by Kelly Kirkrod | May 2, 2020 | Uncategorized
Each year, payroll professionals are responsible for delivering accurate and timely payment for $1.02 trillion in wages and taxable benefits, and $345 billion in statutory remittances in Canada.
These numbers are astonishing, and this poses the question – during a crisis or periods of uncertainty, what happens with payroll? In this post, we’ll provide excellent resources that address the many questions payroll professionals and business owners may have during a moment of crisis and in more recent cases, COVID-19.
Here are our recommended resources:
We recommend referring to the COVID-19 webpage from the Institute of Professional Bookkeepers of Canada. This page highlights a variety of resources to support small business owners during this period – including new plans and support initiatives being offered by the Canadian Government, health resources and much more. With announcements being published weekly, if not daily this is a great resource to help you stay up to date.
This webpage by the Canadian government is a great resource for business owners, not just during COVID-19, but all year round. Operated at the Federal level, this webpage provides business owners support details in regard to emergency loans, deferring taxes or payments, keeping your employees paid and much, much more. By answering some quick questions about your business, industry, and location, you’ll receive specific results and steps you can take.
This Questions and Answers document by the Canadian Payroll Association is a great resource for all your questions about payrolls, benefits, sick leave, record of employment and more. It highlights the top questions Payroll Professionals receive during a time of crisis and provide clear answers and steps your business can take to ensure you maintain accurate payroll records, during times of uncertainty.
Our last recommended resource is this on-demand webinar from the BDC. This video provides detailed info on how you and your business can cope with the impacts of COVID-19. It highlights what’s next for the North American economy, which government aid plans are available for businesses and how you can take advantage of them, and the road to recovery.
We hope these resources are helpful during this period. Also, stay tuned for our next blog post where we’ll share tips and initiatives to help ensure business continuity.
by Kelly Kirkrod | Mar 11, 2020 | Uncategorized
Each year, small business owners incur a ton of transactions to keep their business on track. Whether it’s rent, office supplies or internet costs, there are a lot of expenses to manage. To add to this fire, there are expenses that are forgotten and go unclaimed each year.
With the tax season upon us, we’ve compiled a few of the common business expenses that can often be overlooked:
Business-Use of Home Expense
Are you a new business owner who will be working in your home before officially renting a formal office space, restaurant or studio? Or a contractor, where you primarily run your business from home? If you answered yes to either of these options, you could be eligible to claim part of your home maintenance costs for the use of your business workspace.
If you’re wondering what the acceptable home maintenance costs are, this includes heat, home insurance, electricity and cleaning materials.
In order to deduct home expenses for the business use of a workspace, you must meet one of the following conditions:
- Your home is your principal place of business
- You use the space only to earn your business income, and you use it on a regular and ongoing basis to meet your clients, customers or patients
If you use part of your home for both your business and personal living, the calculation for deduction must be based on the actual space used for your business, for example, a single bedroom.
To learn more about how to calculate how much you can deduct and to see an example calculation visit this CRA webpage.
Office Expenses
As office expenses are smaller and recurring, it’s easy for them to be overlooked.
Office expenses include office supplies and small items such as pencils, pens, paperclips, postage stamps, and other stationery items.
Keep in mind that this does not include any larger or big furniture and equipment pieces that are being used for more than one year.
Management and Administration Fees
Another expense that is commonly forgotten but can provide a significant rebate is management and administration fees.
This primarily includes the bank charges or fees that allow you to operate your business. For example e-transfer fees, monthly account fees, and deposit or processing fees.
As small business owners have recurring transactions each month, these charges can quickly add up and are a line item you do not want to miss!
Travel Expenses
Have you ever wanted to attend a conference or travel to meet customers, but found it to be too large of an expense? Claiming a portion of these travel expenses can make these trips more affordable, and is key for supporting your business growth.
Example travel expenses include public transportation fares such as taxis or flights, hotel accommodation, and meals.
When traveling for business, do keep in mind that a 50% limit is applied to the cost of your meals, beverages, and entertainment. And the travel expense must be incurred to help you earn more business and income.
Need a hand managing your expenses?
While these are only a few examples of expenses that small business owners can claim, you can view a full list here.
If you’re looking for a way to help you manage these expenses, hiring a bookkeeper can provide great relief and allow you to focus on other key areas of your business. Learn more about what a bookkeeper can do for you, in our last blog post.
by Kelly Kirkrod | Feb 10, 2020 | Uncategorized
If you’re a small business, the beginning of the year is usually spent finalizing future projects and initiatives, completing budgets or even playing a bit of catchup from last year.
Even with good resolutions and intentions, sometimes throughout the year, new projects come up, plans change and while you try your best to stay organized, we could always use a little bit of help.
To help you out and make the most of your 2021, we’ve put together some top recommendations of digital tools to help you save time and stay organized in the year ahead. Let’s take a look!
If you’re looking for a tool to help you save time from photocopying or organizing paper documentation, check out Scanner Pro. Scanner Pro by Readdle allows users to digitize documents, receipts and more with their own camera. The app enables users to quickly scan a paper document and upload a digital copy to Google Drive, Dropbox, and other cloud services.
No matter the document type or size, Scanner Pro can help you capture and share contracts, articles, resumes, receipts and more.
Looking for a free app? Try their sister app, ScannerMini. This version offers similar functionality but is restricted to sharing documents only to iCloud.
Find yourself sending lengthy emails when providing feedback or explaining existing processes?
Snag It by Techsmith is a great tool to power your workflows and improve overall collaboration. With this software, you can easily capture screenshots, web pages, text or video, and share with others or use it to create new content. Key features like layout templates, screen capture and recording, annotations, and text extraction help organizations provide clear feedback, establish new processes, create training documentation and more.
Did you know that you can claim mileage as a business expense? If you’re already doing this, you may know it can be a tedious process. In 2020, ditch your mileage tracker forms and try MileIQ by Microsoft. This app automatically runs in the background, tracking your miles and creates weekly reports for your driving. Need to separate business and personal driving? No problem, this app allows users to easily edit and categorize their trips. Additional bonus – this app is included with Office 365 Business subscriptions and is available across all devices, including desktop.
If you find yourself struggling to stay on top of hundreds of emails and keeping them organized, then Slack could be the app for you! This instant messaging application allows users to create channels for specific conversations, projects or topics, make phone and video calls, upload, share and store a variety of file types without size restrictions and more. With integrations into over 2000 apps, Slack can work alongside the programs you use and love, keeping everything organized and preventing organizational silos.
For those looking to keep better track of their time spent on specific tasks, make sure to try RescueTime. This app works in the background on your computer, phone, or tablet, and monitors how you spend your time. Users can set time limits for specific tasks – ie. answering emails, scheduling social posts and more, to help them manage their time more efficiently.
If you’re looking to take control of your expenses in 2020, try Expensify. With multiple pricing tiers, this app can support smaller to medium-sized businesses, all the way up to enterprise organizations. This app helps users manage and track their expenses, with automatic sync between Expensify and their accounting software, automatic updates to existing expense reports, expense categorization, approval reminders and more.
If you’re looking to move to a cloud-storage provider in 2020 to help organize and share your digital files, Sync is a great solution. Unlike common cloud-providers such as Google Drive, or Dropbox, Sync offers Canadian data residency, geo-replication, and end-to-end encryption. This cloud provider makes it easy to store, share and access your files from anywhere, saving time and enabling your entire team.
Our last recommendation is a personal favorite, 17hats. This software is an all-in-one platform that helps businesses with booking coordination, lead management, financial reporting, online payments and more. With everything in one place, 17hats supports your entire workflow from initial lead generation to customer surveys, ensuring entrepreneurs always have insight into their business.
We hope these tools can help you with the year ahead! If you’re looking for other ways to stay organized and free up some time, start by looking at what a bookkeeper can do for you.
