You may be the only stockholder in your small business and your financial status isn’t going to make the pages of the Wall Street Journal, but that doesn’t mean you can afford to overlook the important value of creating earnings projections and doing a quarterly review of your financial position.

Creating annual earning projections that are broken down into quarters is a critical piece of your budgeting strategy. Without this fundamental business management tool it is impossible for a business owner to make the midyear adjustments necessary when revenues take large jumps up or down.

With higher earnings coming in, Lockhead Martin will be reviewing their tax strategies with their accountants. Whirlpool is scrambling to figure out what they can cut and where to keep the ship afloat. Too often small business owners start out the year with good intentions. They create those quarterly projections, but they don’t follow through with the thorough reviews needed each quarter. It is easy to put off those examinations of the financial reports, when you’re busy dealing with all the day-to-day issues involved in running a business.

One way to simplify this review is to have your accountant write up a short report that gives a quick snapshot of where the company stands in relationship to the projections and what areas are affecting the variances. This allows you to see where you are without having to take the time to interpret the reports yourself. This can give a business owner a quick jump start into assessing any adjustments that need to be made for the remainder of the year.

Now is the time to begin creating 2012 budgets and projections. Be sure to put quarterly reviews onto your calendar as well.

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.

2.  Scan a copy of last year’s Federal and State Tax Return and upload it into your document storage. This would be 2008’s tax returns. If you have NOT filed 2008, you have bigger problems than organizing 2009 but you can use these steps to prep a 2008 folder too!

3. As your 1098’s, 1099’s, and W-2’s come in, scan copies and upload them to your document storage unit.

4. Begin to gather all your donation details: Date donated, amount donated, name and address of donation recipient. Upload that into your document storage unit.

5. Outline the following information into a document: Your Full Name (as it appears on your social security card) your social security number, date of birth, profession, home address, phone number, name, social and date of birth of spouse and any dependents. Upload that into your document storage unit.

6. Outline any past due taxes and/or payments that you have made into a document and upload that.

7. If you are self employed or have a small business that gets put on your personal return (typically a sole proprietorship or one owner LLC), prepare the information you will need for your Schedule C. Hopefully you have your bookkeeping up to date. This can be done by making sure all accounts are reconciled and making a PDF copy of your profit and loss, and balance sheet for the year and uploading that into your Document storage center. However, if you don’t have a bookkeeping system, it gets kind of dirty. Your options are to:

• Hurry up and create one now. I recommend IAC-EZ for Freelancers and Micro Businesses, or contact us over at IAC Professionals if you don’t want to do it yourself.
• Manually tally up the numbers. This would mean going through your bank statements and totaling up business expenses into their appropriate tax categories.

Schedule C & Common Expense Categories:

• Advertising
• Automobile Expenses
• Commissions & Fees
• Employee Benefits
• Insurance (other than health insurance; that goes in Employee Benefits)
• Interest Expense (not Mortgages)
• Mortgage Interest
• Legal & Professional Feels (Lawyers, Accountants etc.)
• Office Expenses
• Rents or Leases (this includes vehicles, equipment, office, itemize these out)
• Repairs & Maintenance
• Office Supplies
Taxes & Licenses (not income tax)
• Travel
• Meals that were company event related
• All other Meals
• Utilities
• Telephone & Internet Expenses
• Salaries & Wages
• Independent Contractors
• Bank Service Charges
• Dues & Subscriptions

Income: You do not need to itemize income into details, but you do need to make sure not to overstate income if you receive a 1099. So, make sure when reporting your income, you state which income is reported on 1099’s and whatnot. Or only report the non 1099 income.

Get this data together and upload to storage.

8. If you have an S-Corporation or are a partner in an LLC, you will be getting a K-1 (kind of like a W-2 for a business owner). You will need to receive these prior to filing your return. Make sure you scan these in and put them into your document storage unit.

9. If you work from home, you need to claim your home office deduction. The things you will need documented: Total Square Feet of House, Total Square Feet of Office, Total Rent Paid (if you pay mortgage then don’t worry as this is shown on your mortgage interest statements), Total Utilities paid, Total Repairs & Maintenance on house, Total Taxes and/or Insurance on the house. Add to your document storage.

10. If you have children and paid for child care you will need the name and address of the person or entity you paid, as well as their phone number, social security number or tax id number and total amount paid for the year. Add to your document storage.

11. Make sure to file 1099’s for any Independent Contractors that you have paid. Have them fill out the W-9 and make sure you have their total amount paid for the year, and you can file their 1099’s at www.efileforbusiness.com. Add to your document storage.

12. List of tax payments made and date for estimated tax payments throughout the year. Add to your document storage.

These items will vary by person and entity, not everything is applicable to every person, however. If you follow this checklist you will be in good shape to share that online storage with your accountant and have everything prepared for you in a snap.

Important Deadlines to Remember:

1/15: Due Date for Last Estimated Tax Payment.

1/31: All Contractors must receive their 1099’s and all employees must receive their W-2’s.

3/15: Corporation deadline for filing tax return.

4/15: Personal deadline for filing tax return.