Maximize Deductions: Smart Tax Strategies for Small Business Owners in 2024

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As we enter the new year, many small business owners find themselves navigating the ever-evolving landscape of tax regulations. If that sounds familiar to you, then you probably also already know that maximizing deductions is crucial for optimizing your financial health and ensuring that your business thrives. Here is a handy list of strategies for business owners this tax season:

1) Keep Impeccable Records
Maintaining accurate and organized financial records is crucial for maximizing deductions. Ensure that you keep all receipts, invoices, and documentation related to your business expenses. This not only simplifies the tax filing process, but also provides a clear trail of evidence in case of an audit.

2) Stay Informed on Tax Law Changes
Tax laws are constantly evolving, and staying up-to-date with new guidelines and regulations is key to making informed decisions. Keep abreast of any changes at the federal, state, and local levels that may impact your business, and engage with a qualified tax professional to ensure you are taking advantage of every available deduction and credit.

3) Leverage Section 179
The Section 179 deduction is a powerful tool for small businesses, allowing you to deduct the full cost of qualifying equipment and property in the year it was purchased. For 2023, the maximum deduction limit is $1.05 million. Keep this in mind for 2023 tax write offs, and for 2024 investments you can make while reducing your taxable income for 2024.

4) Take Advantage of Qualified Business Income Deductions
The Qualified Business Income (QBI) deduction is another valuable tax incentive for small business owners. Introduced in 2017 as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, this deduction allows eligible businesses to deduct up to 20 percent of their qualified business income. Ensure that you understand the criteria for eligibility and work closely with your tax advisor to optimize this deduction for your specific situation.

5) Optimize Employee Benefits
Providing competitive employee benefits not only attracts top talent, but can also offer meaningful tax advantages for your business. For example, in addition to helping your employees secure their own personal financial futures, contributions to retirement plans — like 401(k)s — can also be deducted from your business income. Additionally, consider health savings accounts (HSAs) and other fringe benefits that can be both beneficial for your team and tax-efficient for your business.

6) Explore Home Office Deductions
Today, many small business owners operate from home. If you use a dedicated space for your business activities, you may be eligible for a home office deduction. This deduction allows you to deduct a portion of your home-related expenses, such as mortgage interest, property taxes, utilities, and insurance, based on the percentage of your home used for business purposes.

7) Plan for Depreciation
Depreciation is an essential concept for small business owners with significant capital investments. Ensure that you understand the depreciation schedules for your assets and take advantage of the tax benefits associated with them. Planning for depreciation can help you spread the cost of your investments over time, reducing your taxable income in the process.

As a small business owner, strategic tax planning is essential for long-term success. By staying informed, leveraging available deductions, and optimizing your financial strategies, you can minimize your tax liability and keep more money in your business. Consult with a qualified tax professional to tailor these strategies to your unique circumstances and set your business on a path to financial prosperity in 2024 and beyond.

The Top Five Limitations of QuickBooks

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For many small and mid-sized businesses, Intuit QuickBooks is usually the first choice for financial software in the organization’s early days – and for good reasons. QuickBooks is well-known and very easy to use, and it offers the basic functionality that almost any business can use to get off the ground. Unfortunately, virtually every growing business also soon realizes that the early value of the software is soon overtaken by the limitations and compromises. Here are the five limitations that cause CFOs to look for an alternative.

 

1.Over-Reliance of Spreadsheets to Support Financial Processes and Reporting

“After spending over one week sifting through massive spreadsheets, we discovered that we have a calculation error in how we had been recognizing revenue for the past three years.” Sound familiar? Hopefully not – but many organizations naturally and gradually develop sophisticated accounting requirements (such as revenue recognition and multi-entity consolidation). And if QuickBooks is the financial foundation, that often means cumbersome workarounds because QuickBooks doesn’t provide the built-in capabilities for these complex processes. •Are you exporting data to multiple spreadsheets? •Are you creating additional journal entries each month? •Have you created home-grown applications for recording revenue or expenses outside of QuickBooks? These workarounds lead to entry errors, incorrect or outdated data, process inefficiencies, wasted time and resources, and a lack of control and compliance.

 

2.Excess Manual Data Entry and Re-Entry

“How do I import customer order data into QuickBooks? I currently spend many hours manually creating invoices in QuickBooks, and there should be a better way.” Most companies don’t integrate QuickBooks with other key business applications, opting instead to just manually integrate the systems (think: flat files, CSV dumps, and rekeying). That might suffice when volumes are small. But ask anyone who’s endured these workarounds and you’ll see it’s a real productivity killer as the business grows. Who has time to manually research, re-enter, and verify data that’s already captured elsewhere? Instead of automating your business, these manual integrations are invitations to errors and wasted time.

 

3.Limited Access to Reports and Information to Drive Decision-Making

“Rather than constantly struggling to keep up with incoming requests for data and specific reports, Sage Intacct lets us consistently report financials in a timely manner and feel confident that we can easily respond to any new request. Real-time visibility into business metrics is essential for timely decisions that boost performance. QuickBooks offers canned reports – and no dashboards –so your visibility is limited and you’re often forced to make decisions based on outdated data. By leveraging a financial system that incorporates both a multi-dimensional general ledger and report writer, you can transform your analysis and become a strategic partner who generates insights that answer the bigger questions facing management.

 

4.Difficulty in Adapting to New Business Requirements

“QuickBooks continues to crash, and I lose all our payroll data. I don’t have time to re-enter data for 350 hourly employees…” Maybe you’ve seen a couple of the classic signs that you’ve outgrown QuickBooks. Those menus and screens – that used to be so quick and responsive – now have lengthy delays as the system struggles to keep up with data volume and calculations intensity. Report-printing takes forever. And queries seem to dim the lights. This critical limitation is risky at best. It can force you to periodically shut down QuickBooks – just to maintain data files. In a worst-case scenario, you’re looking at potentially disastrous results: system crashes and the loss of crucial data. That’s no way to run a business.

 

5.Inadequate Controls Around Financial Processes

“Errors caused by manual processes and a lack of control resulted in $180,000 of improper expense reimbursements within a six-month period.”

 

Manual process are a fact of life with QuickBooks. Unfortunately, they increase the probability of data duplication and data entry errors, making it difficult to gain an integrated, real-time financial view of a company’s end-to-end operations. Despite its popularity as a business applications for small business, QuickBooks simply wasn’t designed for growing organizations that need advanced functionality for manage sophisticated processes. The Next Wave of Financial Management Technology We’ve helped many businesses make the move from QuickBooks to Sage Intacct. The companies now enjoy real-time data and processes, flexible reporting, and role-based dashboards. We’ve helped organizations increase productivity through accounting automation, extensive integration and user-defined workflows. And, these companies can scale with Sage Intacct – as the business grows they can increase transaction volume and easily add new entities. Give us a call or shoot us an email if you’d like to explore Sage Intacct as your future financial accounting solution.

 

If you’d like to see the software – join us for a quick daily demo.

 

 

November’s Sage Intacct Video Release

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Take a look at how Sage’s Intelligent Time works seamlessly with Sage Intacct’s software. The newest in AI-powered automation for timekeeping is built into Sage Intacct’s financials with an easy to use app for end-users. This allows a business to better predict project costs, and increase their cash flow. Find out more in the video below.

 

purchase order

October’s Sage Intacct Video Release

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Take a look at how Sage Intacct’s purchase order software and how it can help cut your invoice to payment time by 50% and eliminate hours of tedious manual work. Find out what results other companies have seen by implementing Sage Intacct’s core package. The purchase order software works simultaneously with AR, AP, inventory, and cash management to reduce manual work.

 

Fill Out Our Form Below To Have Our Team Contact You Today


SaaS

FREE WEB SERIES: SaaS Success in 2020

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Accelerating past your competition in an economic downturn can seem overwhelming or impossible particularly for software as a service, SaaS, companies. If you are one of these businesses please be our guest for the SaaS Success Series  Join us online for a complimentary 4-week series for finance leaders focused on how we can lead our organizations out of crisis and re-ignite growth.

SaaS experts and SaaS finance leaders throughout the country will be joining on the following Thursdays for this online event:

June 18 – Accelerate Through the Curve – 3 Key Strategies for Growth in a Downturn

The best companies know that the right place to pass competitors is in the sharp curve of a crisis or economic shock; while “followers” only react once they’re in the straightaway of the recovery.

Zach Blaine, Controller at Expel, Ben Murray, CFO of Cartegraph and The SaaS CFO, and Andre Lafayette, VP of Budgeting and Planning at Sage Intacct, will share three key strategies that successful companies implement, but laggards fail to:

  • Encourage selective investments (offense) in addition to cash management (defense)
  • Leverage tools that can automate billing and revenues
  • Elevate your forecasting and planning, above your competitors

June 25 – Discover the Next Level in Spend Management – Greater Controls, Visibility, and Team Engagement

Do you hate being the bad guy who communicates budget cuts? And when the business team doesn’t understand the justifications or implications, employee morale can take a hit.

Matt Wolf, VP of Finance at Roadster, a leading AI firm, and Thejo Kote, CEO of Airbase, a company that provides next generation business-spend management solutions, will share how you can:

  • Give every employee a view into the impacts their expenditures have on company performance
  • Improve the business processes that link specific customers or cohorts to the cost of closing them
  • Provide faster feedback on the results generated by your company’s business decisions

 

July 16 – The Road to Recovery: Month-End Close Best Practices and Tips

Finance and accounting teams have had to quickly react, changing processes and procedures due to the pandemic. Nowhere has it felt more acute than during the month-end close.

Kevin Neary, Controller at Wistia, Mike Whitmire, Co-founder and CEO of FloQast, and David Appel, Head of Subscription and SaaS at Sage Intacct, will share best practices to manage the month-end close, post COVID-19, and use Sage Intacct and close-management software. You’ll learn how to:

  • Streamline processes and reconciliations to close faster and more accurately
  • Collaborate better with virtual teams
  • Identify ongoing improvements with actionable analytics

 

July 23 – Cash is King:  Maximize Cash Flow Perfomance with Artificial Intelligence

Cash management is critical in this downturn. Investors want a 12 to 18-month runway before you raise again. Uncertainty and rapid changes put a strain on your finance teams. How can you leverage automation and avoid hitting a cash crunch?

Carlos Vega, Tesorio’s CEO, and peer finance leaders will share how AI can maximize cashflow performance. Learn how to manage your cashflow during today’s business volatility by:

  • Automating and cleaning up A/R collections
  • Using data-informed smart timing of A/P
  • Automating a cash view of your P&L that you can share with the business leaders

Register here 

 

Can’t attend on a particular date?  Register anyway and gain access to the recording to watch on-demand.  We hope to see you there!

Modern Technology = Game Changing Results

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In today’s society businesses have to be able to quickly pivot and respond to changes in their business environment. In order for this to happen every team member must be equipped with transformative technology solutions that are flexible and adaptable to their changing environment.

Does your current ERP solution give your finance staff the flexibility it needs to respond as quickly as your business changes? Specifically, what types of technology should you be taking advantage of?

Your ERP system should take advantage of the latest in cloud-based, mobile, and artificial intelligence technologies. Both of these technologies give your staff, and your company, availability to access process, and report on data seamlessly on any device. This enables your staff to work from anywhere and to keep critical processes and information flowing. AI is rapidly making its way into accounting processes and with it you can eliminate hours of manual work that is required when using outdated technology.

So how do you take advantage of these technologies and reduce your accounting workload by up to 90%?

 

In this live one-hour webinar, you’ll learn about the benefits of a modern financial management system and its game-changing impact on your company―starting with the foundation of your financials―your chart of accounts.

During this webinar, you’ll learn how you can:

  • Manage financials efficiently across entities, expenses, and cash flows
  • Increase visibility across multiple charts of accounts
  • Consolidate hundreds of entities in real-time

Can’t attend on the 14th? Go ahead and register anyway. We’ll send you a link to the recording. Register here.

CFO

How Your CFO is Leading the Charge in Change

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As the digital age continues to shift how companies operate, the responsibilities of the CFO are extremely vital to the pulse of the company. The amount of data that the CFO is responsible for producing and interrupting in real-time is vast and makes the difference between growth and being stagnetic.

 

CFO’s are not only in charge of making sure that the books are correct for tax purposes but providing clear data on where the business current financials are in real-time. CFOs are able to provide better insight into inventory, location by location profit and loss statements, vendor costs, employee costs, and more because of the technology they are implementing not only in the finance department but across the company. CFO’s are making the room in the annual budget to upgrade every department from HR to sales to accounting to cloud-based solutions that offer open APIs. This allows for information to seamlessly travel between systems automatically. This is eliminating human error and giving CFOs better insight into exactly what is the cause of each result. This alone is saving companies up to 75% of the time it currently takes to check the accuracy of their reports. The upgraded technology also allows CFOs to have custom dashboards with instant real-time results such as totaled up expenses, revenue, net income, and more.

 

What does better insight lead to? Better performance. Better performance leads to growth.

 

What CFOs are creating through technology upgrades, and better insight into their business is moving them into a strategic role instead of just the “numbers position”. With all of the data that is being created at a much faster rate than before the CFO role is now including interrupting the data at a higher level. This includes a recommendation on vendors, quick reactions to locations or lines of business underperforming, and more. The CFO is now flexing different muscles because they are creating the recommendations and bring them to the executive team vs. just the reports. This also gives them immediate insight into where money should be spent for expansion.

 

The CFO role is ever-changing due to their ability to drill down into the business faster giving them the ultimate insight into what is working. This role is becoming as equally as important as the CEO in order for a business to be successful.

 

 

 

 

 



ERP Solution Overview

Sage Intacct Overview Video

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February’s Score a Win video is now available. This month we focus on walking through Sage Intacct to give you a full overview of what the software looks like for an end-user.

 


Create Growth for Your Hospitality Company in 2020

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Creating growth for any company is the number one goal. However, overall profit growth can be hard to create since total growth creates extra work and costs to your bottom line. We have put together our top three recommendations on how to downsize those costs.

Elimination of Your Automation Gap

Elevate Your Customer Experience

Streamline Your Team

Fill out the form below to gain access to our web series. We will be releasing one video each week for the next three weeks. Week one will focus on eliminating your automation gap.


close month faster

Close Faster Every Month

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Getting real-time data to make fast efficient decisions is a top priority for executives. In order to get your data faster each month your month-end closing process has to speed up and provide you with the financial insights you need. Below are our tips to help make month-end close more efficient and allow your executive team to make faster, better decisions.

 

Technology

The starting point for executing a faster close is to have a cloud-based accounting ERP solution that automatically completes tasks as well as executes manual tasks with a few clicks of the button – all in real-time.

A second way to incorporate technology is to have all your vendors send your invoices electronically allowing them to automatically push into your ERP. This cuts out manual entry, reduces errors, and ensures timely results.

Lastly, implementing integrations with your HR, Sales, Inventory, and other software solutions will allow for seamless transfers of data in your ERP and ensure a faster more accurate close. This eliminates having to constantly reach out for data that could take days to get or executing manual exporting and importing processes.

 

Communication

 

Being able to quickly communicate between your executive team and accounting department is key to achieving an accurate and quick month close. Utilizing an ERP system that integrates and documents your communications about invoices, transactions, or edits to the books will make your accounting department more efficient and take your organization to the next level. This allows for information and analysis to seamlessly flow from your accounting group to your management team.

 

Change your Mindset

 

The month-end shouldn’t just be the accounting department’s responsibility. This means that the entire company should be responsible for submitting all expense reports, customer orders, and any documentation that affects the company’s month-end results promptly. Instead of having your organization submit paperwork at the end of the month build processes around seamless paperless solutions that allow for a quick approval and posting throughout the month.

By getting all the information needed prior to the start of the month-end it will allow your finance department to quickly pull together month-end without waiting on timewasting processes.

 

Standardize your Documentation

 

Having documentation that is filled out the exact same every week, month, or year ensures your finance team can easily find the information they need to execute expense reports, customer changes, and more.  This action alone can save hours for your team. It also helps out the whole organization as there is clear expectations of what information they need to provide vs. guessing at what is important.

Find out how rinehimerbaker can help your company get results through the cloud by reaching out to accounting@rinehimerbaker.com.