This is just one case a good bookkeeping outsourcing firm will help you in following ways:

* Effectively help you in monitoring the business activity : The financial data available to you will assists in measuring the success or failure of business in real terms.

* They give a detailed report on the financial situation of the company. The accurate analysis given by them will help in taking crucial business decisions.

* For expanding the business, you might require loans from the bank. For this financial statements for the current and previous year is necessary. So they will keep and maintain a balance sheet, income statement and cash flow budget for the previous years. The statement given by them will give you an idea about the impact of the requested loan.

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Friday, January 2, 2009

Benefits of Online Accounting and Bookkeeping

Accounting and bookkeeping are some of the most delicate and time-consuming jobs. It really gets difficult to maintain books and accounts along with handling and managing overall office or business. But with the advent of Internet technology, accounting and bookkeeping has been radically easier and low-costing. Presently, there are several online accounting and bookkeeping services queued up to take care of your accounts and books. You must be thinking how online accounting services can be better or beneficial from traditional accounting services? Keep on reading to know the benefits of online accounting and bookkeeping:

Less Expenditure: This is the foremost advantage of availing an online accounting and bookkeeping services. Online accounting cost you half of the traditional accounting/bookkeeping services.

• Speedy Work: Thanks to internet, you can get your things done swiftly. This saves your precious time and energy.

• Fewer Requirements: For availing online accounting services you don't need a huge investment. You can begin with a PC with internet access.

• End-To-End Services: The best thing about online accounting and bookkeeping is that you don't need to compromise at any place for any thing. That means you receive full-full-fledged online tax preparations, monitoring facility, print report, financial statements and many other things.

• Hire a dedicated Accountant: You can hire online a dedicated accountant who will specially take care of your business permanently. This will save your cost spent on in-house accountant.

• Communication Facility: Most of the online bookkeeping and accounting services provide their clients with 24 hours voice or text communication facility.

Know more about Online Accounting and Online Bookkeeping services at Ferrarabusiness.com, a leading name for online outsourced accounting, tax preparation and bookkeeping services widely known name for its credible and quality work.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amit_Kothiyaal

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Small Business Accounting Services

Different requirements and business strategies are required for the management of any business no matter what the size is. The bottom line should be to make more profits and fewer losses, whether it is a small, medium or a large scale business. It is never been easy to add handling accounts, transactions and other financial details to any business but KNR-Accounting-Services.com provide you with the services of small business accounting services with which all these can be achievable.

Our small business accounting services provides customized solutions to suit your business needs and if you are owner then rest easy as with the help of our accounting services your business can grow by leaps and bounds. The main benefit of our small business accounting services lies in the areas where sometimes running a small business can become overwhelming in the long run. It also offers accounting software that eases the whole process of making records and tallying them over and over again. However, we also know that most of the small business owners or for that matter any other business owner is not a qualified accountant, and that is why they need to hire the services of a professional to handle this. And small business accounting services is the right choice as it not only reduces time but also personnel resources.

Small business accounting services with KNR Accounting Services have professionals who specialize in providing business accounting services to clients. The accountant will handle the small business accounting work of your business. But just make sure that from time to time you oversee the work is being carried out by the small business accounting services professional. As the business owner, you will like to be informed about all the work that is being done with regard to accounting and bookkeeping of your business, so that you know where your business is heading and if you are making any profits or not.

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