How to Find A Good Accountant

The services of a good accountant can be invaluable to your small business. He or she will help you navigate the maze of tax laws and provide the financial advice you need to manage and grow your business.

While we tend to associate accountants with taxes, keeping you abreast of tax changes and doing your taxes are not the only services a good accountant provides.

Whether you're wondering whether or not to incorporate your business or trying to decide if you should buy or lease a company vehicle, a good accountant will be able to tell you how such a move would affect your taxes and/or your business's growth. If you don't have an accountant working for your business, you need one! But how do you go about finding a good accountant?

1) Ask other business people about their accountants.

Find out who they use and how satisfied they are with the services their accountant provides. If you don't or can't get any worthy referrals using this method, use the phone book and choose several accounting firms. When you call, tell the receptionist what you do and ask for the name(s) of accountants familiar with your type of business. Use this information to create a shortlist of prospective accountants.

2) Call the four or five accountants you've selected and ask to discuss their services.

Ask him or her about his education (such as whether he's a CA or CGA), about his experience with your industry, and about his fees. Use this first contact information to choose two or three accountants to interview.

3) Prepare a short list of questions you want to ask prospective accountants.

It's important that you choose an accountant that is familiar with the special requirements of your business and/or your tax situation, so you can use these to vet potential accountants. For example:

• If your business is Internet related, you'll want to find out if the accountant is familiar with the language of e-commerce.

• If your business involves periods of work in the U.S., you need an accountant that's knowledgeable about the IRS and has experience completing U.S. tax forms.

• If you're thinking about exporting, ask how the accountant might help you develop an export strategy.

I always ask a question about their phone call and/or email policy. It's important that your accountant is easy to contact when you have a question. How accessible is he or she and how do they bill phone call or email advice?

4) Meet with the prospective accountant(s) you've chosen, and ask your questions.

There's nothing like a face-to-face meeting for gauging how well you might work with another person. Besides assessing the accountant's knowledge, see how comfortable you are with him or her and how well the two of you communicate with each other. When you choose an accountant for your business, you're going to be establishing a long term relationship, so feeling comfortable with him or her is important.

After all, an accountant isn't just a tax preparer; he or she can help you build a blueprint for the future of your business.

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Basic Email Management

Checking email, reading email and answering email can take up hours of time if you let it. But only if you let it.

Is your email killing your productivity? Then it's time for some basic email management. Here are four simple email management rules to help you keep control of your inbox:

1) Let your email program manage your email as much as possible.
Email management starts with setting up and using filters. If you're using an email program such as Outlook, you can configure email rules to send your spam directly to the trash - meaning that you don't waste your time reading and deleting it.

2) Do not check your email on demand.
You don't need to see every piece of email the second it arrives. If you're using an email program that announces the arrival of new email, turn off the program's announcement features, such as making a sound or having a pop-up screen announce the arrival of email. Checking email on demand can seriously interfere with whatever other tasks you're trying to accomplish because most people will read email when they check it.

3) Don't read and answer your email all day long.
You may get anywhere from a handful to hundreds of emails each day that need to be answered, but they don't need to be answered immediately, interrupting whatever else you're doing. Instead, set aside a particular time each day to review and answer your email. Schedule the hour or whatever time it takes you to answer the volume of email you get, and stick to that schedule as regularly as possible.

4) Don't answer your email at your most productive time of day.
For me, (and for many others, I suspect), my most productive work time is the morning. If I start my work day by answering my email, I lose the time that I'm at my most creative. If I'm writing a piece, for instance, it takes me twice as long to compose it in the afternoon or evening than it would in the morning, when I feel fresh and alert.

Answering email, on the other hand, isn't usually a task that calls for a great deal of creativity. So by ignoring my email until the late afternoon, and answering it then, I get the dual benefit of saving my most productive time for other more demanding tasks, and not continually interrupting whatever other tasks I'm trying to accomplish.

What time of day is your most productive? Scheduling less demanding tasks such as checking, reading and answering email outside of your "best" working time will help you make the most of your working day - and that's good email management.

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Decrease Your Income Tax Bite With Income Splitting

Is your business going to make too much money this year? Then now's the time you should be planning ahead to lessen your income tax bite by splitting your business income within your family.

The basic theory behind income splitting is simple. You will pay less tax if you make less money because of the sliding tax rates. Income splitting is the transfer of income from a person in a higher income tax bracket to a person in a lower income tax bracket. As a business, you can decrease your actual income by hiring your spouse and/or children as employees, and passing along some of your business income to them in the form of salary or wages.

Suppose, for instance, your business' net income is $75,000. But your spouse has been working in the business all that year, and you paid him a salary of $30,000. Your net income drops to $45,000, a considerable tax savings for you. And, because your spouse's income of $30,000 is taxed at an even lower income tax rate, you get, in effect, a double tax savings.

And income tax savings are not the only benefits to this tax strategy. Because your spouse now has an income, he or she will be contributing to the CPP and able to contribute to an RRSP, helping you both build a more comfortable retirement.

So what are the catches to income splitting? First, your spouse has to actually work for the business. That means he or she has to have designated duties that he or she carries out, just like any other employee. And as the employer, you have to keep and maintain the requisite employee records. Just saying that your spouse worked for you last year and picking a number you like out of the air is not enough.

Secondly, as the employer, you have to pay your spouse a salary or wage commensurate with the salary or wage you would pay anyone else to do the same job. You can't pay him or her $70,000 to do basic office tasks, such as filing and answering the phones, for example. If your spouse is working for you as an office assistant, you need to pay him or her a rate equal to what other office assistants make.

Keeping employee records and paying your spouse an appropriate wage or salary is a small price to pay, however, for such powerful income tax benefits. If your spouse or child isn't already an employee of yours, maybe it's time to think seriously about what he or she could do for your business.

You can find out more about how to put the power of income splitting to work for you by talking to your accountant.

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Base Your Advertising On The Benefits

If you're the only product/service provider in a consumer's time of need, you may get a sale based on that even if you haven't established firm trust.

How can you set this up this kind of advertising? It depends on your business. But I'll give some examples of advertising based on benefits.

An appliance dealer can give/send magnetic advertising specialties for people to put on their appliances. To supplement this, the dealer can establish a program of getting information about the specifications people will want/need in a replacement appliance, such as measurements, capacity, gas/electric, color, etc. Then when an appliance breaks down, the customer can call for a price quote without having to supply the necessary information. (During a stressful time, people aren't apt to want to hassle with this information; they just want a solution NOW!)

I still have a business card for a lock-out service in my wallet. I got it at a gas station. I never met the owner of the service but if my keys are locked in my car on a cold winter day, it doesn't matter that I haven't met him, I'll call him.

We know that people tend to hate advertising.

The whole truth is that people hate advertising that intrudes on them without giving them a benefit.

Entertainment is a benefit; it may not induce anybody to buy the advertised product but it may get them to pay attention to the ad. Since people are more cure oriented than prevention oriented, it's necessary to fully describe the undesirable effect.

This is something an appliance dealer can use but can be adapted for other businesses. "Did this ever happen to you or to somebody you know? The freezer breaks down and all of the food in it (possibly $200 worth) is going to spoil if it isn't put into a new freezer SOON! Now besides all of the other things you have to do, you have to buy a freezer NOW! Pre-shopping for a freezer will limit the hassle you go through at a stressful time like this. We can deliver the new freezer right away and take away the old one."

Then it's just a matter of introducing what I wrote above. Just think, "Why or when would a consumer want my marketing message?" Then base the marketing message on the answer.

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Get The Best Business Cards

Every business person needs to have business cards. They're a fast and convenient way to give a prospective client or customer your contact information and basic marketing message.

It's important to get the best quality business card that you can afford. Pay attention to the quality of the paper and the printing as well as the design. People are impressed by these things, and will judge you and how well or poorly you might treat them by the quality of the business card you hand out.

Your business card represents you. Don't spoil the good impression you've made in person by handing someone a home-made card printed on your home printer (unless you have the kind of expensive printer that can produce the same quality business cards as the local print shop).

Otherwise, you should always have your business cards professionally printed. You don't want to give prospective clients or customers the idea that your products and/or services are second rate.

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Define Your Customer Before Marketing

Don't make the mistake of marketing your product or service before you've defined your customer or client. If you do, you're just throwing your marketing money away.

Marketing isn't just a matter of placing ads. It's a method of attracting new business. Before you can hope to achieve this, you have to know exactly who you want to target with your marketing. You need to know your target market before you can reach them.

What's the point, for instance, in buying an advertising spot on TV if you're trying to sell whitewater rafting adventures? Are these sorts of people really going to be sitting in front of the tube?

Define your customer by getting to know everything you possibly can about him or her. Think carefully about your product or service. Exactly who would want to purchase it? How old is this person? What is her marital status? Where does she live? How does she like to spend her spare time? What are her hobbies? What other products does she buy? Where does she go on vacation?

You need to develop your target market as specifically as possible if you're going to market your product or service effectively. So think of your "ideal" client or customer as a person. Visualize him or her in detail. "See" what he or she does, thinks, and wants.

If you can't visualize this person clearly and distinctly, then you need to research your potential customer or client until you can. Because until you can define your target market, you won't be able to make the decisions that need to be made about marketing, such as how, where, and when to advertise.

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Customized Marketing

During my years as a marketing and service consultant, I learned that you have to give before you receive and that's what customized marketing is all about.

This is a simple rule and you might say, "Why, we are business persons! We are pragmatic and go straight to the point! We mail our price list or our delivery schedule to prospective customers or clients."

But that's not enough. Instead of just giving the customer the same thing that every other customer is given, why not write a small report describing what you can do for the other company and how you will do it?

Customized marketing does not mean giving away all your secrets, contacts or giving the solutions for free. It means giving your prospective customers the information they need to do business with you, and will only give you an edge over your competitors. This kind of directed, specific marketing might take a few hours of your time but you will certainly win or keep a new customer.

Remember the following:

1. 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers;

2. Finding a new customer is harder than keeping the ones you have.

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