To define who your targeted customer is – think about who would normally want or need the products or services you are selling. You may find you have multiple markets and may need to just focus on one or two for now. In the small business classes I teach, I usually tell new businesses to focus on the market they can grow the fastest. The more specific you can profile who the customer is you want to do business with, the more cost effective your marketing efforts can be – because now you can direct your marketing efforts to specific people or businesses and not to the “world.”

So how do you define your market? You need to understand:
• Who they are – the demographics of your market (age, income, gender, education, occupation for individuals; industry, sales volume, number of employees, etc. for businesses)
• Where they are – the geographics of your market (where they live, work, and shop – especially important if clients have to come to you to do business; for other businesses this could be their location, number of sites, where they do business)
• What they care about – the psychographics of your market (buying styles, how they live, likes and dislikes, hobbies, interests, and beliefs for individuals; business culture, how they do business for businesses)
• What transitional changes are happening to them – the synchrographics of your market (changes that may prompt them to buy – marriage, divorce, graduation, etc. for individuals; for other businesses this could mean where they are in their growth cycle)

Once you know who your target market is, you can determine what their wants and needs are. To do this, you can ask them directly or facilitate a focus group (or two or three) of selected customers or potential customer and pick their brain!

For an established business, I think it is important to look at your existing client base and make sure these are the people or businesses you want to do business with. In other words, are you attracting the clients you want with your marketing activities? Profile your existing clients and see if the profile matches the one you did above for the clients you want to have. If you are not attracting the customer you want, it is probably for one of two reasons: you are not reaching the customer you want with your marketing efforts and/or your products or services are not wanted or needed by the market you want to do business with.

1. Go to the lists menu and click “Item List” or go to the Home Screen and click “Items & Services”
2. Click Item at the bottom of the list and then click New.
3. Select the type of item that you want to create:
• Service:    Services you charge for or purchase. Examples include specialized labor, consulting hours, and professional fees.
• Non-inventory part: Goods you buy or sell but don’t track (such as office supplies) or materials you buy for a specific job that you charge back to your customer.
• Other charge: Miscellaneous labor, material, or part charges such as delivery charges, setup fees, and service charges, bounced checks, late fees, opening balance, reimbursable expenses, retainers, surcharges, gift certificates, prepayments, retainers, sales tax, and shipping and handling fees.
4. Click on the box labeled “This service performed by a subcontractor, owner, or partner”
• When you set up Other Charge items for reimbursable expenses, select the “This is a reimbursable charge” checkbox.
• By selecting this checkbox, you can enter what you paid for the item as well as what you sell it for. The set up screen (below) has a place to enter the expense account you want to charge when using this item when entering a bill or writing a check (left side) and the income account you want to post sales to when using the item on an invoice or sales receipt (right side). Selecting this checkbox also ensures that your job cost report compares actual costs versus actual revenue or estimated costs versus estimated revenue for each job phase.

5. Click “OK” to save the item

To use this item in a bill (be sure to enter the Customer:Job name for job costing):

To use this item in an invoice:

The Job Profitability Report generated with this item would look like this – see the line item “Design” below:

Note: When an expense is used instead of an item, the costs will appear as “no Item” – see above.

A suspected phishing email on the Employer Identification Number (EIN), claiming to come from the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility, is currently circulating. The IRS does not send taxpayers unsolicited emails about their tax accounts, tax situations or personal tax issues. If you receive such an email, most likely it’s a scam.

IRS impersonation schemes flourish during filing season. These schemes may take place via phone, fax, Internet sites, social networking sites and particularly email.

Many impersonations are identity theft scams that try to trick victims into revealing personal and financial information that can be used to access their financial accounts. Some email scams contain attachments or links that, when clicked, download malicous code (virus) that infects your computer or direct you to a bogus form or site posing as a genuine IRS form or web site.

Some impersonations may be commercial Internet sites that consumers unknowingly visit, thinking they’re accessing the genuine IRS website, www.IRS.gov. However, such sites have no connection to the IRS.

For more information on scams and what to do if you’re subject to one, see:

• Problem Alerts
• Online Scams that Impersonate the IRS
• Suspicious e-Mails and Identity Theft
• How to Report and Identify Phishing, E-mail Scams and Bogus IRS Web Sites

For information about what expenses are a tax deduction, click here.
Consult with your CPA or tax consultant for more information and congratulations on a good year!

There are several versions of QuickBooks that you may want to consider:

• QuickBooks Pro – With this version you can print checks, pay bills and track expenses; track sales, sales taxes and customer payments; create and e-mail estimates; track time and expenses to bill customers, track inventory and create purchase orders, manage payroll and payroll taxes (with additional download) and offer direct deposit
• QuickBooks Premier – Everything that QuickBooks Pro offers plus track your balance sheet by class, create a business plan and purchase industry specific versions (contractor, manufacturing & wholesale, non-profit, professional services, and retail).
• QuickBooks Enterprise – Everything that QuickBooks Premier offers plus consolidate reports from multiple company files; manage inventory using serial number or lot tracking, FIFO costing, and multiple location inventory and more!

There is also an online version and a version for the Mac. These two versions are not as feature rich as the three versions listed above but can be helpful in certain situations.

For more information and to get a discount on the purchase of QuickBooks, click here or call us at 919.844.6111.

1. Reduce software unless it makes you more efficient
Cut back on software that you don’t need or use. Stop auto-renewals.

2. Go paperless
Don’t print documents unless you absolutely need a hard copy.  You’ll save on ink and paper the less you print.  Begin scanning and e-mailing documents instead.

3. Downsize business location
Work from home, if possible.  Have employees telecommute.

4. Cancel your land line
Use cell phone instead.

5. Reduce business credit card debt
Pay off your credit card each month to avoid paying interest or at the very least, pay down the balance of the credit cards with the highest rates.

6. Buy used equipment and furniture
Check out Craig’s List or other places that you can find used equipment and office furniture. You can save a lot of money if you buy used equipment and furniture in good condition.

7. Use online business marketing
Utilize free social media to market your business such as FaceBook, LinkedIn, Google +1, and Merchant Circle.

8. Use technology to make a job easier, faster, more efficient
Some examples are teleconference services such as Accuconference, AT& T Conference, Skype, and Free Conference.  Setup online payment services.  Use energy efficient appliances and lightbulbs.

After 18 years of pretty much playing it by the seat of our pants, we recently did a brand analysis of our company. We hired a branding and marketing firm called Big Buzz Brands to help us rethink how to best serve our clients and potential clients. They interviewed several clients, employees and others who were familiar with our offerings in order to best understand common needs, perceptions, suggestions, etc.

They also looked at our competitors to see how we compared in services offered, marketing message, and expertise. They did a visual audit of all of our current marketing materials. Finally, they completed a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) to better define our marketing message. As a result, we defined our brand essence (the succinct idea that most often comes to mind when people think of our organization and should serve as the foundation for every interaction with the brand) and our positioning statement (what you do at what value to whom).

Now that we better understood our company, our clients and our competitors, the final step was to redo our logo, tagline, and website. Along the way, we also decided to rename our company to better define who and what we are.

Here are the results:

What we were …                                                                   What we are now …
Name:         The Roper Group, Inc.                                                            Roper Bookkeeping
Tagline:      The QuickBooks & Bookkeeping Experts                            Right by your side. Right on the money.

Check out our new website and logo at www.RoperBookkeeping.com and let us know what you think. Like us on FaceBook  and sign up for our newsletter.

For more info about Big Buzz Brands, go to: www.BigBuzzBrands.com

1. Go to File, click on “Create Backup”

2. Click on “Local Backup”

3. Click on “Options” and select the folder where you want to store your backup copies. This can be on a network drive or on portable storage media such as a USB flash drive or Zip drive.

Note: You cannot schedule a backup to a CD-ROM.

4. Optionally, click the checkbox to limit the number of backups to keep and enter a number in the field provided.

5. Make sure “Complete Verification” is clicked on, then click “OK” then “Next”

6. Click on ” Only schedule future backups” then “Next”

7. Click on ” Save backup copy automatically when I close my company every X times (insert a number – recommend every 1 times)”

8. Click Finish to close the wizard.

Note: Scheduled backups will automatically include the date and time the backup was created in the file name. The date and time stamps are necessary for QuickBooks to manage the number of scheduled backups to retain on the system.

• We have only one supplier of key products/supplies:  If you only have one major supplier, you may be missing out on discounts and the opportunity to get competitive pricing.
• We don’t have a credit policy (or don’t follow it): Define your credit policy for customers who do not pay up front. What will you do when customers do not pay within the terms you have offered?
• We operate on gut feel without analyzing the numbers: Looking at your financial statements on a regular basis to identify trends. This will help you determine when to change your pricing, reduce unnecessary costs and more before it becomes critical. 

1. Know your customers and their ability to pay (check credit references)
2. Invoice immediately and properly (don’t wait until the end of the month to send invoices and make sure each invoice shows very clear payment terms; consider requiring all or part of the payment up front or COD)
3. Make payments easy for your customer (offer credit cards and discounts/incentives for early payment)
4. Work your past due accounts (call, not e-mail customers who are past due and keep a log of promises; stop providing products or services to customers in a delinquent status)

1. Have a good bookkeeping / accounting system that tracks your expenses and other cash disbursements
2. Take advantage of trade discounts from your vendor
3. Be proactive in talking to your vendors to set up better payment terms
4. Don’t buy until you really need what you are purchasing (just in time concept)
5. Examine your payroll (are you paying a lot in overtime that could be reduced by hiring a part-time employee; be careful about changing employees to subcontractors unless they meet the IRS definition of a contractor)
6. Examine your inventory controls (does your physical inventory equal what you have on your books; are you using the FIFO – first in/first out -  method for inventory that has a shelf life; do you monitor employees who have access to inventory)
7. Consider leasing (while overall it may be more expensive, it may allow you to purchase necessary assets and still be able to make the payments)
8. Examine your customer service strategies (it’s cheaper to keep customers than to constantly be looking for new customers)
9. Examine your marketing strategies (are you reaching your targeted client or are you reaching clients who really can’t afford to pay for your offerings?)
10. Barter (use customer furnished products or services in exchange for your products or services)
11. Avoid unnecessary improvements (may sound like a no-brainer but it happens all the time!)

Most importantly, plan ahead. Prepare your cash flow projections each year by month. When your cash projections show that cash will be short, plan ahead to make changes to free up cash or to get a loan or line of credit. Don’t wait until you are out of cash to change how you manage your cash! 

Invoice multiple customers at once with Batch Invoicing: Automatically create a full set of invoices for customers with the same service. Just create the invoice once and select the customers

Quickly locate any account, report, or invoice with QuickBooks Search: Your QuickBooks file is the repository of record for your business, but finding the exact information you need is not always easy. With QuickBooks Search, all you need to do is enter the keyword, and it will pull up all the related reports, invoices, contacts and transaction details.

Stay on top of your receivables with the Collections Center: Quickly identify overdue and almost due invoices, and email all collection notices from your Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail1account in a few steps.

Complete transactions faster with convenient access to your customer or vendor’s balance and transaction history: See at a glance important details such as your customer’s payment history, estimates, and past orders with vendors right at your fingertips on the same screen, so that you can complete the transaction at one time instead of switching back and forth between screens.

Send invoices and estimates right from your business Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail account: The new Webmail integration allows you to easily email right from QuickBooks without going through the steps of setting up Outlook.

Keep track of your vendors’ remittance address: Keep track of your vendor’s remittance with a convenient new field.

Mark which invoices have been paid with the Paid Date stamp: You can now quickly go through your stack of invoices without having to take time to look for individual payment dates.


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