Happy Holidays From A Step Up Bookkeeping

Your Year-End "To Do" List

It’s almost the end of the year, and although the holidays are coming, there are a few tasks you need to address before year end. Getting your financials in order now will start you off right for the New Year. A Step Up wishes you a very merry holiday season and a prosperous 2012.

1. Invoice your clients for all outstanding time and expenses. You want to be sure that invoices are sent for all work done during the year, and many of your customers will want to pay you for this work now to lower their tax liability. Make it easy for them to do so! Receiving payments at the end of the year also gives a cash basis business a bit of flexibility. You can count the income in this year by using the check date on the payment in QuickBooks. Or move it to next year by using the date you received or deposited it (be sure this is actually in 2012).

2. Review your open receivables and determine if any should be sent to an outside collection agency for assistance or if they are un-collectible. If you are on an accrual basis, you can write these off as bad debts and lower your business profit totals. Even if you are cash basis, getting these off your books gives you a truer picture of what is outstanding for the new year.

3. Reconcile all bank accounts, credit card accounts and loan accounts. You need accurate balances to make informed decisions for the future. Ensuring that the totals of your accounts match the bank also improves the likelihood that you haven’t missed any deductible expenses.

4. Prepare a budget for next year. Review this year’s reports and set a plan for realistic growth next year. What income categories were profitable? What expenses can be trimmed? Set a plan for how you will increase revenue and lower expenses in the coming months. You can also enter this information into QuickBooks, and then you can compare how you are actually doing against your plan from month to month.

5. Double-check all employee addresses and social security numbers. Make sure that employee paycheck names and Social Security numbers match their SS cards and W-4 data. Remind employees to submit new W-4 forms if there has been a change in their filing status due to marriage, divorce or dependents (birth, adoption, child turning 21), or if they want to retain their federal ‘exempt’ status.

6. Ask your payroll service (if you use one) for a W-2 adjustment run, or run a Payroll Summary report before closing out 2011 to verify and correct:
- excess SS withheld: if any employee exceeded the 2011 limit of $4,485.60 make an adjustment or refund before sending in your final tax-year 2011 deposit
- additional amounts paid to employees that must be captured on W-2s, including relocation expense reimbursements, personal use of company vehicles, company-paid educational assistance and other taxable items that were paid outside of the payroll system;
- manual or voided paychecks not in your system;

7. Review 2011 paychecks outstanding more than two pay periods so you have time to void and reissue in time for 2011 W-2s.

8. Get address and social security numbers for all 1099 contractors. Send W-9 forms to obtain this information if needed. Review all names, addresses and tax ID information as well as the categories of payments made for accuracy.

9. Meet with your CPA to review your preliminary totals. There are things you can do now to reduce your business tax liability, such as contributing to a retirement plan or paying employee bonuses, but they often must be done before December 31st. It also may or may not be a good idea to make a large equipment purchase at this time. Depreciation deductions are not as favorable if the majority of the year’s purchases were made in the last quarter. Corporations will need to calculate and pay out shareholder distributions by the end of the year. Talk to your CPA about your tax strategy for this year. Of course, you will want to have your records in order and caught up to reap the most benefits from your meeting.

A Step Up Bookkeeping is available for assistance with getting your record-keeping caught up. Give us a call for a no-obligation consultation at 603-679-2022.

Five Tips to Speed Up Cash Collections

If your accounts receivable balances are edging up and getting older and older each month, then it might be a good time to bring out the aging reports. But what if we looked earlier in the cycle to see what we could do to collect the sales even sooner? Let’s take a look at five potential changes you can consider making that will speed up your cash flow, reduce aging receivables, and possibly reduce lending costs in your business.

1. Get paid in advance.

Getting paid in advance manifests itself in a number of ways:

• Prepaid gift cards
• Deposits
• Prepayment plans
• Monthly or project retainers

If it’s common to get paid in advance in your industry, then all you need to do is focus on doing more of it. If it’s not common in your industry, I encourage you to see how you might apply one of these ideas to your industry. You may be able to invent an entirely new way of doing business within your industry.

2. Increase your cash-equivalent payment choices.

If you’re not already able to take the following forms of payment, then it’s time to sign up for:

• Credit cards, especially MasterCard, Visa, Discover, and American Express
• PayPal
• Wire transfers
• Cloud-based bill payment systems

If you have overseas clients, being able to easily accept wire transfers keeps it simple if the client does not maintain a bank account in your country’s currency. And although most wire transfers still need to be handled manually, you can systematize and automate the process as much as you can by having written procedures for your clients.

Offering a cloud-based billing solution such as Bill.com eliminates the physical writing of checks, and you can approve and send payments from anywhere, even if you are on an airplane. The efficiency cannot be beat.

It’s surprising how many business-to-business payments come through PayPal, so if you don’t have this one as an option, you might want to consider it.

3. Streamline your time and billing system.

If you can bill faster, you can collect faster. Take a look at your processes and identify the bottlenecks in your billing system. Is it the partner who keeps the invoices on their desk for days before they are approved to be mailed? Is it an antiquated time system that is not real-time? Is it duplicate data entry that can be streamlined? Once you’ve determined your bottlenecks, you can take action to eliminate them.

4. Implement eCommerce.

An online shopping cart can help clients serve themselves and cut way down on your customer service. Today’s online shopping carts can handle one-time payments, recurring payments, and variable bills. The best of them offer a portal for clients to update their own credit card expiration dates, respond to declined card messages, and basically serve themselves. It’s quite fun to come into the office each morning and find loads of cash sales already in your cart from the night before, without any help from you or your staff.

5. Card on file.

For long-time clients, it makes sense to set up automatic approval on a monthly basis by having their card on file. Most busy and successful clients will appreciate the time savings when using this method, and you will have more control and be able to get paid faster. You can also use a hybrid of this method – semi-automatic approval – where a simple email exchange approves the current month’s amount.

Try one or more of these five tips to speed up your cash flow, simplify collections, and lower the amount you need to borrow from the bank to finance your business.

Russian Roulette, er, I Mean Bookkeeping

The main square in Yekaterinburg

The early snowstorm in the Northeast a few weeks ago reminded me of the city of Yekaterinburg, a large city two hours east of Moscow by air that often sees snow in October all the way through May. The western border of Siberia is a few hundred miles to the east. In Yekaterinburg, there are many small businesses whose owners need to keep their accounting books just like you do. However there are a couple of twists as you might imagine.

The old Russian accounting system was built for one purpose: to calculate taxes. And the tax system is complicated, expensive, and volatile. In the 1990s, about 600 new laws were published every year (just in case we think U.S is the only country that has a crazy tax system). The Russian government has broad powers to garnish business accounts, and many transactions are handled in cash to avoid this capability.

As a matter of fact, it was quite common for small businesses to maintain three sets of books:

• One “official” set of books for the government.
• One for payroll which was mostly done in cash.
• One for management to see what was really going on.

It’s interesting to see whether QuickBooks could handle such data requirements.

At any rate, it would need to be QuickBooks in Cyrillic to support the Russian alphabet. Microsoft Excel is definitely available in Cyrillic; I’m not sure Intuit has any plans for a Cyrillic version any time soon, which brings up another challenge: there are not too many plug and play accounting systems available in Russian.

Another challenge in the new, turbulent post-perestroika economy -- inflation. Lending rates ranged between 130% and 200%. That’s pretty brutal to profit margins. What's worse, a loan has to be paid back in three months. A company needing cash for several months is forced to find a new bank every three months to pay off the old loan and lend it the money for the next three months.

Until 1992, Yekaterinburg was a closed city: No foreigners were allowed to visit for reasons of national security. Concepts that we take for granted in America, such as profit and efficiency, are relatively unknown in Russia. There is no Russian word for “efficiency.” Imagine describing efficiency to an employee who has never heard of the concept or the word.

The chief accountant, who is often a company officer, is usually educated as an economist, which is the closest profession that Russia has to accounting until recently. There is a great hunger for management accounting and reporting because there wasn't anything like it.

Sometimes it’s a breath of fresh air to experience a new perspective. In the U.S. we don’t have to keep three sets of books; one is quite enough for most of us. It’s illegal to make payroll in cash in most states. We have about half a million CPAs and far more bookkeepers to help us with anything we don’t understand. Most of them are quite efficient, and that’s a lot to be grateful for.

If we can help you with anything that feels foreign to you in your accounting system, please call on us anytime.

Six Ways to Reduce Fee Resistance

Do your prospects sometimes balk when you quote your prices? Do you feel you’re losing business because your fees are too high? The problem might not be your prices; it might be the way you’re presenting them to potential clients. Many business owners blame a lost sale on price, but only a small percentage of customers are truly price-sensitive and will make a decision based on price alone. That means the majority of the market buys on value, not price, and that’s what we need to move the focus to when we present prices.

The following are six ideas to help you reduce fee resistance and possibly even raise prices without receiving objections about your fees. The overall key is to reduce the prospect’s risk of doing business with you while increasing the chances that they will look like a hero after they have hired you.

1. Acknowledge their fear or skepticism.

If your client has just had a couple of failures with other vendors, lost some clients, or laid off staff, he is going to be defensive and skeptical about any proposal that has him spending a large amount of money. The last thing he wants to do right now is make a mistake hiring the wrong vendor.

The first step for you is to see the world from your buyer’s eyes. If the budget is tight, you have to acknowledge this elephant in the room. Show them how your service or product can reduce their pain and fit in with their current situation. And show them where it falls short, if it does. Being honest goes a long way and reduces defensive behavior on the prospect’s side.

2. Build vision.

Work with the prospect to see the vision of their problems solved. Staying at this high level will allow you both to communicate the big picture and avoid getting lost in the details.

3. Gain buy-in before you write the proposal.

“If we can deliver this, does this sound good to you?” is the type of language you want to use during the initial conversations. As much as you can gain buy-in at every step, do so. This will allow you to keep one eye on where your buyer stands emotionally as well.

If the answer is “no” to the above question, then you have saved time in the proposal stage. Don’t write the proposal until you know what should be in it that will be accepted.

4. Give your prospect a choice of YESes.

In your proposal, create three options: a small, medium, and large, if you will. This reduces your chance of getting a “no.” Your buyer has a choice of YESes to make instead of a yes-no decision.

For example, a trainer’s small option might be two train-the-trainer sessions, 500 licenses, and no instructor manual. A medium option is two train-the-trainer sessions, 1,000 licenses, an instructor manual, and email support. A large option is four train-the trainer sessions, 2,000 licenses, an instructor manual, two days of onsite support, and email support.

5. Use value words in your conversations, materials, and proposals.

When possible, use words like “investment” instead of “expense.” Also watch your ratio of “you” statements to “I/we” statements. Always use more “you” statements than “I/we” statements. List items you will be doing that are included in the fee and list them in the fees sections as “No charge” or “Included.”

6. Compute ROI.

If you’re dealing with larger accounts, calculating return on investment is pretty much mandatory. Estimate the value of the problems that you will be solving for them, and compare it to the cost of your service. There should be at least a 10 to one ratio, in favor of the prospect.

Include a per person component, if applicable. Your fee might sound high in total, but when you spread it across the number of individuals you will be impacting, it can sound really low. For example, a $20,000 training fee spread over 5,000 participants is only $4 per headcount. Let us know what numbers you need to make your marketing presentations complete. We can work with you to compute the number that communicates your value in the most informative way.

These tips will not only help you get what you’re worth, but they will increase your value in the eyes of the client, resulting in a more satisfied client.

Are You an Expander or Contractor?

Are You an Expander or Contractor?

As business owners, we naturally lean toward being an expander or a contractor in our businesses. In a nutshell, an expander makes things bigger and a contractor pulls things in, but there’s far more to this analogy which can explain a lot about what roles you want to have in place in your business.

The expander is a salesperson who can bring in the business and maintain good client relationships. An expander is a person who has a million ideas and can create profitable new service and product lines, but may not be best at implementing them. An expander will also tend to spend a lot, go over budget, and start a lot of projects.

A contractor is great at staying on budget. They love systems. They will create rules and systems and follow them. They are not natural at selling. They might be introverted. They are great implementers. They can rein in an expander’s ideas by encouraging them to choose one. They can implement it and see it to its finish.

Which Role Do You Play?

It’s fun to think about which role you naturally play, and which roles your team members naturally play. There may even be some tension between the team members who are opposites, but when they can play well together, your business will flourish. To succeed effortlessly in business, you need both types of roles in your business – an expander and a contractor.

Challenges for Expanders

If you’re the business owner and the expander, the challenge for you is finding the time and discipline to do the work as well as keep up with all the marketing. You might feel the pull of that seesaw between delivering services for clients versus going out and getting new clients and keeping your business full.

If you’re in business alone, the first person an expander business owner might want to hire is a contractor type – a project manager type or an admin type that can help you offload some tasks that you can systematize and delegate. Your biggest challenge is time. You need help to get all your great ideas done. Choose an admin person at a low hourly rate that will do the lowest level tasks on your plate. This will free you up to do the higher dollar stuff you need to do with clients and to do the strategy work that no one else can do in your business. Another way an expander can bring a contractor role into their business is through coaching or a mastermind group that can hold them accountable.

Challenges for Contractors

If you are the business owner and you are a contractor, you love doing the work but hate going out and getting clients. You are introverted, maybe a numbers or rules or systems person. You might dislike marketing and avoid doing it. Your biggest challenge is getting enough business in the door. The first step you can do is to leverage online marketing as much as possible. Systematize your marketing so that it’s as automated as possible. You can also employ a strong support team of expanders in your business to help you. Find a fabulous employee that has client service, sales and marketing experience that can be your expander.

Your Business Roles

You will easily be able to tell if you have too many of one role in your business. In an all-expander business, client projects can run over-budget which hurts your margins, important initiatives may not get implemented, and details can get overlooked. In an all-contractor business, you do great work but you are a best-kept secret and you may fall short on revenue goals.
Take a look at your business roles. Are you naturally an expander, or does your business have too many expanders? Are you naturally the contractor, or does your business have too many contractors? Let us know how we can help you keep your business in balance.

Five Tips to Manage Overwhelm

Does it seem like you need to accomplish more in less time than ever before? Just about every small business owner I know is overwhelmed with everything they need to do. Many factors are contributing to this feeling: new technologies, increased government regulation, a need to market harder, and less access to capital are just a few examples.

Is there truly a way to find an extra hour each day? Yes, there is, and here are five tips you can put in place to reduce the feeling of overwhelm, free up time, and feel more in control of your business.

1. Get stuff done off prime time.

Most people drive to work between 7 and 9 and come home between 4 and 6. Save yourself 15-30 minutes per day or more by coming in before or after the rush.

Apply this same idea to your weekly errands or times when you need to stand in line. Go to a restaurant a little early (or late) to avoid the busiest times. Go to the grocery store during the week instead of on Saturday.

Doing this for 10-12 errands per week will save an hour a week or more. Combine that with the time you’ll save in rush hour, and you could save as much as three hours a week using this idea. Even if you can apply this idea to only one or two days a week, you’ll still be ahead of the game.

2. Delegate clerical or personal tasks.

Make a list of all the tasks you are doing that a minimum wage earner could do, and hire a college student for a few hours a week. You’ll benefit from systematizing the tasks you delegate – they will get done more efficiently – and you will have freed up a few hours a week once your worker is trained.

3. Practice Power Hour.

Carve out one hour a day to complete the most profitable task for your business. This might be making sales calls, meeting with a power partner, or designing a new service or product to offer clients. It’s best if it’s the first hour in your day. In any case, the time should be sacred, with no checking email, no answering the phone, and no texting.

Your business will really accelerate when you make Power Hour a regular practice.

4. Check email and social media less often.

Turn off automatic send and receive in your Outlook or email application. Instead, close (yes, close!) your email application for most of the day. Check it only at 8am, noon, and 4pm. When you can break the addictive cycle, you will have fewer interruptions, be able to focus, and do higher quality work.

Likewise, if you need to spend time on social media, set a timer before you start. When the bell rings, that’s it! Get back to work.

5. Nail your time wasters.

The only real way to determine where your primary time drains are is to track your time, minute by minute for a couple of days. When you review the log, you’ll be able to see what’s going on and what you can do to prevent time from slipping through your fingers.

When you can use your time wisely, you’ll not only get more done, you’ll get the things done that matter to you.

Seven Strategies to Fire Up Your Fall Sales

The fall months are a great time to rev up your business revenue.  Many business owners are freshly back from retreat or vacation, and they’ve had time to refresh and rejuvenate themselves and their staff.  Now it’s time to benefit from all that creativity that’s been unleashed and put those ideas to work.   

If you’re ready to rev it up for the fall of 2011, here are some fresh ideas to help you invigorate your fall sales. 

1.       Conduct a Client Survey

If you’re wondering how to discover the next big revenue blockbuster for your business, go to a wise source:  your clients.  Send a survey asking them what their current challenges are, what keeps them up at night, and what they could use help with.  Tools such as Constant Contact surveys or SurveyMonkey make sending surveys a snap these days.  You’ll gain valuable intelligence on where to focus your revenue development efforts so that you can serve your clients even better while increasing your income. 

2.       Ask for Referrals

The fastest and most cost-effective way to find new clients is by tapping into the network of current clients who are pleased with your work and know others who could use your services.  To make sure your clients know you are looking for more clients just like them, you might have to tell them!  They may not put two and two together like you think they should.  Prime the pump by creating a referral program and making it known you’re in the market for new clients. 

3.       Make Yourself Skillful

There’s nothing like adding new skills to your tool belt to help you increase your value in your client’s eyes.   Learn a new software package, design a new procedure, read a book, or take a training class that will give you ideas on how you can add value to and extend your current service or product line.  Once you’ve mastered it, you can train your team on what you’ve learned and make it a new offering which brings in more revenue.  

4.       Collect Testimonials

Collecting testimonials has multiple benefits.  First, you can use them on your promotional material so that new prospects can read about what it’s like to do business with you.  Second, you’ll learn something about what the client values by reading them.  And third, every communication you have with your clients increases “top-of-mind” awareness, making it more likely for the client to use more services or refer you.  That’s a triple win.

5.        Change Up a Current Service or Product

Add a whole new service by changing something about your current service or product.   If you offer products or services a la carte, bundle some together and make a package offering.  Correspondingly, if you offer a package, break it down into smaller offerings.  If you offer services via the phone, offer them in person as well.  Join with a trusted partner to offer your products and theirs together in one packet.   Or subcontract with a vendor you trust to expand your offerings even more.  When you offer three options, a discount, regular, and premium version, your clients will have more choices to fit their changing budget.  You can also change up the packaging, add extras, subtract items, change the color, change the timing, and much more. 

6.        Upgrade Your Marketing

Invest in your marketing skills and materials so that your company is more appealing to prospects.  Redo your website if you need to, or perhaps there’s a flyer you can design that you can hand out at networking meetings.  Learn how to write a great proposal and how to communicate well during a sales call.  Or learn how to use social media to engage and educate your prospects on what you do.  When your marketing materials are a notch higher, your business will be more attractive to higher quality prospects.

7.        Cross-Sell and Upsell to Current Clients

Your current client base is a gold mine of potential.  They already trust you and know you through the services you are currently offering.   It’s possible they may not know everything you do.  It’s your job to let them know about all the other services you offer.  When you do, you’re highly likely to do more business with them. 

Try these seven ideas to fire up your fall sales.   

The Best Way to Bring on New Clients

How to Save Precious Time Onboarding New Clients

You might have routines and systems to help a new employee settle in, such as payroll forms and training manuals. You might also have some procedures set up for when you start doing business with new vendors, such as asking them for their tax ID paperwork and having them submit invoices to your standards. But what about onboarding new clients? Most entrepreneurs don’t think about systematizing that process.

You will save a ton of time if you stop and put some systems in place to help you and your new client get off to an efficient start. The payoff can be extremely high. If you save a half hour per client and you have 100 new clients a year, then you just saved 50 hours a year, or an hour a week.

Here are a few tips to get you thinking about where you might be able to streamline your new “New Client Acquisition Process.”

First the Paperwork

What forms do you need from every client? These might include:
• An engagement letter or contract that describes the scope of the work to be done.
• Billing information, which might include a credit card on file and the process they want used to submit and approve invoices.
• How the client found out about you for marketing tracking purposes.

You can further systematize this by having a standard engagement letter, a form each client fills out, and/or a standard pre-written email (forever saved in your drafts folder of your email program for easy access).

The Good Old Days

Way before computers and the internet, all types of businesses used to run credit checks on new customers before opening their accounts. That might not be a bad idea to bring back! If so, you’ll need a form for that so that your clients can provide you with the information you need to run a credit check. Either that or provide them the ability to prepay their account.

Getting Started
Make a list of items you need from your clients to get started. This will vary depending on what industry you serve. Here are some common items to get you started:

• Contact information include staff names, titles, phone numbers, and email addresses
• Account names, user IDs and passwords
• Description of their problem if it’s repair-related
• Hardware and software information if it’s a computer-related service
• Any documents you need to complete your project
• Insurance information
• Licenses
Once you have your list, you can create a form asking for all of the information you need from every client. This will save you tons of time if you are asking for these things piecemeal now.

Instructions

Do you find yourself repeating the same instructions over and over again to each new client? Write your spiel down or better yet, make a recording so your client can listen in at their convenience and play it over and over again if they need to.

Here are some common implementations of this one:
• Photography studio owners can write down how clients can prepare for their portrait and what to wear.
• Grocery stores can provide recipes for items in their deli.
• Plant nurseries can have instructions on how to re-pot plants.
• Plumbers can provide instructions for how to turn off the water.
• Restaurants can offer menus that disclose ingredients and calories for those who are sensitive or on diets.
• Office supply stores can make a chart of how different products compare.
• Web hosting companies can have screen-capture videos made on how to set up email accounts.

You’ll save tons of time with this one. What can you think of to save yourself time onboarding clients?

Systems

There’s no doubt you’ll need to enter some information into your sales, order, accounting, or project system in order to set up your new client. If there’s any way your client can do this directly, then you will have saved yourself a step. Take a look at where you have duplicate data entry and explore ways to automate it or have the client enter the information directly. We can help you with some ideas if you need help in this area.

Welcome Packet

Is your business the type that could send your client a welcome packet of goodies? If so, shower your new client with bonuses and goodies so they’ll have a positive first impression that will last a long time. These items will include anything that saves your client time and money, and will NOT be a bunch of promotional items with your logo on it. (If it has your logo on it, it’s not a gift; it’s an ad.)
These items might be checklists, reports, tips, cheat sheets, candy, flowers, liquor (if your license allows it), a thank you note, a stuffed animal, and/or anything else that is a traditional gift.

Take a look at all the steps you go through to onboard your client, and see where you can streamline your systems so that both you and the client will save time. You’ll also look amazingly organized to the client, which is a good thing!

Life is too Short; Save Time with these Ideas

The Secret Sauce to Saving Time

Is finding enough time to do everything you need to do one of your top five small business challenges? If so, you’re not alone; just about every entrepreneur lists “time” as a challenge they face today in running their businesses. It’s not uncommon to feel stressed and overwhelmed at everything you need to do.

Plenty of time management books will help you use your time more productively, but who has time to read a whole book these days? Instead, here are some quick tips to help you work smarter, ease any stress, and tame the time monster.

The 4 “D”s

You might have seen a strategy that allows you to evaluate how to handle each task or e-mail as it comes across your desk. Here’s mine: 1. Do, 2. Delegate, 3. Delete, and 4. Delay.

It’s pretty self-explanatory. For each task you have, you choose one of the four. Do means drop everything and do it now. Delegate means give it to another person to do. Delete means you didn’t really need to do that task in the first place and you can cross it off the list. And delay means you’re going to do the task later and not now.

Every single thing that comes into your life can be handled using this 4D filter: do, delegate, delete, and delay. It’s a great tool, and I’d definitely recommend trying it if you don’t have a system for yourself. But there’s an even better idea.

The Secret Sauce

Once you’ve applied your formula and you’ve decided on the tasks you’re going to “do” today (the first of the “D”s), there’s another step we can add that will actually start freeing up some time. With tasks you’re going to “do,” you have two more filters to try:

1. Can I automate this task?
2. Can I systematize this task?

Go ahead and “do” the task the way you’ve always done it. Then add another step that essentially asks: “Is there a better way?”

Take Your Biz Off Automatic Pilot

It’s funny how we keep doing the same things over and over again the same way, even though our business has long outgrown the way we’re doing it! Sometimes we don’t think to question whether there are new ways of doing things faster. We might not want to tackle the learning curve, even though we could save a lot of time in the long run.

A client showed me her invoices recently, and I asked her how long she had been doing invoicing that way. “About 15 years,” she said. The second she said it, it dawned on her to change. It hadn’t occurred to her to even consider changing before! Once she got the bug to change, you couldn’t stop her. She was able to both systematize and automate her invoicing, saving several hours each week. Once her mind was turned on to asking “Is there a better way?”, she found dozens of tiny procedures she could change, freeing up even more time in her daily routine.

It can happen when you add or replace an employee, too. You’ll see what systems need tightening up, and you can create procedures and implement new software and tools with the new employee to make the job even more effective. This happened recently to an associate when he hired a personal assistant.

Workflow Improvements

Frank is a do-it-now sort of guy. When he needed something, he needed it now. He was making multiple personal errand trips several times a week to purchase groceries, make dry cleaning runs, do banking business, and mail packages. His new assistant, Beth, took over all of those tasks and she also systematized everything. She created inventories and re-order points on all his supplies and even his groceries. She set up procedures for all her new tasks. What took Frank 10 hours a week now takes Beth 3 hours a week because she eliminated the redundancy and streamlined the job. Now that’s a time management tip worth implementing.

More Important Things

The 4Ds, Do, Delegate, Delete, and Delay, are a great way to organize your time. To save even more time, take a look at automating or systematizing everything you can, and let us know how we can support you.

Won’t it be nice to have time for more important things?

The Fine Art of the Upsell

Want Fries with Your Burger? The Fine Art of the Upsell

Restaurants do it beautifully. “Did you leave any room for dessert or coffee?”

At least one car rental company my client just visited did it obnoxiously. “Did you want insurance, gas, a GPS, or a toddler seat? Who will be responsible for the car if something happens to it? Oh by the way, it’s extra now for the steering wheel. And if you want it to go in reverse from 4PM to 5PM, that’s an extra charge, too.”

The All-Important Upsell

How does your company rate when it comes to the all-important upsell? Is it smooth like a restaurant waitress who smiles while she delivers her line? Or could it be improved?

While you don’t want to anger your current customer, you do want to fully serve their needs in a way that helps them and boosts your revenue. Here are five tips to perfect and track the all-important upsell.

1. Make sure you are upselling.

Once people have chosen to do business with you, you have their trust. They’ll want to know what else you have to offer. Sometimes we may feel like we’re bugging the client, but it’s really cheating your client not to let them know what else you can help them with.

Don’t be afraid to add upselling to your communications with your client in a number of places. If you don’t upsell, you’re leaving precious money on the table, and most of all, you’re under serving your clients. A small percentage of your customers will always purchase what you suggest.

2. Get the timing right.

Add an upsell option immediately after a prospect has landed in your funnel. For example, if they signed up for your free newsletter, offer them your entry product or service on the landing, on your Thank You page or in your first welcome email to them.

If your product or service is relatively small in dollars, add an upsell option immediately after any small purchases. Do this right after the shopping cart has processed their order. Some carts have an automatic feature built in to do this; all you have to do is select the product you think the buyer would like.

Don’t upsell right after you’ve agreed on a large proposal, but do upsell at the end of that engagement.

If you meet a client periodically, such as monthly or quarterly, always schedule the next appointment before you leave if possible.

3. Get the product right.

Gradually move your client up in price. If they purchase something for $100, offer them something for $500, but not for $5,000. If they buy a $5,000 contract, they might be ready for a $10,000 service next year.

4. Create the right language.

Never put your customer in a position where they feel forced to make a decision or feel wrong for not taking the service, like my client did with the rent car. (Try your upsell line on your spouse or friend before you try it on a prospect to be sure of this.) Use language that is benefit-focused when you explain the options, and always let them know that you appreciate their business and the decision is theirs to make.

5. Package your offerings right in the first place.

Services that should be included in the base price, well, should be included in your base price. Don’t confuse upselling with what should have been in your package in the first place. That’s how most customers feel cheated during upsells.

Tracking the Upsell

There are a couple of ways you can track your upsell results. If you offer every client who bought “x” the “y” product, you can compute a conversion ratio based on your sales of x and y, assuming you keep them in separate buckets in your accounting system. You can do that for every upsell you have at the service line or product line level.

Another more general way to track upsells is to compute revenue per client on a monthly basis and see if it’s on the upswing. If you need help calculating either of these methods or setting up your services and products correctly to create the upsell tracking you want, please let us know how we can help.

Upselling is a vital part of every business. Fine-tune your processes with these tips and watch your sales increase and your clients become better served and more loyal.

Is Your Business Out of Balance?

You wouldn’t be in business if it weren’t for your clients. Yet, sometimes we almost forget that we are ultimately in business to receive a salary and to make a profit. In large companies, a balance must be maintained between serving clients and serving the shareholders. In your small business, the shareholder is YOU, so the pull is between you and your clients.

The question is, are you winning? Are your clients winning? Or is there a balance? Here are some tips to see if your business is out of balance, and if it is, how to get back in balance.

1. Pay yourself first.

This might sound very basic, but it’s surprising how many small business owners will pay everyone else first and then have nothing left over for themselves.  A recent client of mine realized how much her employees and assistants were cutting into her business margins on one particular service line. She cut back on her assistants’ time and employee hours, stopped doing some tasks that weren’t generating a return, and had more profit left over for her own paycheck.

The solution is to remember to always pay yourself first, literally, by cutting your payroll check or taking a regular draw from your business before you pay anyone else.

2. Price your services carefully.

Be sure that not only your costs and overhead are covered when you price, but that also a fair profit margin is left over for all your time and trouble. Too many people are pricing for the short term in this economy. Price for the long term, and emphasize the value you bring to your clients.

One example is to ask yourself whether you’ve made an adjustment for the higher gasoline rates. If not, you’ve just given yourself a pay cut. You probably wouldn’t work as an employee for someone else who gives you a pay cut; why tolerate it in your own business?

3. Maintain excellent time boundaries with clients.

If you charge by the hour, be sure you charge what you are worth. It’s typical not to charge for learning curve time, and writing off some of that time is fair. However, if you are constantly writing off time that you work on a client’s account, something is wrong.

Whenever you write off time that truly deserves to be billed, you are cheating your family out of your hard-earned money, taking time away from them, and spending your money and time on a customer instead. You are also misleading the client, who will be expecting you to be cheap in the future. I think we do this because we love pleasing our clients, but I think everyone would agree that family is where all of our true priorities lie.

This includes answering emails and phone calls for free and not writing down that time, giving bonus products, and other freebies. It’s one thing to make a conscious decision to be competitive and consistent across all clients and another to be sloppy in our recordkeeping or to say yes when we really meant to say no but didn’t have the courage. If you need help with setting up better time tracking or billing systems, give your us a call.

4. Don’t try to do it all yourself.

There’s power in numbers. There are a couple of options when hiring a team to help you get everything done:

1. Delegate the tasks that you do that are worth the lowest hourly rate on the market. For example, what are you doing that someone earning minimum wage could learn to do? This will free up your time for more strategic tasks or billable time.
2. Hire someone that you can receive at least a 4 to 1 return on salary. Your employee then becomes a profit center for you that is billable.

In either case, you are maintaining the balance by freeing up time and/or generating additional revenue as you incur additional costs.

5. Get a life outside work.

Unfortunately, our society is perfectly designed to promote workaholism. With devices we can access 24 /7, some of us can’t resist peeking to see what emails and text messages have come in even though it’s off hours.

Leave work behind during the evenings and weekends (or take time off regularly). Everyone needs to re-charge with social events, hobbies, and interests outside of work. You’ll be refreshed, well-rounded, and more creatively able to do your best work when you are serving clients.

Do any of these five tips speak to you about getting your business back in balance? If so, take the step toward making some changes. When you do, you’ll start to feel more in control, less burned out, and back in balance.

Seven Summer Projects That Can Heat Up Your Business

Summer is a great time for new projects that revitalize our lives.  If your spouse or family is creative, you may have a lot of those summer projects that require your time and attention at your home this season.  But what about a summer project for your business?  It could be just the thing to spice up your business and help you rejuvenate your staff and your energy at work. 

Here are seven ideas to help you heat things up at work and reap the rewards that result:

1. Move from reactive to proactive. Work on fine-tuning one small area of your business where you’re constantly experiencing fires. How can you anticipate and prevent these fires?  It might be putting some procedures in place, training staff, getting help from a vendor, or perhaps even firing a client that is too demanding.  When you take the first step toward prevention, even if it's a baby one, you've made a tremendous amount of progress toward controlling the situation rather than if you just remained in reactive mode. 
2. Look at one part of your processes and make a small improvement. I’ve just recently implemented these new articles in my newsletter (let us know how you like them).  That's one example of a really small change that I made in my processes that will improve my service to my customers.
3. Systematize something that's worked in the past and repeat it. No need to reinvent the wheel if you've found the magic formula. Do the magic formula over and over again, perhaps more often, and you'll increase your results. For example, if you're good at working with people on the phone, then write down the process you’re using so that you’re discovering what you say that customers like.  Then do it intentionally 100% of the time as part of your newly systematized process. 
4. Listen to your clients and roll out a new service offering that they are asking for. A huge part of the battle for getting new clients is getting people to trust you. Why not leverage the people who already trust you - your current clients - and serve them in a new way. Increasing your revenue per client is a great way to help your clients even more and to boost you bottom line at the same time.
5. Hone your skill. We spend a lot of time working on our core competency - the service we deliver to clients - and getting better at it. Why not get better at an accounting skill? This could include understanding reports better, learning how to job cost or product cost so that you understand your margins better, learning how to review accounts, and a host of other skills that will help you become more effective at analyzing your business’s financial data. Sometimes we forget accounting is a skill we can learn just like we know our core business - especially those of us who are reluctant about numbers. 

6. Measure. How do you know something is working unless you measure it? Add procedures to measure the results that are important to you; then you can begin to see where you need improvements. These include numbers such as revenue, expenses, cash flow, and profits down to the unit you want to measure them. When you do this you'll naturally be able to improve your financial results in your business.
7. Celebrate. Stop for a second when you reach a goal and celebrate all the hard work you did that paid off and got you there. Give yourself a reward, practice gratitude for what you received, and then set your next goal.

Which one of these projects speaks to you the most? Mark your summer calendar right now to take one step toward working this project into your summer plans so you can heat up your business.

Carve out a unique space for your business

In the Niche of Time

You’ve probably heard advice about how it helps to carve out a niche for your business. But did you know it will also save you a tremendous amount of time? Here’s why.

When a small business first opens, the entrepreneur is thankful to take anyone who breathes and pays their bill. Once the business fills with customers, the owner can afford to get more particular. They can take a look at what type of clients they like to serve best, as well as the type of clients they best serve.

Through targeted marketing, small business owners can begin to attract the type of clients they prefer. That’s when defining your niche comes in handy. But it also saves time in your business.

“Same Old, Same Old” Equals Time Savings

When you serve a niche, you will see the same client challenges over and over again. You can create a systematic process that can be followed for your clients when your clients are more homogeneous.

As you become good at identifying the challenges of your niche clients, you can anticipate the needs of your clients much better and more accurately. There is less breadth to learn. You can take the time you save to learn about solutions for your homogeneous clients that are far deeper and far more effective.

Depth, not Breadth

As an example, a small business that serves hospitals, physician practices, and drug stores with their pharmaceutical products will have three learning curves instead of one. They’ll grow faster if they discover which client type is more profitable for them, let’s say, hospitals, and target more hospitals in the marketplace. If they can generate the same amount of revenue with 20 hospitals as they could the mix of three types of clients, their production and marketing costs will be much lower.

There are even more benefits to developing your niche. When you implement this deeper knowledge that you’ve learned from serving multiple clients that are alike, your client testimonials will be glowing. You will develop a reputation faster within the niche than you would in the general world. Your referrals will speed up.

Developing a niche not only saves you marketing and sales dollars, it also creates economies of scale within your staff. They have less to learn and will surpass their learning curves faster, which enables them to serve your clients sooner and better.

Have I piqued your interest about niches? Are you convinced there are riches in niches?

Riches in Niches

Let’s list some of the ways a niche can be defined.

• Industry: Your niche might be by industry, as in construction, health care, or technology. The more recession-proof your industry is, the better.
• Service/Product: A niche could be by service or product, as in tax planning, women’s shoes, or dog grooming.
• Geography: You can also narrow your offerings by geography.
• Customer Type: Another way to niche is by customer, such as hospitals, psychiatric practices, or retirement homes.
• Combination: You can mix and match for power niche-ing, as in nurses’ shoes, hotels that cater to traveling rock bands, or nonprofit teen programs.

Is Your Business Already Niched?

To get a hint of how your business might already be developing a niche, review your customer list and look for commonalities among your current client base. Look for type of customer, industry, geography, product/service, and even gender to see if you spot a trend. Group similar clients together to see how much revenue as a percentage of total sales each type is bringing in.

Once you identify that you have several of the same type of clients, you can benefit from productivity gains by standardizing the way those accounts are served.

Finding a niche allows you to work smarter, not harder, and keep more of what you make in your business.

Time is money. Let us do your bookkeeping!

Did you know that A Step Up does more than onsite bookkeeping? 

We also offer offsite and remote bookkeeping solutions.  We have a variety of methods available to us to help you with your bookkeeping tasks as much or as little as you like.  Stop spending your nights and weekends catching up with your business record-keeping, and have more time available for money-earning activities!   

For offsite bookkeeping there are 3 criteria we address to determine the best solution for you:

1)   How much of the bookkeeping do you want to do yourself?  Will you be running your own payroll, or perhaps entering invoices and deposits, but would like us to enter checks and debits and reconcile the bank statement?  Or is there another combination that makes sense to you, based on your available staff and time?

2)   How much access do you need to your QuickBooks data file?  Do you need daily up-to-date information at all times, a weekly backup to run whatever reports you like, or do you just need monthly reports to assess how your business is doing?

3)   What is your flow of paperwork and source documents?  Are most statements available online, or is there a significant amount of paper that needs to move back and forth?

We offer a variety of flexible solutions based on your needs to access your data and the flow of your office.  Which one is right for you?

1)    Remote Login to your computer.  We use logmein to directly access your computer and the QuickBooks data file that always resides at your site.  We can also set you up with your own free logmein account, so YOU can access your own computer when you are traveling.  In this scenario, you do some of the bookkeeping yourself, and we take over your computer when you are not using it to do the rest.  Your file is always up-to-the minute when you need it.

2)    QuickBooks Online or a Hosted (cloud) datafile.  Your QuickBooks data actually resides on a third-party server, and both you and A Step Up can access it whenever we need to.  The benefit of this is that you don’t need to dedicate a computer to QuickBooks, and we don’t need to coordinate a time to take over the resources at your office.  We can also both be in the file at the same time in some cases.  This is a great solution for a busy office and monthly access fees start at just $20 a month for QuickBooks online and $50 a month for a hosted solution.

3)    We keep your QuickBooks datafile on our server.  We have a secure environment and a multiple backup procedure.  You don’t even need to have a computer or purchase QuickBooks for this option!  We handle all of your bookkeeping and send you reports, typically once a month if we are only reconciling your bank accounts, and weekly if we are also handling invoicing and bill payment tasks.

Lastly, we set a plan of attack for the source documents we need to complete your bookkeeping.  These generally include: bank statements, credit card statements, check registers, and copies of invoices and bills.  We offer free pickup and delivery and can set a fixed schedule (typically the same day each week) to exchange a “folder” of what has accumulated during the week.  You can also scan and email us, or fax.  Online banking is also an option, and for several clients we download the bank statements directly when the bank completes them.

We have fixed monthly rates available, starting at just $125 per month for data entry of all checks, debits and deposits for two accounts (typically a checking account and a credit card).  This also includes reconciling and monthly reports. 

Your bookkeeping no longer needs to be a chore.  Let the QuickBooks experts at A Step Up Bookkeeping assist you with keeping your financial records up-to-date, timely and accurate.  Up-to-date records give you the valuable information you NEED to make informed financial decisions about your company’s growth.  We also keep an eye on cash flow and expense trends, to keep you on sound financial footing.  Call A Step Up at 679-2022 for a free consultation.

What are clients saying about A Step Up?

   " I am extremely pleased with the services, professionalism, and adaptability of  A Step Up.  Deb goes out of her way to satisfy her clients.  I highly recommend her services."

  "No complaints.  A 5-Star operation.  Debbie and her staff are prompt, friendly and professional."

  From A Step Up, thank you for your kind words.  Your feedback helps us to better serve you.

Join the Raymond Chamber and A Step Up Bookkeeping on May 10th

A Step Up Bookkeeping Services, LLC

285 Calef Highway, Suite 12A, Epping NH

Come help A Step Up Bookkeeping celebrate our first year anniversary in our new space. Easy to find on Route 125 in Epping!

We’ll have food, fun, and libations and door prizes to give away. Network with your colleagues and fellow business owners as you enjoy a pleasant evening of celebration.

A Step Up Bookkeeping has been providing bookkeeping and payroll services, as well as QuickBooks Training, to small businesses since 2005.  In May of 2010, we doubled our space by moving to a brand new office building right on Route 125 in Epping.  We help new businesses who have just purchased QuickBooks and need help setting it up and learning how to use it, established businesses that need to navigate the maze of adding employees, and small business owners who do it all and need to offload their bookkeeping tasks.  Our mission is to help small businesses improve their cash flow and increase their profitability. Owner Debbie Moulton is Advanced Certified in QuickBooks and is a member of the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers and the Exeter Area Chamber of Commerce, as well as the Greater Raymond Chamber.  For more information, visit our web site at www.StepUpBooks.com.

As always, bring plenty of business cards for networking.  Please RSVP to A Step Up Bookkeeping Services at 679-2022.

Open House & Business After Hours Event

Tuesday, May 10^th, 5:30-7:30pm

Employee or contractor? A taxing question for employers

Hiring workers as employees or independent contractors has a profound impact on how much additional cost your business must bear, what documents and information workers must provide to you, and what tax documents you must give to them. It also affects the amount of taxes you withhold from their pay.

With employees, the employer must pay Social Security, Medicare, state unemployment and federal unemployment taxes. Employers are also required to carry workers’ compensation insurance and sometimes liability insurance. They must file new hire reports and quarterly payroll forms. Employees also expect benefits such as health insurance, holiday pay, sick pay, and vacation pay.

Contractors incur none of these costs because they pay both halves of Social Security and Medicare taxes, buy their own liability policy and generally are not paid for the time they don’t work.

Since the benefits of using independent contractors are so significant, the IRS looks closely at this to prevent exploitation of workers who should really be considered employees.

A number of tests exist to determine whether workers qualify as general contractors:

1. They provide their own tools and supplies.
2. They work independently. They are told what result is desired, not the individual steps  necessary to do the job.
3. They do the same work for other firms.

If you have the right to control both what is to be done and how it is done, your workers are employees. If you can direct only the results, you are working with contractors. It is also important to know how workers perceive the relationship.

Although there are certainly benefits to both groups, it is important to adhere to IRS law about how they are classified.

Employers who misclassify workers as independent contractors can end up with substantial tax bills as well as penalties for failing to pay employment taxes and failing to file required tax forms.

Knowing the proper worker classification can be critical to your business, so don’t guess. Visit the IRS.gov website to be sure.

Financial Empowerment Seminars

A  Financially based 4 week Workshop Series

Facilitated by: John Butruccio founder True Choice Coaching

Please join us for a unique, interactive workshop and discover how the power of personal development can influence your financial state of mind. We will focus on the law of attraction, at a deep personal level, by tapping into your own personal power to create new habits that will inspire increased self awareness, create a higher level of self esteem and unwavering self confidence. Your personal and professional relationships will improve immensely and often immediately once you open yourself up to new possibilities that will influence your financial future. Once liberated from our life long self defeating thinking habits around money we can then move forward with a sense of abundance and well being.

Hosted and sponsored by:  Debbie Moulton

285 Calef Highway, Suite 12A Epping, NH 03042
Thursday evenings, April 7, 14, 21 and 28.  6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. 

Attendance fee is $120.00 per person. Refreshments will be provided.

Space is limited…Register soon.  John Butruccio @  C 978-265-7004

John Butruccio is a professional personal development life coach.

Bring plenty of Business Cards for networking and a note pad for taking notes.