Still waiting on your tax refund? If you’re lucky enough to be getting money back but haven’t received it yet, the IRS has set up a webpage where you can check on the status of your refund. For e-filed returns, status should be available 72 hours after you e-file. If you filed on paper, status should be available 3 to 4 weeks after you mailed your return.

Click here to check your refund status

You’ll need to provide the following information from your tax return:

• Your Social Security Number (or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number)
• Your Filing Status
• The exact whole dollar amount of your refund

Owed money on April 15?
If you paid additional taxes to the IRS this year over and above your prepayments or withholdings, you’re likely required to pay estimated quarterly income taxes for this year. This means that 4 times a year you pay an estimated amount to the IRS to cover your taxes for the year in advance.

WorkingPoint’s Estimated Tax Report estimates your federal income and self-employment taxes based on IRS tax schedules for the current year, so you know how much you need to save for end of year taxes or for estimating your taxes for quarterly tax payments.

The Estimated Tax Report is available on Premium account plans. For more information about this report, check out our online Help Center.

Picture Courtesy of the UK's Daily Mail

I have a client who works in one of the nation’s least cutting edge industries. It’s not something that most people regard as terribly sexy, but it’s something that we all need. So, as a saleman, my client is constantly trying to find ways to jazz up his universe and introduce cool new technology into the mix — something that helps both the business and the customers.

Unfortunately, my client is constantly frustrated because the organization is slooooooooooooooow to consider new solutions, they are uncomfortable being disruptive, and they are highly adverse to risk. This means that of the dozens of items he proposes every year, they might act on one or two.

Where we have had success, though, is in the baby-step approach. As a group of entrepreneurs, my team is all about the big, crazy, disruptive plans to shake up the world. But that’s too radical for this client’s organization, so we have to find little ways to introduce change, and then let them grow into the possibilities over time. What’s key, though, is a very, very bland insertion strategy.

I was thinking about this when listening to the this great video clip from the Standford’s Entrepreneurship Corner. Liz Tinkham, a global manager at Accenture, discusses the danger most startups face when trying to sell to a large organization: “too sexy” usually means “too complicated.”

This is a great point, and ones that I often think that entrepreneurs will forget: enterprise clients come with baggage. They have legacy system baggage, contract baggage, relationship baggage and political baggage. So, to paraphrase a line from my favorite Broadway play of all time, you ‘need to find baggage that matches their’s.’

The question is, can you do that? And, if you can, do you want to? Most high tech entrepreneurs I know are out to shake things up. They have a vision and they tend to love disruption. That’s what makes them willing to forego a cubical and benefits package to ride off into the sunset alone.

Entrepreneurs have to ask themselves: Do I want or need to sell to large companies? If the answer is yes, then the next question is the one that Liz posits in the video: How do I tone down my product enough to be digestable for an organization that comes with a lot of baggage?

Of course, even if you can do that, you may decide you don’t want to. But once you figure that out, then you can build out a sales strategy that fits, instead of one that doesn’t.

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to Debra Kennaugh of Crossroads Engineering Inc.:

“Crossroads Engineering Inc. is a small civil engineering firm specializing in professional traffic engineering from preliminary studies to ultimate design.”

Don’t have a profile for your small business? Learn more or Sign up for an account and create your free company profile today!

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to George Rivas of AnyLogic America:

“AnyLogic is the world’s only simulation modeling software that supports all the major techniques: Discrete Event, System Dynamics, and Agent Based modeling simultaneously.”

Don’t have a profile for your small business? Learn more or Sign up for an account and create your free company profile today!

We’ve been hard at work on our banking integration and we are excited to announce that the “foundation have been laid!” We know that this is a feature that you are excited about as well so, we have decided to break the feature into 2 parts so we could give you access as soon as possible.

The first part of our banking integration offers Premium subscribers the ability to view financial institution account balances in WorkingPoint. WorkingPoint can securely connect with over 4,800 bank and credit card providers, including PayPal. Connecting to your financial institutions is easy and administrators can set up connections in just minutes. By creating a simple connection between your financial institution accounts and your bookkeeping accounts where you track your business activity in WorkingPoint, you gain real-time insight into your actual cash and credit card liabilities all from where you manage your business: WorkingPoint.

Viewing your bank and credit card balances in WorkingPoint saves you the time and hassle of logging into your financial institution to check your balances so you can see things like, whether or not you have enough cash in your account to cover the check you are about to write or how much you owe on a credit card so you can decide whether or not to order that next shipment using your credit card.

And this is just the beginning! We are actively working on the next part of our bank integration. Soon, WorkingPoint Premium subscribers will be able to import bank and credit card transactions. This will make it easy for you to balance your bookkeeping accounts with your actual bank and credit card accounts.

To learn more about connecting to financial institutions, check out our online Help Center.

First 2010 Estimated Tax Payment Due April 15

With income taxes taking center stage on April 15, it’s easy to forget about the other taxes due today – Estimated Taxes.

Use WorkingPoint’s Estimated Tax Report to help you calculate what to pay. The estimated amount it based on the data you have in WorkingPoint, so if you are new to WorkingPoint, be sure to figure in any sales or expenses not included in your WorkingPoint account.

The Estimated Tax Report is a premium feature and only available on the Premium account plan. Not on the Premium plan? Upgrade today!

For more information on estimated taxes, visit the IRS Website.

My husband has a new startup that he’s been working on for much of the past year, and part of the way I’ve been helping him is finding the best possible tools to help out with some of the work that he is trying to get done. The trouble is that I’m a classic web addict with a bit of early adopter ADD.

I love testing out new web apps. KillerStartups is my guilty pleasure every morning, because I will always find at least a couple of new apps that I go sign up for. Even if I only poke around in them for a few minutes, I love exploring them. Most I may not check out more than once. But some I do actually fall in love with enough to keep around for a while.

But this world changes constantly, and that means the things that matter most are portability of data and a certain degree of flexibility about the solution. For some solutions — like WorkingPoint — a longer-term commitment makes the most sense, because of the amount and value of the data entered.

For other systems, though, being a bit more nimble is often the best way to test drive something, figure out what you like, and then decide if the tool is the best fit or if looking at something new makes more sense. In my world this is especially true of project management apps. I have yet to find one that I love, so I move from one to the next like Goldilocks, trying to find one that is just right.

Aside from KillerStartups’ daily deluge of new web apps, the other way I keep tabs on new goodies to try out is often Twitter. The new CRM solution I am using (and, to date, liking quite nicely) is called BantamLive. One of the founders actually reached out to me on Twitter in response to a general inquiry I posited on CRM options. (Note to product teams: Don’t tell me Twitter has no value to finding new customers!)

After KillerStartups and Twitter, there are a couple of other good online sources (Louis Gray’s blog), and then there are the lists. I love lists. Lists are easy to consume, they are quick to read and they are usually titled cleanly enough to quickly categorize to determine if the content is appropriate to what I care about.

So, in the interest of my love of lists, I have a few specific ones for entrepreneurs looking for some tools to help run, manage and grow your business. And we’ll start off with an appreciative nod to WebWorkerDaily for including WorkingPoint in this week’s list of web apps a small business can’t do without.

Other Great Lists for Entrepreneurs

• Using Web Tools For Creating and Managing Contracts
• How Startups are Using Social Media for Real Results
• 5 Essential Apps for Your Business’s Facebook Fan Page
• 13 Essential Social Media Lessons for B2B Marketers from the Masters
• The Small Business Guide to Google Apps
• 14 Essential iPhone Apps for Small Business Users
• Bartering as a Business Practice – 5 tips to Creating “Profitable” Alliances
• Top 5 Online Sources for Free Business Plan Help
• 4 Life Saving Tips for Small Business Marketing
• Market Your Site Like a Rock Star – 10 Blogs to Help You Do it Right

Yesterday, Aliza Sherman at Web Worker Daily announced her “updated list of what I consider to be the best solutions for our critical tasks in 2010.” And we are stoked to be listed as an app you can’t do without in the invoice management category. Thanks Aliza!

In addition to invoicing your customers, WorkingPoint helps you manage your expenses & contacts, track your inventory, market your company with an online profile, create professional financial reports, save time on taxes and more.

Sign up for your account today!

Ah, the smell of tax season in the air! Of course, if you’re a business owner then tax season is every season, and never really seems to go away, does it? (Lucky us!)

In a recent binge of tax-related research and reading, I’ve come across some particularly helpful tax sources that I thought would be worth sharing.

Daniel Kehrer of Business.com has a great blog called “What Works for Business,” and he’s got a ton of great content on taxes for small business:

16 Tips to Avoid a Tax Audit of Your Small Business Return
Small Business Tax Tip #1: Tap New Rules for Business NOLs
Small Business Tax Tip #2: Accelerate Income & Defer Expenses
Small Business Tax Tip #3: Depreciation is Your Friend
Small Business Tax Tip #4: Beware of Out-of-State Surprises
Small Business Tax Tip #5: Take Advantage of Depressed Asset Values
Small Business Tax Tip #6: Bank on a C-Corporation Comeback
Small Business Tax Tip #7: Expect More Extensions
Small Business Tax Tip #8: Find Hidden Treasure in Your P&L
Small Business Tax Tip #9: Don’t Procrastinate!
Small Business Tax Tip #10: Don’t Expect More Tax Relief

And on MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, here is an interesting perspective that runs counter to most common advice:

Outcome Of Hiring An Accountant To Do Our Taxes Vs Using Turbo Tax Or Tax Cut

Of course, in the end, as a business you must file taxes and as an individual you must file taxes.  For some of us, there is so much anxiety associated with it that it warrants its own therapy sessions.

Interestingly enough, taxes were the reason I avoided owning my own business for years: I simply couldn’t handle the idea of having to deal with them at all.  I had absolutely no problem forking over a disproportionate percentage of a very high income to pay taxes, as long as it meant that I didn’t have to think about it for more than a couple of hours per year.  That was a nice arrangement and one that I was willing to pay to maintain.

Then, of course, life decided to intervene and lead me down an entrepreneurial path where taxes are a part of my weekly reality, no matter how much I hate it.  So, now I am working through my anxiety by consuming endless amounts of information on the subject.  Is it working?  I don’t know yet.  I’ll let you know next week.

The WorkingPoint Community is made up of small business owners, like yourself, and we want you to get to know each other. We’d like to introduce you to Holly Boxrud of Lina and Roo Natural Bathworks:

“We are a down to earth, family-based natural skin and body care company located on Vancouver Island, in Nanaimo BC…Our quality handmade organic & natural soaps, bath crystals, body care products, perfumery, skin care treatments, facial cleansers, toners, scrubs & masques, body butters, body scrubs are made with intent by hand here on Vancouver Island. We hope you can feel the love.”

Don’t have a profile for your small business? Learn more or Sign up for an account and create your free company profile today!