What's in a Name?!

When my daughter (who happens to be typing this in for me today), Michelle and I started our little practice we spent a long time coming up with our name. Eventually we selected the name of Tailor Made Business Solutions, PLLC. No this was not because I love golf but Michelle felt that through my career I never approached a client’s needs with a predesigned or cookie cutter blueprint or design. But rather I tried to design processes and procedures that were tailored to the way they thought and did business without sacrificing the disciplines necessary to provide sound financial recording and reporting for them and outsiders who relied on this valuable information.  Additionally, with Michelle's prior background in Human Resources, we really could go in and meet all their needs if necessary.

However, as of late though, we are both beginning to rethink the name. Why you ask, well we get a lot of requests for quotes on anything from alterations of suits for men, hemming a dress, to the actual fabrication of custom and tailored made clothing for all genders and ages.

Now I have a dry sense of humor which most people do not always appreciate. Therefore I don’t turn these people away. So my stock answer to any of these people who call because they did not get past the first word tailor is that I will do the job for $5,000. There is always dead air after this quotes, so I quickly jump in to tell them what the business is really about and once I take a course in Tailoring (cost of $4,500) I would be more than happy to try and help them.

Any takers on two horrible seamstresses tailoring your clothes?! ;)

How to make your accounting software payoff

Most Small businesses use QuickBooks and or Peach Tree to prepare their books and records. Some try to perform the necessary bookkeeping tasks themselveswhile others employ bookkeepers. At the end of the year these same companies employ a CPA to prepare their tax returns from these very books and records. Unfortunately, many business owners and bookkeepers are not current with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and tax regulations. Nor do they know the difference between the two. Thus, when a small business has to convert from one to the other to either prepare a financial statement to borrow or expand there business they will have to engage a CPA to prepare the conversion. Moreover, in many cases the entries made by an outside CPA to prepare the tax returns never find their way into the books and records of the company causing the Company to be totally reliant on the continuity of the third party providers. Consequently, by not  not requiring that all adjustments made by third party providers get included at the time of creation , along with the supporting documents,  valuable and costly information becomes lost permanently.  This becomes extremely worrisome if ever the company needs audited financials, is being audited by federal or local tax authorities, etc.

The above scenario is usually created because many business owners feel that they are saving money by not engaging an experienced CPA who knows how to configure the software properly while at the same time developing processes and procedures that insure compliance with both tax and GAAP accounting so that when the final entries are made the data can be automatically created to prepare GAAP reports or directly uploaded into tax software in a manner whereby the returns are like ivory soap 99.99% pure. Sounds impossible or too good to be true maybe a few years ago but today these small software packages can do what is being done for some of the larger businesses throughout the world who utilize , to name a few, SAP, Oracle. PeopleSoft, Great Plains, etc. All you need is a CPA that understands the capabilities of the system and knowledgeable enough to work with your existing CPA and or bookkeeper who do not or choose not to involve themselves in this manner. The investment to implement pays dividends in the future.