Many people are upset that the mileage rate (from the IRS) has decreased. The mileage rate decreased because fuel costs have decreased.

(All of you conspiracy theorists might want to note that the same thing happened last year at this time too. Hmmm, just in time for us to drive around and do Christmas Shopping……)

When I talk to a Small Business Owner, I hear disappointment that the IRS mileage rates dropped. When I talked to an accountant friend of mine, she was happy – “I’d rather pay less for gas than have a higher deduction.”

Better spending habits are far, far more valuable for tax savings than spending more and getting more “write-offs”.

This is from a Padgett press release:

Accounting Today has named Padgett President Roger Harris to
its “2008 Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting”
list.

This year’s list, entitled “New Frontiers”,
focuses on the abounding changes in the accounting industry and
details how the individuals featured in the Top 100 are impacting and
advancing the field. The list includes not only accounting
professionals but also government officials and regulators.

“The profession stands poised to cross the
threshold into largely unexplored territories, such as the inevitable
convergence of U.S. GAAP and International Financial Reporting
Standards, new technologies, a potential revamp of the Tax Code and
dizzying changes in workforce demographics,” said Accounting
Today editor Bill Carlino. “This year’s Top 100 People roster
includes many of those who are spearheading the profession’s
journey into these brave new worlds.”

Padgett Business Services
is at the forefront of this journey, educating policy-makers and
shaping legislation in Washington. Through the efforts of the
Padgett Foundation, Padgett Business Services
is actively participating to ensure that new regulations enhance the
accounting profession; Harris recently testified on behalf of Padgett
in the IRS hearings on one of the most pressing issues in the
accounting industry today – preparer penalty rules.

However, the primary focus of Padgett’s work
in Washington is to shape legislation so that it benefits America’s
small business owners. Acting on behalf of Padgett’s small
business clients throughout North America and associations of tax
practitioners, Harris has testified several times on IRS reform and
has testified before the Senate Small Business Committee and the
House Ways and Means Committee. He has also been featured as an
expert panelist on Tax Talk Today, the IRS monthly web-cast.

Accounting Today describes Harris as “a veteran tax policy
advisor to the IRS and Congress, his influence and insight are
welcomed in Washington as well as on Main Street.”

This is not the first time that Padgett Business Services
has appeared on the “Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting”
list; Vice Chairman Dan Sautner has also been honored on the list and
Accounting Today has recognized Padgett in the past with the
following citations: Top 100 Firms, Top 10 Fastest Growing Firms in
America (without merger for growth), Merit Award for Achievement in
Client Service, Gold Medal Award for Achievement in Client Service.

Not only is Padgett recognized as a
leader in the accounting industry, but they are also recognized as a
leading international franchisor. Padgett has been ranked as a top
franchise by Entrepreneur, Success, and Income
Opportunities magazines, and was also ranked in Franchise
Business Review’s Franchise 50 2008 Franchisee Satisfaction
Awards.

He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.

Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.

Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol – Times Online
 

I don’t know that all this is actually good for humanity — Wouldn’t this lead to somehow betraying the inherent Dignity of Man?  (e.g. how long before we genetically modify humans to be perfect slaves?  Or Modify some humans to to be inferior/superior to others, etc….)

(I know this is just an accounting blog, but everything we do in our life expresses our values and accounting is no different.  Any accountant can easily look at any balance sheet or income statement and know what the client’s values are.  So perhaps revealing some of my own values can help other gain insight on how this profession truly works.)

My fourth grader’s science teacher taught her class about work. But not the kind of work that us non-engineers think of……she was talking about the unit of measure: “Work = Force X Distance“

She didn’t teach them the equation above; she had them do an experiment. One student pushed against the wall with all his might for 5 minutes and another student moved paper clips (one at a time) from one pile on the left side of her desk to a pile on the right side of her desk.

She then asked the students who did more work. They were all surprised to learn that the girl moving paper clips did more “work” than the boy pushing against the wall.

The boy pushing against the wall had plenty of force, but no distance. The girl had both force and distance in her movement of the paper clips, however negligible it may have been.

In our businesses, how often do we use plenty of force without getting anything to move? How many lunches and one-to-one meeting do have with other professionals that don’t actually move the business any distance to our goals? How many times have we filled two hours with a series of 5-minute tasks that don’t move a project to completion?

And how many times do we ignore the “paper clips” because they are just too small to worry about? Like accounting, cold calls, paperwork, paying bills, returning phone calls, keeping track of mileage, identifying key sales ratios, maintaining and tracking a business plan, etc…

Maybe Gustave Coriolis was the first business coach.

Do staffing issue worry you? Is hiring a difficult process? Does the red tape of employee payroll accounting scare you? If so, then you may want to attend a new series of workshops focused directly on solving these issues.

Padgett has partnered with Pomaybo, Inc to present a (2) part series specially designed to help the Small Business Owner.

This exciting new series of workshops will address Human Resource Issues and Accounting Issues. It is a must for business owners, office managers, HR Professionals & Managers. The workshop will be held in 2 convenient locations:

• 5/8/2008 8 am – 12 pm Breakfast Norwin Chamber of Commerce (Irwin)
• 5/15/2008 12 pm -4 pm Lunch Sandler Sales Institute (Wexford)
• Registration $89.00/individual (non-refundable)

To register, please click here.

“It’s no trick: How counting money makes money” James Merante, Padgett Business Services

You ever see somebody do a really cool card trick that looks impossible? But when the trick is explained, it just seems so simple you can’t believe it actually works?

If you attend our introduction to Small Business Accounting entitled “How Counting Money Makes Money”, you will learn not only how to save money on your taxes, but also enjoy greater freedom from worry in regards to your business’ financial condition. And like a card trick, when you learn the secret, you won’t believe how easy it is.

“Employee Handbooks: What you need to know” Dawn Pomaybo, Pomaybo, Inc.

Learn what you need to have in a handbook, how it should be written, terminology to avoid, why you should have a handbook and when you should implement a handbook. In addition, you will learn about pending legislative issues that can and will affect your business if they pass and also, what recent legislative changes have taken place.

Even if you have a handbook, just updated it, or need to create one….this seminar is for you!

Thank you to our valued sponsors and partners:

To my friends at ServiceMaster and Prime pay: I flipped a coin to determine whose logo would go on top. It was fair and square! ….But seriously, a big thank you to Mia and Kara and John and Evan.

Do staffing issue worry you? Is hiring a difficult process? Does the red tape of employee payroll accounting scare you? If so, then you may want to attend a new series of workshops focused directly on solving these issues.

Padgett has partnered with Pomaybo, Inc to present a (2) part series specially designed to help the Small Business Owner.

This exciting new series of workshops will address Human Resource Issues and Accounting Issues. It is a must for business owners, office managers, HR Professionals & Managers. The workshop will be held in 2 convenient locations:

• 5/8/2008 8 am – 12 pm Breakfast Norwin Chamber of Commerce (Irwin)
• 5/15/2008 12 pm -4 pm Lunch Sandler Sales Institute (Wexford)
• Registration $89.00/individual (non-refundable)

To register, please click here.

“It’s no trick: How counting money makes money” James Merante, Padgett Business Services

You ever see somebody do a really cool card trick that looks impossible? But when the trick is explained, it just seems so simple you can’t believe it actually works?

If you attend our introduction to Small Business Accounting entitled “How Counting Money Makes Money”, you will learn not only how to save money on your taxes, but also enjoy greater freedom from worry in regards to your business’ financial condition. And like a card trick, when you learn the secret, you won’t believe how easy it is.

“Employee Handbooks: What you need to know” Dawn Pomaybo, Pomaybo, Inc.

Learn what you need to have in a handbook, how it should be written, terminology to avoid, why you should have a handbook and when you should implement a handbook. In addition, you will learn about pending legislative issues that can and will affect your business if they pass and also, what recent legislative changes have taken place.

Even if you have a handbook, just updated it, or need to create one….this seminar is for you!

Thank you to our valued sponsors and partners:

To my friends at ServiceMaster and Prime pay: I flipped a coin to determine whose logo would go on top. It was fair and square! ….But seriously, a big thank you to Mia and Kara and John and Evan.

Number 46 on “101 Great Ideas to Start Your Business” from Entrepreneur Magazine:

46. Find Simple Accounting Software: Padgett Connect is an accounting software program from Padgett Business Services geared toward the average user who doesn’t have in-depth knowledge of accounting. It’s customized by Padgett for each client’s business, and user support is free. The program can handle everything from writing checks to sending invoices. It also aims to make everything easy to use, with simple terminology and preset charts of accounts tailored specifically to the user.

Available to all my clients, for free!

This is the kind of stuff that gets me. As a Small Business Owner, when I read something like this I think “give me a break….don’t you have anything better to do?”

But, as I stop and think about it, I realize that the distinction being examined here is important and potentially expensive.

This must be what Small Business Owners think when I start talking about depreciation.

A long-running California lawsuit over whether all megabytes and gigabytes are created equal may have reached its end on Friday.

The class action lawsuit against Kodak, Sandisk, Lexar Media, and other memory card makers alleges that the defendants intentionally misrepresented the capacity of their flash memory devices by using decimal definitions, in which a megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes. The suit says a binary definition is appropriate, meaning that one megabyte equals 1,048,576 bytes and that the memory card sizes were overstated by 4 percent to 5 percent.

When memory capacity was smaller, the difference didn’t mean much. A decimal kilobyte, at 10^3=1,000 wasn’t very different from 2^10=1,024.

But as capacity grows, the differences become more significant (technically, the ratio between the decimal and binary representations increases). This explains why your new terabyte drive isn’t as capacious as you hoped it might be. A 10^12=1,000,000,000,000 decimal terabyte is roughly 10 percent smaller than the binary equivalent of 2^40=1,099,511,627,776. Here’s more background on why computers work this way.

You can read the original article here.

No, I am not referring to a business plan in the above post heading. I am referring to a succession plan.

Many Small Business Owners continually re-invest in the business, rolling all their profit back into their business’ equity. Most of the time, business owners feel that this is the responsible thing to do, and many times they are right.

So what is the plan if the Business Owner becomes disabled or dies?

When a business’ wealth is tied up in capital assets, it can make it hard for families to manage the transition. Many time they will end up selling the business for far less than proper market value, simply because they need liquid funds to pay creditors.

When I talk to a Business Owner about their goals, this is an area that most have not considered.

When you are a Small Business Owner, there is more to planning than just “business plans”.

(My thanks to Keith Colonna from Smith Barney for his insights on this topic.)

Now, it will be even easier to get me on the phone: I added a “Call me” button to the left column of the website. Clicking on this button will try my office and cell phone — and any other phones — until it finds me. (Unlike some of our “ivory tower” accounting peers, we are trying to do everything we can to be accessible)

If you click on the above button, it will prompt you for the phone # from which you want to call me. Your phone will ring. When it does, answer it and you will hear my phone ringing.

Look forward to hearing from you….

So which one are you? In my line of work, clients generally fall into one of two categories. Either they delegate or abdicate.

I can see the look on a clients face when I am conducting our opening meetings. I can see that they are being seduced by the idea: just turn everything over to Padgett and let them deal with those numbers and returns and forms and e-tides and stuff.

This is abdication. Just about the worst mistake a Small Business Owner can make. Because no matter how good we are, it is still your business being driven by your judgment. And when things go wrong, the consequences are yours.

But isn’t that what you want? — you might ask. Aren’t you trying to convince Small Business Owners to allow you to handle their financial issues?

No, we are not trying to convince Small Business Owners to allow us to handle their financial issues. But what we do believe is that Small Business Owners need a specialist in regard to the complex and varied needs for Small Business reporting. We will make sure the numbers are right and the Small Business Owners make the strategic decisions. These kind of Small Business Owners are the delegators.

Those that delegate read the reports that we provide. And because they delegate, they actually have time to complete those pedestrian tasks like reading financial reports, making sure they have money in their accounts to pay taxes, strategic decision making, etc…

This is how to turn Crises Management into real management which is based on thoughtful marketplace predictions. So delegate what you can, but be sure not to abdicate.

I met with a non-profit the other day, just trying to see if I could do anything to help.

It turns out that this guy spent about 5-6 hours a week keeping his quickbooks in order. He also kept incredible records. This gives me mixed feelings. If everybody was this thorough, they wouldn’t need me for their monthly reporting. On the other hand, it is so good for a business to be this organized that the entire world would be a better place if more businesses did this.

I like to think that my role is so much more than simply crunching numbers and developing tax information. I have the wealth of thousands of clients’ experience at my disposal, but sometimes my role is better when I am a consulting business in lieu of an accounting services.