If you are a breeder, horses can appear in either “Inventory” or “Equipment Fixed Assets” depending on what they are being used for.  For example, your sale horses would be classified as inventory while those being used in lesson programs are equipment fixed assets.

A standard structure of your accounts is paramount to insightful bookkeeping. Creating an industry and business specific chart of accounts will provide a solid framework for establishing financial control of your business. If you are unfamiliar with the chart of accounts you should be using, your best option is to hire a professional bookkeeper or accountant. A proper chart of accounts will easily answer these three questions:

1.       What are your variable costs?

2.       What are your fixed costs?

3.       What is your breakeven point?

One of the keys to running a successful business is truly understanding where your income is coming from and where your expenses are going.  Getting your books set up properly from the start with the aid of a professional bookkeeper will eliminate future nightmares and helps you know the answers to how your business is doing right away. 

In time, many entrepreneurs realize they cannot handle bookkeeping on their own. They often turn to an office assistant, or a friend, or even Aunt Sally to handle the books. Does this solve their headaches? More often than not, the answer is no! It actually causes the headache to grow larger.  In time, the business owner figures out that it was a bad decision, but feels bad firing a friend or family member so the cycle continues. 

We are working with an equine client now who fell into this trap and it ended up costing them thousands of dollars and trouble with the IRS.  You see, they had cash flow problems and their internal bookkeeper/cousin was having the owner sign the checks written to the IRS for payroll taxes, but wasn't mailing them because they were short on cash.  She felt guilty about not being able to manage the cash flow, so she just hid the checks.  This went on for months.  When the IRS came knocking, they owed over $75,000 in taxes.  Had the employee not been a relative, they would have terminated her, but since she was a cousin, they kept her employed.  Unfortunately, that wasn't the only mistake she had made and eventually her issues caught up to them and the company had to file bankruptcy and close. 

As you can see, choosing another untrained individual will only cost more in the long run.  The bottom line is to hire a qualified and experienced bookkeeper who will properly track your finances accurately the first time, which saves you time, money and headaches in the long run!

Reconciling your monthly statement with your books is a fundamental aspect of bookkeeping. It certainly can be time consuming and fairly tedious, depending on the number of transactions each month. I had one client bring me almost two years worth of unreconciled statements who wanted me to find out what went wrong. After much research, I discovered the error, but the solution was a much more difficult task as the mistake occurred over a year before!

Banks do make mistakes, although they would like you to believe otherwise; companies do double-charge whether in error or for unscrupulous reasons; debits continue from businesses even after you have discontinued service; and accounting entries get entered incorrectly from time to time. With the potential for these sorts of errors and overcharges, it is worth the time and effort to hire an experienced bookkeeper who can stay on top of your finances each month.

The last thing you want to happen at the end of the year or at any point for that matter is to lose all your numbers. Losing your financial data means to many businesses not knowing who owes you money, and this will mean in many cases, missing out on getting paid.  You may not be able to prevent a disaster or technical malfunction, but you should take precautions to lessen any damage these events could cause. 

There are many products in the market today that make backing up data virtually effortless, from online back-up services which run whenever your computer is idle to capture any new information you have input to online accounting software which houses your information on their secure servers for retrieval from any computer. Even in this increasingly paperless society, having hard copy print-outs of quarterly and yearly financials are important to have on hand to be ready for any situation.

We worked with an equine client who was getting ready to prepare their 2009 taxes when they lost all of their QuickBooks data.  It was unrecoverable.  They didn't have time to recreate the data file so they hired us.  It took us almost 80 hours to put together the information, which cost them about $4800. An offsite backup service can cost as little as $20 per month.

If you lack the confidence to use some of the accounting software packages available or don’t feel technologically savvy, hire an experienced bookkeeper and IT company to take care of it and to maintain your back-up of files.  We work with both 411 Technology Solutions and LogicKey  and know they will help you devise a back-up and disaster plan that will alleviate your worry. 

Make backing up your financial data the one thing you don’t have to worry about, as there are sure to be plenty of other things to focus your attention on when running your own business!

We are looking for a staff accountant who has experience reviewing financial records, identifying problems and fixing them. 

The following is required (if you don’t have these, don’t waste your time applying):

• Bachelors in accounting (or associates and comparable experience)
• Job costing
• General ledger
• Accounts payable
• Accounts receivable
• Bank/account reconciliation
• Payroll and payroll taxes (no using ADP doesn’t count)
• Sales tax
• Property tax
• Not-for-profit accounting experience (grant/fund accounting)
• Month end closing and financial reporting
• QuickBooks experience
• Experience working with on-line banking
• Flexibility
• Ability to multitask
• Ability to work in sometimes chaotic environment
• Communication skills (training experience is a plus)
• Ability to work with various types of people
• Understanding that even though it’s accounting, it’s not always black and white
• MOST IMPORTANT – Positive attitude, desire to grow and develop, and a sense of humor

If you meet these requirements, please continue reading this ad.

We are Foster Results (www.fosterresults.com).  We provide bookkeeping services to small business, personal money management to individuals and families, QuickBooks training, and part-time Controller/CFO services.  We are a fast growing business in Westfield.

PLEASE NOTE:  We do not currently offer insurance benefits, but do have a 401(k) plan with a company match.  Position offers a competitive salary, bonus potential based on performance and paid time off…and most importantly a family-friendly, flexible working environment.

If you’re interested in being a key member of a team that works hard, has ambitious goals, understands the importance of family and has fun, submit your resume to jennifer@fosterresults.com (in Word format please.)

Too many equine businesses don’t do the sometimes tedious work of bookkeeping and record keeping, and then the owner ends up with a huge tax bill at year end.  Then they have to devise a payment plan with the IRS - and the interest rate for the IRS is significantly higher than bank interest.  We have one client who, before having us work on his bookkeeping, pushed it aside to deal with it all later.  He is still paying his business’s 2007, 2008, and 2009 tax bills.  With interest, he will pay about 135% of what was originally owed.  I know I would rather use that money for something else than paying the IRS.  Wouldn’t you?

Jennifer Foster, President of EQ Bookkeeping www.eqbookkeeping.com