Why all your files should be green

I’ve worked with companies whose file folders were color-coded: Blue meant one thing and red meant another. And chances are, if your files are color-coded, your office (like most others) uses a filing system of bland corporate beige. In this blog, I’m suggesting that your files should be all green!

No, this isn’t a pre-St. Patrick’s Day prank. Green files are far better for your business in a number of ways.

When I say “green” files, I don’t mean that they are green in color. I mean that they are ecologically-friendly. When I say “green” files I’m referring to scanning your files and paperwork and storing it online instead of in those giant filing cabinets that seem to multiply like rabbits in a busy office.

Online file storage companies offer a variety of services relating to storing and sharing your files. Now, I should make a clarifying point here: Some sites tend to have a greater emphasis on sharing. Sites like Box.net and YouSendIt.com are sometimes lumped into the online file storage industry but these sites are primarily there to help you ship big files from one place to another.

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Tags: Blog, Busy Office, Disaster Proof, Electronic Filing, File Folders, Filing Cabinet, Filing Cabinets, Filing System, Paperwork, Piece Of Paper, Rabbits, Scanning, Secure Storage, St Patrick, Storage Companies, Storage Industry

Save the Planet AND Get Control of Your Incoming Mail

Every morning I collect the mail left by the postal service. There’s a ton of it and somewhere I think I can hear a rain forest weeping.

The junk mail – usually marked “to current occupant” – doesn’t even get opened. It goes into the shredder. The newsletters, fliers, newspapers, and magazines get sorted into a “likely to read” and “unlikely to read” piles for the coffee table or the recycling bin respectively. And then there’s the other mail: Bills, reminders, letters from Mom. It goes into a “must open” pile. It’s the stuff you have to read and act on. Unfortunately, even that pile can be a big stack. And once you’ve acted on it, you sometimes still need to keep it around. Bills and tax forms, for example, are things that you probably don’t want to through out. You act on them but, after that, you might need them for tax purposes or reference, so they go into a file folder. Those file folders can swell over the year. By the end of the year, you’ve got a filing cabinet drawer devoted to papers you hope you never need again but can’t throw away. Problem is, these papers need to be kept around for various bookkeeping, tax-related, or review purposes… perhaps for a few years!

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Tags: Coffee Table, Digital Image, Dr Seuss, Dr Seuss The Lorax, File Folder, File Folders, Filing Cabinet, Fliers, Incoming Mail, Junk Mail, Mail Bills, Mail Service, Mail Services, Occupant, Rain Forest, Recycling Bin, Scanning Services, Shredder, Stacks Of Paper, Tax Forms

End of Year Tax Preparation Tips

Here are some tax preparation tips:

1. Open up a free document storage account, so that you can get all your tax documents in one place. Preferably one that has sharing capabilities; all the easier to share with your accountant and bookkeepers. My recommendation: DocLanding, it is free to start (you only need to pay once you exceed certain storage requirements) and you can set up file cabinets and file folders, and the sharing permissions are very detailed. You can share whole cabinets, folders only or documents-only.

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Tags: Address Phone Number, Bookkeeping System, Donation Details, Federal And State Tax Return, File Cabinets, File Folders, Free Document Storage, Pdf Copy, Personal Return, Preparation Tips, Profit And Loss, Social Security Card, Social Security Number, Sole Proprietorship, State Tax Return, Storage Account, Storage Center, Storage Requirements, Storage Unit, Tax Documents

QuickBooks & FreshBooks – Part 3 – Sales Tax

Part 3: Handling Sales Tax

QuickBooks is an accounting application and FreshBooks is an invoicing application. They are two different things, but in the end to have your data matching in both, there could be a ton of double entry resulting in valuable time consumed and strenuous effort.

You can have your data accurate in both, while not matching in both. Matching and accuracy are two different things. For all of the numbers to match up, it is a matter of accuracy. To have all of the details such as sales items etc. it would be a matter of matching.

In this blog post, I will begin to show you ways to get accurate data from FreshBooks into QuickBooks.

This blog post is Part 3, if you have not read the previous posts, I suggest that you do:

Part 1: Methods 1 & 2 to getting FreshBooks Income into QuickBooks

Part 2: Method 3 to getting FreshBooks Income into QuickBooks

Also useful, is my post: Handling Credit Card and PayPal Processing Fees in QuickBooks, which has a short segment relating to FreshBooks as well.

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Tags: Accrual, Accuracy, Accurate Data, Amp, Bas, Blog, Credit Card, Freshbooks, Good Stuff, Income Accounts, Invoicing, Matter Of Fact, Paypal, Quickbooks Accounting, Receivables, Sales Tax, Segment, Strenuous Effort, Tax Accounting, Two Different Things

Handling Credit Card Processing Fees (or PayPal Fees) in QuickBooks

There is always that never ending problem, where you just don’t get all of your income

Many merchant accounts (these are the people that permit you to accept credit cards) just take a monthly debit out of your bank account at the end of the month, these are easy to account for, you simply enter a withdrawal in your account register for the amount debited and categorize it as Merchant Processing Fees, which should be a COGS or an Expense (this varies by where you are located and your industry, check with your accountant if you are unsure).

However, what about those merchant accounts that take the percentage before you even get the money, similar to Paypal? This makes it more difficult to track, however, I do have an answer.

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Tags: Accountant, Accounting, Cash Receipts, Chase Paymentech, Checking Account, Checkout, Cogs, Credit Card Processing, Credit Cards, Google, Invoices, Lump Sum Fees, Matter Of Fact, Merchant Account, Merchant Accounts, Monies, Paypal Account, QuickBooks, Three Ways, Worry

Making FreshBooks work with QuickBooks and vice versa – Part 2

Part 1: Dealing with Income – Continued (Part 2)

QuickBooks is an accounting application and FreshBooks is an invoicing application. They are two different things, but in the end to have your data matching in both, there could be a ton of double entry resulting in valuable time consumed and strenuous effort.

You can have your data accurate in both, while not matching in both. Matching and accuracy are two different things. For all of the numbers to match up, it is a matter of accuracy. To have all of the details such as sales items etc. it would be a matter of matching.

In this blog post, I will begin to show you ways to get accurate data from FreshBooks into QuickBooks.

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Tags: Accounts Receivable, Accuracy, Accurate Data, Amp, Blog, Cash Basis, Cash Revenue, Freshbooks, Getting Money, Ideal, Invoicing, Quickbooks Accounting, Strenuous Effort, Two Different Things, Vice Versa

Making FreshBooks work with QuickBooks and vice versa

Part 1: Dealing with Income

QuickBooks is an accounting application and FreshBooks is an invoicing application. They are two different things, but in the end to have your data matching in both, there could be a ton of double entry resulting in valuable time consumed and strenuous effort.

You can have your data accurate in both, while not matching in both. Matching and accuracy are two different things. For all of the numbers to match up, it is a matter of accuracy. To have all of the details such as sales items etc. it would be a matter of matching.

In this blog post, I will begin to show you ways to get accurate data from FreshBooks into QuickBooks.

Read More »

Tags: Accounts Receivable, Accuracy, Accurate Data, Customer Center, Entities, Freshbooks, Invoices, Invoicing, Journal Entries, Main Menu Bar, Quickbooks Accounting, Receivable Balance, Receivables, Short Cuts, Strenuous Effort, Two Different Things, Vice Versa

Setting up a new customer or client in QuickBooks

This is a very simple blog post on how to set up a new client or customer in QuickBooks.

Step by Step:

1. Open QuickBooks

2. On your Menu bar click Customer Center

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Tags: Amp, Bare Minimum, Blog, Crm Application, Crm System, Customer Center, Customer Name, Invoicing, Menu Bar, New Job, Other Additional Information, Quickbooks Premier, Screen Shots, Step 1, Step 2, Step By Step, Visuals, Voila

New design & We re-started our blog!

New Year and new ideas. As most of you know, we used to have a pretty nice blog and last year we took it down (why I don’t know). We plan on starting it up again – and this is it.

What better time to re-start a blog than with a whole new logo and design?

Stay tuned for application reviews, bookkeeping tips, and the whole nine yards.

Tags: Application Reviews, Better Time, Blog, Bookkeeping, Logo And Design, Logo Design, New Year, Whole Nine Yards

New Blog Coming Soon!

It has been awhile since IAC Professionals had a blog, but one is back (and will be better than ever if I do say so myself). Stay tuned, we are doing alot of tweaking and tinkering on the site. As soon as we have everything fine tuned, we will begin blogging away. Go ahead and subscribe to our feed in the upper right hand corner.

Tags: Alot, Blog, Tweaking