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Accounting Made Easy With Small Business Credit Cards

Accounting Made Easy With Small Business Credit Cards . Jaded by a routine 9 to 5 job? Stifled by your thankless work? Have you bartered your dreams away for an emotionally unsatisfying life? If you have finally decided to wrench yourself free from your shackles, it is time to take stock financially and see how small business credit cards can actually help you in starting your and running your own business.

When you set out on this exciting new journey, you are likely to face a number of challenges, and with them, teething troubles. You can avoid such stress if you make good use of the various tools specially designed to assist entrepreneurs in their ventures. Small business credit cards are by far one of the most important accounting instruments made available to you.

Small Business Credit Cards are Valuable Accounting Tools

One of the major problems that small businesses face is detailed accounting of their monetary transactions. Finances of any business must be immaculate and readily presentable, and if you haven not done such accounting before, be prepared for a tough task.

Usually, a small business suffers from insufficient manpower. Business owners assume various roles and are often under tremendous pressure to perform efficiently in a frenetic race against time to meet deadlines. Thus, opportunity for human error creeps in. But when it comes to finances, even the minor errors can spell disaster for your new baby.

Small business credit cards offer an opportunity to ease this tension and minimize errors, tells matlab fonction . Whenever a transaction is done through a small business credit card, it is automatically reflected in a monthly statement. Your books can then be easily updated on time with the help of these all-inclusive statements showing specific details. A thorough account of all purchases can easily be maintained in this manner.

Managing Your Business with Small Business Credit Cards

Small business credit cards generally offer features such as online banking and round-the-clock technical assistance, tells Cabinet comptable Marseille . This is especially handy when it comes to bill payment, downloading data, viewing expense reports, redeeming points, and overall maintenance and monitoring of transactions.

Add-on Benefits of a Small Business Credit Card

Credit card companies have bettered the deal by offering additional benefits on small business credit cards. As a business owner, you cannot afford to ignore these benefits. For example, obtaining incrementally higher credit limits can provide you with additional liquidity when required and more opportunities to expand your business products and services.

A small business credit card can also have a cash back offer that entitles the cardholder to rebates on purchases made with collaborating businesses. The refund may be reflected on the customer’s account statement or just be provided by way of a periodic rebate check. Some cards also come with airline and travel reward incentives and you can even earn frequent flyer miles with your purchases that can also be redeemed for discounts and rewards.

Small business credit cards have revolutionized the way fledgling businesses approach finance. Card statements that are usually made available online can help remove tedious accounting paperwork. Small business credit cards empower even those with the most rudimentary knowledge of accounting, freeing them up to focus on growing their respective businesses.

Accounting Police: Do They Exist?

Accounting Police: Do They Exist ? Who created accounting principles? Who sets and revises accounting standards? What if you don’t follow all the rules, do you go to jail? Is there an accounting police force that investigates and arrests violators? It would seem that there must be some regulatory force to make sure that providers of financial statements conform to the rules. There is, up to a point, and here is how it works:

Mainly, it’s all voluntary and it works pretty well. First, double-entry accounting originated in Italy in the 1400’s, so its been around awhile. Accounting principles have evolved over the years just as have accounting standards. The reason why the system works is that the business community could not function if there was not commonality and consistency in financial statement reporting. It would be chaos, much like if there were no driving rules of the road.

Therefore, in the United States, a body of experts known as the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB pronounced Fasbee) was established in 1973, which superseded another board called the Accounting Principles Board (APB). The FASB members go through a lengthy process of analyzing and reviewing problems in the accounting field that are brought to them. After much thought, they will make a pronouncement as to what they think the new or revised way of approaching the treatment of an accounting issue should be.

They are a non-governmental organization that has private financing. A big supporter of FASB is the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Many Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) belong to this prestigious organization and are obligated to abide by its guidelines and principles of behavior. Other countries no doubt have similar organizations that require high levels of accounting professional conduct.

FASB established an accounting code called “Generally Accepted Accounting Principles” or (GAAP). The assumption is that if a business financial statement is prepared according to GAAP, then the user of that financial statement could rely on or trust the information more readily than if not prepared according to GAAP. Those businesses that deviate from GAAP, and many smaller businesses do, cannot say that their statements are prepared under GAAP; in fact, they should inform the reader that they are not. However, let the buyer beware.

One governmental body that has a policing function is the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), tells Cabinet Comptable Grenoble . It is primarily concerned with public companies because their job is to protect investors from unscrupulous acts. Recently, the SEC has gotten into the act of establishing accounting standards. It has its hands full today.

Since most businesses use their financial statements to prepare their required income tax returns, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may audit those tax returns and review the financial statements upon which the tax returns are based. Not following the rules can get you in trouble with this governmental body.

You can see that in many ways compliance to the principles and standards is a mixture of voluntary and regulatory behavior, says point fort point faible entretien . Currently, there is an effort underway to set international accounting standards due to the inexorable globalization process. This is a massive undertaking that will take years, but it is obviously necessary and inevitable.

Accounting Police: Do They Exist

In America There Are Two Tax Systems

In America, There Are Two Tax Systems. One of America’s most famous jurists, Justice Learned Hand made this statement over forty years ago. When used today, one would certainly have to include the little-understood world of Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA’s). The point is that we all need to keep ourselves informed about what IRA alternatives are available to us.

“In America there are two tax systems, one for the informed and one for the uninformed. Both systems are legal.”

One of America’s most famous jurists, Justice Learned Hand made this statement over forty years ago. When used today, one would certainly have to include the little-understood world of Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA’s). We all need to keep ourselves informed about what IRA alternatives are available to us. Being uniformed about these IRA alternatives certainly means we are not taking full advantage and secure better returns on our retirement dollars.

The vast majority of Americans have since their (IRA’s) introduction in 1974 allowed our IRAs and 401Ks to be directed by someone else. For example the friendly Broker and their Wall Street affiliates. This easygoing very passive approach “let someone else do the work for me” attitude may well have continued forever if Wall Street didn’t crash in 2000. With more than a trillion dollars lost in IRA and 401K equity alone, it challenged our view of Wall Street.

NASDAQ investments go up

Back in 1974 our IRAs and 401K’s could be used to purchase real estate related items like Tax Lien Certificates, Tax Deeds and Mortgage Notes. If we Americans had known or understood that, millions of us would today be retiring with vast sums of cash and assets inside of their IRAs and 401Ks.

NASDAQ reported on March 10, 2005 that it had risen to 59% of what it was five years earlier! This means $100,000.00 invested in NASDAQ listed companies in 1999 would be worth something like $59,000.00. That’s very sad, but it’s where most Americans are today. Magazine, newspaper and television advertising campaigns made millions of Americans believe that those Wall Street products were the only financial products you could buy. This is not the fact, and as outlined above, Wall Street has not preformed well over the last 30 years.

In America There Are Two Tax Systems

Real Estate on the other hand has out performed everything over the last 30 years by a very long way, tells Code Postal Strasbourg . IRAs and 401K’s in general have over ninety percent of their funds in financial products. This may well lead you to ask “Why?” Are those Wall Street financial products superior in any way to real estate investments?” No! Here are some quotes taken from two very respected publications:

“… since the major housing organizations began keeping records in the 1960s, there has never been a year in which the average existing U.S. residence lost value. Not a one. “FORTUNE Magazine, August 12, 2002

“It is striking that after the longest, strongest bull market in history, the average American built more wealth owning a home than investing in the stock market .”DENVER Post, March 14, 2002

After reading these quotes, it really is hard to understand why our IRAs and 401K’s are not 90% real estate versus 10% Wall Street products. Maybe it’s time for all of us to get a little more informed about those hard-earned dollars before it’s too late!

Have an opinion or a question you would like me to answer, then write to Cabinet Comptable Clermont-Ferrand.

Keywords : 401k, Clermont Ferrand, Expert Comptable, ira , Nasdaq , tax systems