One of the reasons having a good accounting software is so important for a small business (whether or not you have an accountant) is helping you to get ready for tax season.  Accounting software like WorkingPoint allows you to stay on top of recording all of the finances of your business so you and/or your accountant can figure out how to give the most accurate financial picture to the IRS.

Do you know what you can deduct? Are you keeping all of the documentation necessary to track those deductions? Whether or not you have an accountant, or even use accounting software, it’s in your best interest to to stay on top of tracking all of your accounts to present the most accurate fiscal picture of your equity, inventory, profit and potential deductions you may be able to make!

How Wikipedia describes Tax Deductions related to Business Expenses:

“Nearly all jurisdictions that tax business income allow tax deductions for expenses incurred in trading or carrying on the trade or business. Technical details of the allowance vary, and may be very general or very specific. The amount of particular deductions may be limited based on character or amount, or deductions in aggregate may be limited or reduced.”

Even if you have an amazing accountant it’s up to you to keep track of where and how you are spending money on your business. So how do you know what you can “write off” in relationship to running your business? What’s important to keep track of, and what do you need to prove? The following list of articles is a must read to understand Small Business Tax Deductions and your business!

Recommended Reading:

“31 Small Business Tax Deductions”  Gregory Go, American Express Open Forum

“Small Business Tax Deduction Checklist”  Gilberto Fuentes, Ehow

“Publication 344: Tax Guide for Small Businesses” IRS

“How to Prepare for the Next Tax Season Now” Issie Lapowsky, Inc.com

“It’s Always Tax Season“Ronnie Lynn Deutch, Entrepreneur.com

On September 1, 2010 a man wielding a gun and possibly an explosive device took a bunch of hostages at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters. This deranged man is presumed to have taken these extreme measures in order to get his message across to the organization and to mass media. Violence, threats and other acts of this nature are  abhorrent in all forms, and this is an obviously a case of extremely poor messaging, decision making and circumstances but with so many people out there trying to get their message across it can feel like your message is getting lost in the cacophony.

Understanding common messaging mistakes is important to make sure you are investing your valuable time towards effective messaging tactics. The following are a list of serious blunders I see in frequently in Social Media and traditional marketing. Are you making these mistakes in your messaging?

Blunder #1: Only Talking about Yourself and Your Business in your Social Media Platforms

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. If you rely on social media and you only talk about yourself and your product you will have a hard time acquiring and retaining followers, advocates and fans. Not only is it frowned upon and viewed as bad form it’s quite frankly boring. Nobody has enough interesting stuff in just their own product or business to keep people interested with the frequency that the social media beast needs to be fed.

One great, recent example of generosity is this guest #FF post on ShopBop’s Blog that highlights blogger favorites that they recommend you follow on Twitter. ShopBop is a has grown to be leading purveyor of contemporary fashion and commended for their connection to their community.

Blunder #2: Not Talking About Yourself Enough

Have you ever seen an ad on television and thought, “huh? I don’t know what this is for…”. Well that can happen also in the land of many messages. People get so excited about sharing funny/cool content that they forget that above all if you are spending time and effort on a strategy it should in some way enhance your brand.

Some of our most popular content on the WorkingPoint Blog are the Botpreneur Comics from Sparky Firepants (Aka David Billings). While not strictly about accounting or small business resources, this comic captures and touches on themes that are relevant to our user community, many of whom face the challenges so humorously exposed in the comic strip. That is what makes the content “worthy” of our effort to promote it via our twitter, facebook and blog, not just that it is cool and funny.

Before you repost, retweet or write a blog post stop and ask yourself these questions to avoid these business messaging blunders:

How does this content relate to my brand, message, or product? Why should I invest my time in promoting it?

When was the last time I shared great content from someone else? (In general, I like to do a 2 for 1 rule on Facebook 2 things from other sources for every 1 thing I say about us).

If this is about my product only can I complement it with something interesting from some other source?

Speaking of sharing great content from other sources:

WorkingPoint wants to congratulate  WorkingPoint Guest Blogger & Solopreneur Expert Larry Keltto, author of the popular Solopreneur Resource Blog The Solopreneur Life, who launched a good marketing idea by creating  “From Idea to Market in 10 Weeks” a Solopreneurlife Mastermind Group for his community of solopreneurs.

At WorkingPoint, we are lucky enough to have a highly trained operations officer who ensures we follow a strict safety and security protocol. Like the best hurricane tracking software, he has the ability to see potential dangers brewing and to anticipate and develop strategies to keep our business “hurricane” free. Not everyone is lucky to have a storm tracker like ours, and his advice and guidance is invaluable for ensuring that your business is also as safe and secure as it could possibly be. Consider these pearls of wisdom a small business hurricane survival and recovery plan and stay tuned as we’ll continue to collect and share with you his invaluable advice. In the devastating wake of the Gulf Coast Oil Spill we discussed the importance of having a disaster plan in place for your business. Consider these strategies and tips additional insurance so that your business is as safe and secure as possible.

And remember, with a WorkingPoint account in case of a disaster or emergency your data is safely stored online, where you can still access it from anywhere. Sign up for an account now and make sure your business books are backed up.

#1: Passwords must have a minimum Levenshtein distance of 10 from the username…

If you don’t speak engineer, this jewel of wisdom translates roughly to the idea of making sure your passwords have a distinct content distance from the username.  The password should ideally not contain any words or phrases used in the username, and some people prefer that they not contain any words or phrases at all but rather random strings of letters, numbers and symbols. For more detailed information about how to create effective passwords visit this helpful password safety guide.

#2: Passwords and usernames should never be communicated digitally (email, chat, skype ect.)

Just like you would never leave your pin number in your wallet next to your ATM card (you wouldn’t right?) you should also never email, chat, or skype passwords into the digital world where they could be accessed by people with nefarious intent to steal your identity, your funds and worse. If you absolutely must communicate a password digitally use two different accounts (skype + email etc.) so that both accounts would have to be hacked to access the account information

#3: If you daisy chain a power outlet your house/office will burn down

Accessing power in this digital age (where every employee has a laptop, screen, cellphone, ipad, ipod and 3 other things that need to be plugged in) is at best a challenge. Resist the urge to sacrifice safety for convenience by stringing together multiple surge protectors to form a “daisy chain”. They are not made for this type of use and will therefore spark, explode or otherwise endanger the safety of yourself and others around you.

What security advice has been most valuable for your business? Do you regularly take measures to ensure physical and digital security? Let us know ways that you keep your business as safe and secure as possible.

One of the reasons having a good accounting software is so important for a small business (whether or not you have an accountant) is helping you to get ready for tax season. A good accounting software like WorkingPoint can help to make accurate accountancy, and therefore tax season, as painless as possible. Whether or not you have an accountant, or even use accounting software, it’s in your best interest to to stay on top of tracking your revenue, equity, inventory, profit and on upcoming changes to taxes expected for 2011.

Below is a list of “must read” article we’ve collected that discuss some upcoming changes expected to how your business will be taxed in 2011, when the reduce tax rate for business put forth by President Bush in 2001-2003 expires at the end of this year. Have questions about accounting or taxes? WorkingPoint Premium subscribers can access highly trained accounting advice and ask questions from our experienced Small Business Accountants. Sign up or upgrade your account today!

“Tax Rules You Should Know About for 2011” by Barbara Weltman, American Express Open Forum

“2011: Year of the Tax Man” by the National Center for Policy Analysis

Pre Order your 2011 Tax Calendar for Small Businesses and Self-Employed directly from the IRS

There’s a lot of uncertainty about what taxes for small business will look like when the “Bush Tax Cuts” (tax cuts from 2001-03) expire in 2010 but most experts are predicting that small business taxes will go up and that Congress will not act extend the current tax rates.

How are you preparing for these changes? Do you anticipate that your taxes will go up?

Guestpost by Justin Pot of iSupportU

If your business is anything like ours, voicemail matters. We’d love to answer every phone call, but sometimes people call during off hours or while we’re on the phone with someone else.

Traditional voicemail systems suck, however. Using the phone to access an inbox is a terrible form of human-machine interaction, especially if you’re used to the quickness of email. I don’t want to “press 1 to hear new messages”; I want the messages to appear in front of me.

Enter Google Voice. This amazing web app, part of the Google Apps suite of online software, manages our voicemail for us on the web. Every message left is transcribed for quick reading, then emailed to every member of our staff.

Because a message left hanging can quickly turn a current customer into a past customer, it’s essential that someone on our team get back to every voicemail left as quickly as possible. But once that team member calls back, how do the other members know not to call back themselves?

Simple: we respond to the voicemails to reach quickly everyone in the company. Sometimes we’ll summarize the conversation, sometimes we’ll request someone else call the individual and sometimes we’ll simply say the conversation’s happened and all is well. The point is the entire the team, wherever in town their bikes may have taken them, knows what’s going on.

Sound complicated? It isn’t. We can set this up for your business, and even train your staff to use it properly. Give us a call or contact us for more information. Google Voice is just one part of a suite of software that will change the way you do business, for the better.

As you know, WorkingPoint strongly endorses events as a way to build community around your brand and your small business. We want to be more to do more for our community than just provide accounting services. We try to be more than just a business accounting software or a digital version of a bookkeeper, we try to be role models for small businesses like ourselves and “eat our own dog food“. So we use WorkingPoint as our accounting software, and any small business software (be it payroll software or social media related) we recommend to you we also use ourselves. And when we reccomend that you use events to network your business, we also plan events ourselves! WorkingPoint Wednesday is a networking event for the amazing small companies who we are lucky enough to share space with at SOMACentral.

Below is the invitation I made using this awesome website called Polyvore. It’s a fashion site, used to create beautiful collages by fashionistas and dabblers alike. I love using it so much (it’s so fun!) and I love how great my sets turn out (they have the best fonts!) so I decided to see if I could use it to create the event invitation. The engineers here were also impressed with the site design and functionality.

I love the way the invitation turned out and it only took me about 15 minutes to make (plus revisions from the team!) and then I used a screenshot to create the PDF which we emailed out.

If you want to see the photos from the event, visit our Facebook page and don’t forget to “like” us!

The Invitation

Invitation by dena728 on Polyvore.com

One of our very favorite freelance contractors illustrated another hilarious and incisive commentary on one of the pitfalls of being a contractor. There are so many outside factors acting on your quality of life, even if you are “free”-lance. Do you work with umbrella companies? What if the umbrella companies are evil? What if they exploit your social capital until you end up devouring all of your friends?

When you work from home, run your own business, are a solopreneur, freelancer or any other independently acting entity, you alone bear the responsibility for the decision making process and the consequences of that decision. This is incredible and also terrifying. There are no checks and balances in place, but there are also no limits to your creativity, potential and payoff. Plus nobody tells you when you have to get to work in the morning.

Social Capital is becoming more and more valuable in the “Social Media Era”. AS a freelancer or small business owner that line between personal and professional networks can be even more blurred.  If you work inside your home there’s not even a clear distinction between personal and professional space in your physical world.

Our advice for every contractor: Make sure you have a solid independent contractor agreement, try to achieve some work/life balance and know when you’re turning into a giant scary robot and crushing all your leveraged contacts to death!

Courtesy of Sparky Firepants (also known as David), a real life WorkingPoint user! Check out his other awesome work at www.sparkyfirepants.com.

Barclay’s Golf Tournament and Tiger Wood’s Divorce are making big headlines this week. Everyone from ABC News to TMZ are covering the Golfing Stars tumultuous personal life. Meanwhile Jim Furyk’s oversleeping disqualification has him leading off  a top ten list of worst money making athlete mistakes. The list of athletes includes not 1 but 2 golfers (with Tiger claiming the #1 spot). Earlier this year, Mint.com created one of their infamous infographics about what they dubbed the “Tiger Wood’s Economy“.

The business of Golf is booming and Tiger Wood’s is the much touted reason for this success . What lessons can you learn for your small business from the meteoric rise of this once more humble sport? What can you learn from Tiger’s very public troubles and successes?

Lesson #1: People need someone to cheer for…

Tiger Woods is no doubt the face of the modern golf movement. His presence on the court increases ratings 20 – 50% which in turn drives more sponsorships and ad revenue to the tournaments.  Tiger is likable, he has a great personal story and he brought a face to a sport that hadn’t had a  “hero” in several decades.

Regardless of whether you are reinvigorating a million dollar sports industry or trying to sell cupcakes like Kara of Kara’s Cupcakes your business will benefit from having a real likable person at the helm. People build relationships with people, and using your own likable story and image for your business will help people to build a lasting relationship with you and with your business. In the technology era, this is easier and easier to do with options like Facebook, Twitter, personal blogs and easy website customization to help you to tell your story. Show people why you are so passionate about what you do, why you love your work and why they should pick you and your business!

Lesson #2: Success doesn’t make you bulletproof

The media backlash and loss of sponsorships as a result of Tiger’s highly publicized divorce is still rippling, and although there is no doubt that Tiger is still a force to be reckoned with the loss of major sponsorships equals a loss of serious profits for his personal brand.

When you build your professional brand around yourself as a person, it’s important that your brand (and therefore your personal life!) stay true to your brands statement and mission. You never know just how valuable that “social capital” can be!

Lesson #3: People will try new things for someone they like.

This relates back to #1 in a big way, once people are cheering for you then you can parlay that into a useful audience. Those 20-50% increase in ratings come from people who otherwise wouldn’t watch golf if it weren’t for Tiger. That means that Tiger turned his personal likability into something profitable. You most likely already have something great to offer in your business, how much more desirable would it be if people like you?

Unfortunately, the overarching theme of Tiger’s lessons for business is about the power of popularity. If people like you, they may be more willing to like your business. It may feel like high school, but in this competitive market you and your personal story are a valuable asset which can and should be leveraged to help you attract and retain customers!

If you watch or read the news then you have heard about the half a billion eggs recalled for potential Salmonella contamination and the onset of hurricane season with the arrival of Tropical Storm soon to be Hurricane Danielle . You may also have heard about the highly anticipated launch of Facebook Places, a check in feature from the internet super company that is the #1 most visited website on the planet.

What makes this revelation comparable to a national food recall or a potential natural disaster? This new Facebook feature is truly going to bring the much touted geolocation option to the masses. Facebook is accessed by over 500 Million people from their mobile phones which makes it by far the largest and most widespread mobile technology in what Jess3 (aka Jesse Thomas) has dubbed the “geosocial universe“.

In an earlier post about Geolocation for Small Businesses, I explored why geolocation was not ready for mainstream use, but with the reveal of Facebook Places I am eating my words.

Mashable wrote a fantastic intro guide for personal and business use titled “A Field Guide to Using Facebook Places” is a great beginners guide to how to get started using this new technology. It will also help you understand how people will be using the tool. With Facebook’s 500 million mobile users, and their “check ins” at your business being broadcast to and average of 130 friends, 50% of whom log on to Facebook in any given day according to Facebook’s own statistics, the potential marketing opportunities for your business are huge.

What makes these opportunities even more exciting is the potential that these users will be exactly who you want to reach, demographically and geographically. With Facebook being used increasingly for professional networking as well as social, peoples “social graphs” are a rich source of referrals and new clients. Facebook places has made these recommendations as easy as “checking in”.

How to Claim your Business on Facebook Places:

1) Check in/Add your Business.

The first step is to try to check in to your business, this will tell you if your business is already up (duplicate entries will dilute your efforts). If you find that your business is already listed, skip to step #2.

Sign in to Facebook from your mobile phone or laptop (you will need a phone with a browser). If you have an iphone you can do this from inside the facebook app. If you are using a laptop or other mobile phone with browser you will have to visit the Facebook Touch Mobile site at “http://touch.facebook.com/” and click on the far right tab titled “Places”.

If it’s not already listed, create a listing. For an iphone, select the plus sign in the top right hand corner and you will see the “add a place screen” and a slice of the map. Fill in all the requested information and press “add” in the top right corner.

To add your business from a browser, click the “add” button on the top left corner:

and then add your location information and click “add” on the bottom of the screen.

note: You must be at your business location to check in. You cannot edit the map or add an address manually so whether you are on a phone or on a laptop you will need to be physically at the business location to check in/add the place.

2) Claim your Business

Now that the listing has been added, go to Facebook.com and click on the place you just checked into.

At the bottom of the screen, in the center of the page click on, “Is this your business?”

Then just follow the instructions and fill out the form provided.

note: In order to ensure that you own your business, Facebook asks you to provide official documentation of ownership for your business. This protects you from having a “stolen business identity” and I think it’s a great feature that some of the other geolocation sites lack!

3) Promote your place!

“If you build it they will come” only works in the movies! Put up a sign in your business that encourages people to check in, or offer specials and deals for people who are checked in (you can see who’s checked in on Facebook and send them a message with a coupon or discount code!).

These 3 steps will get you started in using Facebook Places. Remember, once you claim your business it’s important to encourage people to check in because this technology is so new, the behavior is not yet a pattern. As an early adopter of geolocation technology, I’ve become increasingly used to “checking in” when I go to places but I still rely on visual reminders from businesses to trigger the”check in” response.

Will you use Facebook Places for your business? Are you already using some kind of Geolocation or Social Media strategy? Let us know what you think!

Guestpost by Justin Pot of iSupportU

If a bicycle-based IT company sounds weird to you, you’ve probably never been to Boulder. Our town is a series of bike trails and bike lanes, all leading to ample bike racks. In many ways it’s easier to get around Boulder on bicycle than it is in a car. Heck, locals have even been know to build picnic table bicycles.

That’s why we at iSupportU are dedicated to being a different sort of technical company, one with a commitment to reduced carbon usage.

Running a bicycle-based IT company is not without its challenges, however. We need to be lean, because anything we need to carry with us to a job needs to be lugged by bike. When we’re biking from client to client we need our information to accessible without a great deal of complication.

That’s why we rely heavily on the cloud. Any application that lives on the web instead of on a desktop computer is an application that follows us with us on our bikes, and as such makes our lives easier.With WorkingPoint, for example, the tiny netbook in our bike’s basket allows us to invoice customers on the fly, wherever in town we may be. That’s valuable.

It’s also valuable that WorkingPoint works regardless of operating system. This is a very important point, seeing as our staff is split equally between Mac, Windows and Linux enthusiasts. Every platform works great, and that can’t be said for many desktop programs.

Our enthusiasm for the cloud doesn’t stop with Working Point, though. Since the beginning we’ve been big fans of Google Apps, the suite of online software from the search giant. With these tools we have access to our email, our shared calendars, our documents quickly and easily from any computer.

We love using these tools ourselves so much that we’ve started helping our clients get onto the cloud. We can help you too, of course; check us out and give us a call. We’re also big fans of WordPress for building web sites, and which we used to build our own site as well as sites for our clients.

There’s nothing quite like reliable cloud applications for keeping a business efficient, however you might prefer to get around. WorkingPoint is certainly one we’ll be recommending, not to mention using ourselves.