Jeff Bowe, ACTUM Group, Presented

At the end of 2009, Simons Bitzer & Associates conducted a five question survey of Central Indian Business Leaders. We wanted to find out, among other things, what they felt their business challenges would be in the upcoming year. Overwhelmingly, we found that business owner and leaders were looking for more sales, more orders, more projects – and they did not have a large budget to get there.

With that in mind, we invited Jeff Bowe, ACTUM Group, to present an interactive sales training workshop at our firm last week. While we offer traditional accounting services, as well as outsourced, our true passion lies in helping small and medium sized business owners not only succeed but also maximize their profitability. We were please to host this workshop and we received outstanding feedback from our participants.

While I would encourage any owner or manager to inquire into Jeff Bowe’s training, I wanted to share a few of his key points for those unable to attend.
• Start selling to a smaller niche of people
• Use social media tools to narrow your market
• Focus on profit over volume
• Be perceived as the only one who does what you do in your market
• Ask your customers what they are really buying from you and focus your marketing efforts on that

For more information about Jeff Bowe and ACTUM Group, please visit www.ActumGroup.com

For more information about Simons Bitzer’s next workshop, visit www.SimonsBitzer.com

Accountants Help Protect Small Business From Economic Crime

Globally, the number of businesses reporting economic crime, or fraud, increased from 37 percent to 45 per cent. Fully one-third of all crimes are discovered by chance, and no industry is immune. Sadly, the largest group of offenders is employees of the firms that have been impacted by the economic crimes.

Recently, a Daily Journal Publication, The Southside Business Exchange, published a news article discussing just this trend. The principals of Simons Bitzer & Associates were pleased to be interviewed for this article. Please visit the link below to read the story in it's entirety.

http://www.simonsbitzer.com/downloads/Southside%20Business%20Exchange%20January%202010%20Articles%20(2).pdf

For the Record

Behind every successful small business story there’s a lot of hard work and, yes, administrative effort. To really make your business prosper, brilliant ideas are only half the answer – you also need to ensure that your company is solid from the ground up. One way of establishing a solid business base is through good record keeping. While this may not be entrepreneurship’s most glamorous aspect, it is nonetheless a prerequisite to consistently good results.

Accurate and consistent records enable you to keep track of your company’s progress. Records show whether sales are up or down, which customers are spending and which are not, and whether any changes are needed. Without adequate documentation, making reliable business forecasts or looking back to see where you have been successful in the past is considerably more difficult.

Good records are also fundamental to the preparation of financial statements – which are necessary when dealing with banks and creditors, and also allow you to access information about your assets, liabilities and equity in your business quickly and systematically.

Small businesses receive money and property from a variety of sources on a regular basis. By using accurate records you can identify where your various receipts come from and separate non-business receipts from taxable income.

A simple but important function of records is to act as a supplement to your memory. For example, tax-deductible expenses may occasionally slip your mind. Without an adequate record keeping system, you will not be able to claim deductible outgoings at tax time – a loss which could be particularly detrimental to your business.

Records need to reflect the income, expenditure and credits that you note on your tax return. As a general rule, these figures will be the same that you use to monitor your business during the year. Keeping good records throughout the tax year, and not just scrambling to assemble documents when your return is due, also means that you will have accurate figures available for official inspection at all times.

Choose your manner of record keeping based on the type of small business you run. If you operate more than one small business, make sure that each operation’s record keeping is entirely separate. Stay tuned next week for more record keeping tips.

Deducting Haitian Relief Contributions on your 2009 Tax Return

To encourage donations to charitable organizations working in Haiti, Congress recently passed and President Obama signed into law, a special measure making your cash contributions tax deductible in 2009 even though they are made in early 2010. The new law gives you flexibility in deciding when to claim a deduction for your early contributions.

Typically, if you file an itemized individual federal return and you want to deduct your charitable contributions, you can only deduct the contributions you made in that tax year. The earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, 2010. Under the normal rules, charitable contributions made to help Haiti would be deductible when taxpayers file their 2010 returns in 2011. The new law makes a special and temporary exception for Haiti relief.

Under the new law, you can treat a contribution made to help Haiti after January 11, 2010 and before March 1, 2010 as if made on December 31, 2009. You can decide whether to deduct your 2010 Haiti contribution on your 2009 return or your 2010 return. However, you cannot deduct the same Haiti contribution on both your 2009 and 2010 returns. You can, however, allocate multiple donations to more than one year. Of course, to take a charitalbe deduction of any kind, you must opt to itemize your deductions rahter than take the standard deduction.

Note that in order to qualify for the accelerated deduction,the contributions must be cash and must be made to a qualifying charitable organization. Some charities use names that sound or look like those of respected, legitimate organizaions yet may be phony.

With questions, please seek advise from your Certified Public Accountant.