As part of your fresh start to a new year, why not go through your client and contact list and see if you can stir up some new business from some of the clients and contacts that you haven’t heard from in a while.

Going through your contact list and making some phone calls and sending some emails is an easy way to cull out some truly dead leads that don’t need to be cluttering up your contact list and bring your business to the forefront of the minds of people who haven’t thought about you in recent months, at the same time.

Timing is important in all types of sales, and you never know when your unexpected phone call or email message may come just as someone is considering the very product you have to offer. You want to be sure yours is the name that comes to mind, whether it is immediately or a few months down the road.

Even if the individual you contact isn’t in the market for what you have to offer, someone in their sphere of influence is bound to be. Again, you want your business to be the first to come to their mind when someone mentions a need for the product or service you provide.

Some businessmen and salesmen make this a New Year’s tradition. Their clients can always expect to hear from them shortly after the new year begins. It is one tradition that could be a very profitable one.

Unfortunately, once the business has launched and is sailing full-steam ahead through the choppy waters of revenue generation and working hard to navigate through dangerous obstacles that can easily sink a business in those first few years, it is easy to leave that business plan at the bottom of a desk drawer. That well crafted map for the future can be lost underneath the daily accumulations of decisions to be dealt with and the urgency of meeting the needs of your clients.

The new year is the perfect time to review that business plan. Being reminded of your initial objectives and dreams can spark a new passion for the year ahead. Looking back at the goals you set and comparing them with the reality of what has transpired can be a great exercise that reminds you of the things you’ve done right and the things that didn’t go anything like you expected. Hindsight is still one of the best teachers anyone can have.

After you’ve compared the plan with the reality, it is time to re-chart the course. Goals that have not yet been met need to be moved into the future and strategies determined to carry you from your current position to those new milestones. There may be some entirely new goals that have emerged during this time that you’ll want to add to your five year plan, as well.

The beginning of a new year is a great time for reflection and strategic planning. Reviewing and renewing your business plan is the perfect place to start.

Depending on the time of year that the disaster occurred, victims of a disaster may have the option of choosing to either amend the previous years return to include these deductions or to include them on the current year’s filing. Depending on your financial situations in the two years, one option may be more advantageous than another.

The IRS also offers some other benefits to victims of natural disasters that you should be aware of.  The IRS will waive the normal fee for obtaining copies of the last year’s tax returns for disaster victims. Often times the IRS will also extend filing and payment deadlines for victims of natural disaster. Waiving or decreasing penalties associated with late filings and payments for these victims is also often done by the IRS.

Hopefully you won’t be taking advantage of these deductions this year or in the future, but it can be helpful to know that the IRS will show some compassion regarding your situation should you find yourself among those who are suffering the tragic losses that occur when nature goes on the rampage.

1. Reconcile bank accounts and loan accounts. Never assume that the balances sitting on your books for each of your bank accounts and loans are equal to what the bank says they are. Take the time to do a reconciliation of each bank account and each loan. Provide your accountant with those reconciliation documents so that they can see that you have already verified their accuracy, so they don’t feel they need to do so, and don’t have to ask you for that verification.
2. Payroll Tax Liabilities. This is another area that needs to be reconciled and provided with documentation of those reconciliation. Payroll tax liabilities can often have small amounts that need to be adjusted at year end due to rounding. Verify these account balances with your quarterly tax reports and make any adjustments needed for year end accuracy.
3. Asset Purchases and Sales. Since assets such as vehicles and equipment need to be depreciated, it is important to keep very detailed records regarding the purchases and sales of any of these items during the year. Providing your accountant with a spreadsheet that shows all new purchases with the date of purchase, amount of purchase and full description can be very helpful. Copies of the receipts related to these purchases should be maintained as well and provided for additional documentation of the costs that are included in the figures you have recorded. The same documentation should be provided for any items you may have sold or discarded off your list of assets.
4. Reconciliation of Receivables and Payables. If everything has been recorded correctly, you should be able to print off a current receivables and payables detail for the end of the year that matches the corresponding accounts on your balance sheet. If there are any discrepancies between the detail totals and the account totals, you will want to hunt down these issues and correct them before providing your accounts to your accountant.

Taking the time to make sure all your accounts are properly reconciled and then providing the supporting documentation of those reconciliations will ensure that your accountant is able to move through the process quickly and efficiently. The less they have to do, the less you’ll have to pay on their final bill.

The first step in the process of determining your bad debt write-offs for the year is to print an accounts receivable aging report. You will want to determine which of the invoices that you have listed as past due have little or no chance of ever being collected. These will generally be invoices with clients that are a year old or more, that have failed to respond to all your attempts at collection.

The invoices that you are going to write-off as uncollectible should be clearly detailed in the supporting documentation for the adjusting entry that you will make to the Bad Debt Write-off expense account on the income statement. You will want to maintain your complete files on these bad debts showing all your billing and attempts at collection, should they ever be required by the IRS.

For most small companies, the adjusting entry that is made should credit your accounts receivable account on your balance sheet and debit your bad debts expense account on your income statement, decreasing your net income for the year.

Companies with larger receivables may follow a different procedure. Some of these companies will often create a ‘Bad Debt Allowance’ account on their balance sheet. This account is used to record the ‘estimated’ amount of bad debts expected rather than the specific individual bad debt write-offs. These estimated amounts should then be reviewed, at least quarterly, to adjust them to true expectations, which may move up or down. Actually write-offs of specific invoices will still occur, the accounting steps related to this type of accounting are just a little more complicated than the direct write-off method.

1. There are several energy saving home improvements that may qualify for a tax credit if they are completed and paid for before Dec 31^st. For a full listing of those energy credits, visit www.energy.gov.

2. Charitable gifts of cash or goods to IRS designated non-profits can be included in itemized deductions. For goods such as clothing, vehicles or other items, you simply need to have a receipt for the goods donated from the organization and then you may deduct the fair market value of the goods contributed.

3. Make the most of your mortgage interest deductions by paying the mortgage payment due on Jan 1^st 2012, before Dec 31^st 2011, so that you can include another month’s interest on your itemized deductions.

4. College students might consider paying their spring tuition in December if they haven’t used their full $4,000 tuition deduction that is available for 2011.

5. Saving for college? Some states offer 529 College Savings Plans and your contributions may be tax deductible.

6. Retirement plans. Have you contributed the maximum annual amount for the year? If not, you may decrease your taxable income by making additional contributions.

7. Convert your IRA. In some situations it may be an advantage to convert your traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, and the gross income cap for who can take advantage of these conversions has been removed.

8. Do you have both gains and losses on your stocks? You might consider selling stocks with big losses before the end of the year to use those losses to offset the gains.

9. To avoid the big bump in income at the end of the year, you might request that any year-end bonuses or stock options be paid out after the first of the year, instead of at the end of December.

10.  If you pay real estate taxes directly, instead of through a mortgage escrow, you might consider paying your next property tax payment before December 31^st in order to include those taxes on your 2011 tax deductions.

1. Mortgage Insurance Deduction. If you pay mortgage insurance premiums as part of your house payment, you will still be able to take a deduction for those on your 2011 tax return, but that special deduction will disappear and no longer be available to you in 2012. You may want to check with your mortgage company to find out if or when you are able to drop this insurance off your mortgage. It is generally not required to be kept in place for after you reach a certain equity point in your mortgage.
2. Sales Tax Deduction. The option of taking a deduction for sales tax in lieu of state and local income tax will also be expiring after 2011. Individuals living in states that do not have a state income tax will be missing this bonus when they file in 2012.
3. Adoption Credit Changes. For 2012 the adoption credit limit will decrease from $13,360 to $12,650, and the refundable nature of the adoption credit will expire at the end of 2011.
4. Educator Expense Deduction. This special deduction for teachers providing materials for their classrooms is set to expire at the end of 2011. It is possible that congress may choose to renew it, but don’t count on it for 2012.
5. Mass Transit Fringe Benefit Allowance. The tax-free allowance for mass transit benefits paid by your employer for 2011 was set at $230 per month; a nice perk. For 2012 this will be reduced to $125 per month.
6. Alternative Minimum Tax Changes. Personal tax credits will be allowed to offset both the regular tax and the AMT tax in 2011, but that benefit will disappear for 2012. Personal tax credits will only be allowed to offset regular income tax after 2011.
7. Social Security/Self-Employment Reduction. The 2% reduction in social security taxes for employees and the self-employed will expire at the end of 2011. This will be particularly important for the self-employed to take note of when calculating their estimated tax payments for 2012. They will want to make sure and adjust their payments upward to account for that 2% increase over what they paid in 2011.

ExcelTips.net – This site provides very easy to follow steps for things like using a pivot table to count items in a list of data, importing and exporting data from a variety of other programs and answers to a lot of those ‘Why did that happen?’ questions. They have tips related to older and current version of Excel. They also provide a weekly tip by email to spark ideas for using Excel in new ways.

MIStupid.com – I love the title of this site! Sometimes it can be just one little step in a process that we are missing, which can be very frustrating. This site provides a list of short video tutorials for some of those common processes like how to use conditional formatting to cause a cell to change color when the conditions are met or freeze panes or print gridlines.

Ron’s Excel Tips – For the advanced Excel user, this is the tip site for you. He has tips on merging large amounts of data, working with VBA, creating pop-up menus, filtering by font color and much, much more.

Of course, you can always use Microsoft’s FAQ’s and tutorials, but sometimes it’s faster and easier to find what you need on a smaller site that’s tailored for someone who is already beyond the basics.

Lavin, previously served as Undersecretary for International Trade at the U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Ambassador to Singapore, as well as a National Security Council Staff member. He understands international trade. He also understands that his knowledge can provide great value to the American small business owner. The barriers of language, international trade laws and shipping concerns are all removed by using Export Now as the middleman in the transactions.

By linking together with Tmall.com, the online retail outlet used by the majority of Chinese, Export Now is able to assist its partners in setting up shop in China’s online mega-mall. Orders are placed online and the business ships the orders to Export Now’s distribution center on the West Coast, and they handle it from there. In addition, Export Now claims “you can export to China while keeping the same price point and margin you would for a U.S. sale.”

Innovative thinking is always the way to keep your business growing and improving. Lavin saw a service that was needed, and he had the knowledge and expertise to make it happen, so he did. Because of that many other small businesses are benefiting as well.

For a new business startup, many of the ‘negatives’ can turn into positives. High unemployment means you are more likely to find high quality employees at a lower wage than you could during better economic times. Commercial space is also likely to be in low demand, which can mean lower rent and more flexible lease terms. In general this means lower overhead, which gives you a very competitive edge against established competitors who may have become top heavy during previous years. Low interest rates and increased government incentives also will work in the startups favor during these times.

Another positive for the new business during an economic slowdown is the fact that consumers will be doing more comparison shopping than they did before. When people are operating on a tighter budget, they are more inclined to look for new vendors who may give them a lower price than they have paid in the past. The only other thing a new business needs is the basic ingredient for any successful business; you need to provide a product or a service that meets a current need, or want, of the public.

Now may be the perfect time for some of those dormant business ideas to take bloom. Creative, but prudent entrepreneurs may find that this is the right time to put their business plans into motion.