Accounting Tips Guides

A key element to entrepreneurial success is choosing the right people to be part of your management team. In fact, angel investors and venture capitalists both view strength of the management team as the major determining factor in whether they are willing to make an investment in the company. But it is also important for an entrepreneur to have outside advisors he or she can trust and rely on, an accountant being one of these. Even a start-up company with little or no revenues needs to have a good accountant available, as well as an attorney who has experience with young businesses.

Accountants are important members of a company’s team. If you’re a start-up or small business you may not have the resources to hire an accountant full time. There are software programs that can do most of the data entry but it’s still a good idea to hire an accounting firm on a consulting basis to oversee your accounting systems, processing, and tax returns.

Attorneys are just as important, perhaps more so than accountants. An attorney can guide you to select the most appropriate way to set up your business. The best time to retain an attorney is before you need one. It’s worth the money to know that if something comes up you have a legal expert who is familiar with your company. Attorneys have valuable contacts with venture capital firms and private investors. They know what is reasonable in a private offering , what isn’t, and what must be included.

An attorney can also help you protect your intellectual property, trademarks, trade names and trade secrets. While it may seem expensive to have an experienced attorney on your management team it will avoid problems later.

Business Appraisers can tell you how much your business is worth and why. If you’re considering refinancing, that business appraisal can help you determine how much debt the company can carry.

If you’re considering selling your business the business appraiser can provide a ball park valuation. Of course the buyer will want to conduct their own due diligence and may even hire their own independent business appraiser, that’s to be expected. The appraisal you have completed gives you a bench mark to start negotiations.

A Business Plan Consultant can expedite the business planning process. If you’re looking for investors a well thought out concise business plan is critical. If you’re considering starting a company, a business plan will help you improve your chances for success and avoid making serious mistakes. You may be the only one who reads this plan, although you should have input from a number of other people with business experience. A business plan is an important ingredient to the success of a start-up business.

Using Consultants to provide services you need on an outsourcing basis can be much less expensive in the long run than hiring someone as an employee. The consultant probably will cost more on an hourly basis but you only need their services on a project basis. Consultants can provide programming, technical assistance, and communications expertise, just to name a few areas.

When hiring a consultant, or consulting firm, ask for references and check those references. A good place to start the search for a consulting firm is to ask your attorney and accountant for recommendations.

More tips for entrepreneurs . Dee Power is the author of several nonfiction books. Find out why your business needs an attorney http://www.capital-connection.com/attorneys.html

To qualify for being able to file shortened accounts a small company should satisfy at least two of three conditions. The three exemption conditions prior to April 2008 were that annual turnover is less than 5.6 million pounds, balance sheet total is less than 2.8 million pounds and the average number of employees is less than 50.

Where the financial year started after April 2008 the parameters increased to, annual turnover less than 6.5 million pounds, balance sheet total less than 3.26 million pounds and average number of employees less than 50.

Medium sized companies may also submit abbreviated accounts and the parameters to be classified as a medium sized company are significantly higher than those for a small company. For example for financial years starting from April 2008 two of the three qualifying conditions for a medium sized company to be satisfied were increased to sales turnover of under 25.9 million pounds, balance sheet total under 12.9 million pounds and average number of employees less than 250.

When a small company satisfies the audit exemption parameters it can maintain that audit exemption for a full financial year afterwards even if the parameters were exceed in that following financial year.

There are benefits in submitting abbreviated accounts as simpler and easier accounting records can be maintained reducing time spent on accountancy work. In addition although potential suppliers and financial institutions may require details of the year end financial accounts it is acceptable not to publish full details.

The main differences that can be produced under the banner of abbreviated accounts basically mean that a small company does not have to include a full balance sheet, profit and loss account or directors report which would normally be required by Companies House.

The small company is still required to submit a shortened balance sheet together with notes that explain the year end balances shown in the balance sheet. Under the audit exemption rules the year end accounts for a small company do not have to include an auditors report. When an auditor has prepared the accounts and submits a special audit report that report should state that in the auditors opinion the abbreviated accounts are being submitted in accordance with the appropriate section of the Companies Act.

Small companies must include a statement in the balance sheet that the year end accounts have been prepared in accordance with the special provisions contained in Part V11 of the Companies Act 1985. For financial periods starting after 5 April 2008 the accounts must be prepared in accordance with the Companies Act 2006 and include a statement that the special provisions applicable to small companies have been adopted

The statements to accompany the balance sheet of a small company submitting abbreviated audit exempt accounts are that:

The company was entitled to audit exemption for the financial year under the relevant section of the Companies Act 2006.

The shareholders have not required the company to obtain an audit.

The company directors acknowledge their responsibility for preparing accounts that comply with section 221 of the Companies Act 2006.

The company directors acknowledge their responsibility for preparing accounts which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the company and the profit and loss for the year.

The accounts have been prepared in accordance with the special provisions of the Companies Act relating to small companies

The rules on audit exemption apply not only to the year end accounts supplied to companies house but also those supplied to HMRC. This enables the small company to submit the short version of the corporation tax return, CT600, with the abbreviated accounts for tax purposes.

Terry Cartwright is a qualified accountant in the UK and producing Accounting and Audit Exemption packages for small limited companies in accordance with Companies House submission requirements.

It seems to me that, for large swathes of the public, the two “fiscal rules” that govern economic expenditure are, if not totally incomprehensible, at least too shatteringly dull to care about. One states that borrowing should not exceed the bracket of 40% of GDP whilst the other, the ‘golden rule’, refers to the balancing of the budget over the economic cycle.

It’s not exactly Bad Boys II is it? For the past 11 years these Brownite commandments have largely gone undisturbed. However, with financial storm clouds gathering overhead, it looks like they might not be as perennial as people thought.

The problem with this, naturally, is that if someone starts moving the goalposts, it somewhat throws the match into disrepute. The Conservatives, as one might expect, are practically queuing up to attack the Treasury over the issue. “The last nail in the coffin for Brown’s reputation for prudence” they’re calling it. The shadow chancellor George Osbourne, for example, rather sniffly referred to Brown “giving the prisoner the keys to their own cell”

A couple of rather adroit analogies aren’t they? Well, yes, until you read what Cameron said about these ‘fiscal rules’ at his party’s economic summit only two days previously:

“I don’t believe it’s impossible to try to get some political consensus [with the government]…about tight rules on fiscal policy”

That’s how he decided to phrase his intentions for steadying up the economy. Elsewhere he claimed that he wanted to “Reform the fiscal architecture” Which sounds remarkably like the way Kevin McCloud might describe Labour’s policy of ‘relaxing the fiscal rules’

Of course, as the old saying goes, the duty of the opposition is to oppose, but to describe Brown (and invariably it is Brown and not the Treasury or Alistair Darling… I wonder why?) as some prodigal cad and then hint at proposing the exact same measures is pretty rich isn’t it?

Many financial commentators have described Brown’s cabinet as standing at a crossroads with this issue. Either, they tighten their belts, raise taxes and feel the brunt of public unrest, or they slacken their belts, throw caution to the wind and indulge in a little more borrowed cash. The choice, clearly, is a tricky one:

ROCK: Oi! Brownie! How can you justify sticking to a set of outdated rules that will unnecessarily burden the public?

HARD PLACE: Oi! Gordon! where do you get off talking about borrowing more money when the financial situation is in such trouble?

Still, I suppose either of the two main positions are better than what Nick Clegg’s thrown into the mix. His ‘fair tax’ party has done somewhat of a u-turn of late and are now saying that they can solve the sticky economic climate by… lowering taxes.

Mmmm…? Well, we’d all like to see how that plans out wouldn’t we Nick? Sure you’ve thought this one through? Because I find it very hard to believe that every other economic advisor has dropped the proverbial clanger and forgot to add up these huge sums of money that are secreted around the different nooks and crannies of public spending. Brown doesn’t keep a penny jar does he?

So what have we learnt? That the government is in trouble; that the opposition will belligerently scratch and claw at everything the cabinet say, and that Nick Clegg could feel the benefit of a nice sit down. Well what’s new? Of course, detractors will rally around to call this the ‘end of the Brown era of economics’ but that only matters if you believed in such short-sighted spin in the first place.

Samantha is a London theatre fanatic and regular West End theatregoer. She writes and researches some of the biggest London shows you can view examples of her work here Oliver and Show and Stay.

Just because a doctor owns his own practice does not mean that he is doing particularly well. It might be true, but it also may not be. A physician does not necessarily have the right business skills to run his office and will not be very successful monetarily. They can be the best doctors in the world but they must have the right skills in billing for their practice to reap the rewards.

If the doctor is smart enough to recognize this weakness, he can hire the services of a medical billing company to take care of all his office needs.

Trained professionals who know all the ins and outs of insurance and medical billing staff a medical billing company. They are capable of handling all aspects of making claims to the insurance company and getting the payments in on time.

Insurance companies don’t make things easy for the medical practice. They have a tendency to deny claims at the drop of a hat.

If the practice is very busy and sees a great many patients there will be a lot of claims that need to be submitted to the insurance company. If only one member of the practices staff is handling this they will have to manually fill out and submit the claims for every patient that goes through the office. If there is one mistake on these claims the insurance company will deny it immediately and send it back. Now that one person has to refill out the form correctly in addition to the new claims that they must do every day.

Even when everything is done right it can still take the insurance company a very long time to send the payment. For a small practice this can spell disaster. If there are a couple of denials and late payments this can effectively put the practice out of business.

A medical billing company can put all of those worries to rest. The staff of the practice will no longer have to do all of the work that is required for the insurance companies. The billing company utilizes professionals who will be able to get all of the claims filled out and filed in a timely manner. They will also be able to use electronic means to file the claims. This gets rid of the manual method of submitting claims.

The professional at the medical billing company will also make sure that the claim makes it all the way through to the insurance company and is paid. They take the time to monitor the claims all the way through the process. Medical billing companies have a very high success rate for getting their claims paid.

When a claim is submitted electronically it will be denied or accepted immediately. When it is accepted the funds will be sent to the practice within a few days instead of the months that it could take with a manual system.

For a smaller practice this is a big deal. To get their money in a timely manner is the one factor that will decide if they are in business in a week. For practices that think a medical billing company is too costly to justify, they should sit down and figure out what it is costing them to do it in their current manner.

This type of billing company will be beneficial for any practice, regardless of the specialty.

Peter Geisheker is CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing company. One of the types of clients that Peter helps are medical billing companies and medical billing services

Hurricane Katrina’s showed us very clearly that we are very susceptible to any major halt or reduction in oil production. With prices souring since the Katrina tragedy the term “cheap gas” is as extinct as the dinosaurs. The Hurricane Katrina cutoff came from a natural disaster, of course, but the larger threat is a political.

Amazingly enough, two-thirds of the world’s established oil treasury lie in and around the Persian Gulf area; these countries, led by Saudi Arabia, now supply about a quarter of today’s oil. This flow could be interrupted at any time for a wide range of reasons — terrorism, war, domestic upheaval, deliberate cuts, just to name a few. Many other major oil exporters are equally unpredictable: Russia (the No. 2 exporter), Venezuela (No. 5) and Nigeria (No. 8).

More than 60 percent of our oil use goes for transportation, subjugated by in large by road travel. It’s a fable that encouraging more fuel-efficient vehicles means that we will all have to drive the smallest of autos. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Fuel efficiency isn’t dictated by the size of your auto but by the performance of its engine. We will not go back to having cheap gas until we utilize the technology to make more efficient automobiles.

The introduction of “hybrid” vehicles — combining internal-combustion engines and electric motors — promises fuel efficiency gains of 10 percent to 50 percent based on accessible technologies. But it’s also a myth that simply issuing tougher fuel standards will bring instant relief. We have to look at the efficiency of the cars we are driving and that will determine how much or how little fuel we use. And, of course that does determine if we will be buying cheap gas in the near future or not.

It’s going to take a long time; you’ve got 225 million vehicles out there. It may take as long as 15 years to turn over the entire fleet of automobiles on our highways. In fact, the math is worse than that. From 2008 to 2025, the number of vehicles may grow by 50 percent, projects the Energy Information Administration. The swell reflects more people (from today’s 297 million to 351 million in 2025) and potential higher incomes. To keep total gasoline utilization stable, average fuel efficiency must improve by approximately 50 percent.

We should be able to do this. Car companies can shift decisively toward hybrids and it is now very easy to convert your existing auto into a hydrogen from water hybrid very cheaply. Regardless of the hype, annual new hybrid sales will amount to a meager 234,000 sales out of about 17 million.

If companies are to be pushed toward building more hybrids, they have to be assured of strong demand, because there’s a downside. On average, hybrids cost $3,000 to $4,000 more than conventional cars. Again, as of late, many people are finding it much cheaper to convert their own vehicles to hydrogen hybrids for less than a couple of hundred dollars.

The traditional U.S. car companies — General Motors, Ford and Chrysler — are unfortunately the least prepared for change. They tied their fortunes to the biggest SUVs and pickups and right now the smaller foreign car producers seem to be leading the push toward hybrids. Cheap gasoline can come from two areas, at the pump or by how much, or more precisely how little fuel that auto uses.

Government needs to cultivate a market for fuel efficiency, although the consumers are no longer waiting for the government to act. With the public becoming more aware of the water for fuel technology people are starting to make the shift on their own. Americans now know that the era of cheap gasoline is history and are now purposely looking for more cost efficient ways to travel.

It’s not a national tragedy for someone to trade an Expedition for a Taurus. Some drivers will want to turn to a hybrid versions of their present vehicles; others will downsize. Cheap gas may be history, but greater fuel efficiency is the mark of the future for us all.

Michael Littles is a big supporter of the continued development of Hydrogen as a fuel source and provides a free video for all those who want to learn more about this technology in order to save 35% to 50% on your fuel costs. Get your free video by visiting: http://www.h2o-n2fuel.com

When a doctor owns a medical practice it does not necessarily mean that they have a great deal of money. It is possible for a doctor who owns his own practice to be very wealthy, but on the other hand if the business end of the practice is not handled properly he may not. A physician does not necessarily have the skills required to handle the money part of his medical business. He can be the best doctor but it requires a different set of skills to handle business.

A doctor should understand this and hire the services of a medical billing company to handle the parts of his business that he cannot take care of.

A medical billing company will have a staff that is trained to handle every aspect of a medical practice’s business. They are equipped to deal with the insurance end of the billing and the medical coding end.

Working with an insurance company can prove to be very hard. They tend to deny claims for the flimsiest of reasons and often use reasons that are borderline silly.

When a medical practice handles their own insurance claims will find that the insurance companies tend to deny claims a good deal of the time. When a practice makes use of a medical billing company this doesn’t happen nearly as often.

For a busy medical practice that sees a lot of patients there will be a lot of insurance claims to fill out. Usually one person is required to fill out each and every one of those forms. They will need to write out each form individually and send them to the insurance company. If there is one mistake on the form then the claim will be denied by the insurance company. They will generally send the form back and require it to be filled out again.

This creates an overwhelming amount of work for the person that must fill out these forms.

Even if the forms are filled out correctly it can still be weeks or months before the insurance company will send the check. For a small practice this can be devastating. This is especially true if there are denied claims in the same period of time.

When a practice hires this service, all of this work is eliminated. The difficulties that are caused by the insurance company can be avoided when a medical billing company is used. Professionals working for this type of company are trained to handle the claims forms and will get them to the insurance company using electronic means. This means that the claims will not have to be filled out manually and sent in through the mail.

The professional at this company will also monitor the claim and make sure that it goes through the process without delays. They are constantly on top of each claim that they send in and will correct any problem that occurs. The success rates are higher than ninety percent.

When a claim is sent to the insurance company by electronic means it will be accepted immediately or denied immediately. The practice will receive their check in a matter of days instead of months.

This helps the smaller practice receive their money faster and will be a benefit to the budget of the small practice. The cost of this type of service is far lower than the cost to the practice that delayed and denied claims are.

This service can be provided for any kind of practice regardless of their type.

Peter Geisheker is CEO of The Geisheker Group marketing firm. One of the types of clients that Peter helps are medical billing services and medical billing companies