It seems that every new year we’re bombarded with ways to make our lives easier. Even though National Organization Day isn’t until April 26 (there’s a day for everything), January is a great time to get your business in order and create a clean slate for the new year.

Any good start involving your business is to focus on how to maximize your tax deductions, while minimizing your tax liability. Regardless of your form of ownership—S Corporation, C Corporation, or Sole Proprietor—you need to be ready to file your taxes on time. Certum Solutions can help you figure out your deadlines, get your books ready, and even set you up with an accountant who can provide timely advice to you.

Here are 4 ways to get organized for the new year:

 

#1: Stop Co-mingling Your Funds

This is a definite no-no! If you’re using QuickBooks, it’s very tempting to set up all of your accounts in one QuickBooks file for business and personal, and even though the accounts are separate and you’ve classified expenses as “personal” or “business,” it’s very difficult to see only your business expenses or even pull a balance sheet for an 1120 filing.

What you should do is have two QuickBooks subscriptions—one for business and one for personal. Even though this will cost you double the price you pay for one subscription, it’s well worth the expense in order to have cleaner books. And in some cases, you may not need QuickBooks Plus when, in fact, you could get by with QuickBooks Essentials, so the pricing might be less.

At Certum Solutions, we are experts at helping you choose the right plan for your business and personal expenses, and can guide you to the best-fit software.

 

#2: Automate Your Monthly Transfers or Draws

Who wants to manually enter the same thing over and over? No one we know!

QuickBooks has the ability to set up Recurring Transactions to automate regular expenses or deposits—and you can even set up a timetable to have these transactions appear in your register when you want them to. For example, you can set up your monthly office rent or payment to appear in your register on the 15th of the prior month. What’s nice about this feature is you can better anticipate your expenses and plan in advance to ensure you have money in your account to cover them.

Ditto on payroll. In fact, payroll is probably your largest ongoing expense, accounting for 15-20% of revenue. When we set up payroll for our clients, we map it to QuickBooks so expenses appear in your register once payroll is run, but you can get ahead of this by setting up Payroll as a recurring transaction to be able to always anticipate these expenses.

Try Recurring Transactions—or we can show you how to use them. They truly help you plan.

 

#3: Don’t Wait Until the Filing Deadlines to Get Your Taxes Ready

Filing deadlines differ for your business depending on your form of ownership, but one thing remains constant: The deadlines do not change, except when there is a federal holiday that falls on the traditional day.

In 2024, the deadlines include the following: 

·      Partnerships, Multimember LLCs and S Corporations: March 15

·      Sole Proprietors and C Corporations: April 15

Of course, there are also extension dates:

·      Partnerships, Multimember LLCs and S Corporations: Sept 16

·      Sole Proprietors and C Corporations: Oct. 15

So what do we know? We know when the filing deadlines are going to occur, so why is it that so many businesses procrastinate getting their taxes done? If your books are organized, there’s no reason why you can’t get them done on time—and even early, although there are some cases why extensions are good to have. For example, if you contribute to a SEP for your employees, you can wait until Oct. 15 to file your taxes.

 

#4: Go Green and Digitize Whatever You Can

We’re not sure filing cabinets will ever go completely away, but with readily available technologies at our fingertips, there’s no reason you can’t get rid of as much paper as possible.

Going green in 2024 will be a central theme throughout the year, and at Certum Solutions, we are doing our part, too, in maintain the ecosystem. Once again, we will offer our Earth Day grant in April, so watch for notices about this. 

If you can’t seem to digitize all of your files at once, don’t fret. Set yourself a goal to tackle a bit at a time—and soon enough, you’ll be using your file cabinets as horizontal TV stands.

 

Call on Certum Solutions: We’re Here to Help! 

At Certum Solutions, we think every day is a great day to get organized … and we can help you do that, whether it involves your books, taxes, office or something else.

Contact us today to set up a free, 30-minute call. We are great listeners and will have the answers you need to soar in 2024.