The tasks at hand for small business owners every day are not only challenging, but countless to say the least. With year-end just around the corner now, small business owners should start giving focus to some of the administrative tasks for all your bookkeeping and tax needs. Year-end tasks can certainly be frustrating, time consuming and challenging at best. However, your year-end does not have to be the typical nightmare every small business owner professes it to be. With a couple of useful, important tips in hand, you can make your year-end small business tasks go a whole lot smoother and prepare yourself well in advance of the up and coming tax season.
First and foremost, reaching out to your employees and all your vendors early on to update your records can certainly help minimize your year-end woes and make simple tasks even simpler and easier. Sending out notices to all of your employees requesting verification of their addresses and any other pertinent information will ensure that they receive all W-2 forms in a timely fashion and without delay. In addition, ensuring that all vendor information is up to date will allow for you to create and provide 1099 forms without delay. Be sure that this updated information includes full names, taxpayer ID numbers and current addresses at a minimum. Finally, be sure that all sales tax exemption forms for any vendors you do not charge taxes to are in the house.
The folks here at Tax Alternatives strongly recommend you perform some practical cleaning up of your small business tasks. Start by cleaning up any account balances that are in need of either corrections, revisions or reclassifications before year end arrives. You also want to make certain that you are all caught up on bank reconciliations with all your book balances matching your bank balances. We also suggest you take time out to adjust any inventory you have to ensure that accurate quantities are logged and that all is in perfect order. Don’t forget to also adjust any loan balances you have so that they line up correctly with principal and interest allocations. It is also a good idea to make any depreciation entries as well at this time in preparation and anticipation of the forthcoming tax season.
Another very important ‘pre’ end of the year task is that of maximizing any deductions you may have for your small business. There are a number of ways you can maximize deductions, some of which we will discuss here now. For starters, you want to be sure that you write off any bad debts that you are confident will never be collected. Further, you can adjust inventory on your books by omitting any inventory items that are either worth less than what you actually paid for them or that you feel you will not be able to sell. Finally, if it applies, be sure to pay any employee bonuses of any type that you are offering prior to your year-end.
With all of this preliminary year-end preparation, you are sure to find that the up and coming tax season will be a whole lot easier and a whole lot less challenging. Surely, it will be a pleasure to check off, early on, this very important task from your ongoing to do list. With so many small business tasks that you are accountable for, minimizing challenging efforts at tax time is absolutely a must do for any small business owner.
If, however, you feel you are not up to the task, then rest assured the folks here at Tax Alternatives are the team for you. Our Christian-based company and our highly skilled and trained team of specialists are on hand to provide you with your every need. There is no task too big or too small for our team. With that said, don’t delay. Contact our team of professionals today for all your small business needs. You’ll be more than glad you did!!
