Work with what you’ve got – tax prep part 2

As promised, I’m writing even more thoughts about financial administration and tax preparation. It’s a miracle that I can find any content in this subject area at all because I know little to nothing about either financial administration or tax preparation. It takes a very good husband and a very good accountant to prod me through both endeavors.

So maybe that’s an important bit advice: marry and hire well.

Actually, those are critical moves if, like me, you have no natural inclination towards solid state bookkeeping.

Before I got married I didn’t balance my checkbook. Rather, I practiced “guesstimation” and noted a round number that probably wasn’t off by too much on my check ledger and then made sure that I never let myself dig too deeply toward that guesstimated amount without adding more funds and guesstimating a new total. With me on this? I’m proud to say that I never, ever bounced a check. I had a feel for the amount of money in my account. I also knew that a quick call to the bank would yield an exact amount which I could use to upgrade my guesstimate at any time I chose to be more precise.

Now, you might argue that this is neither efficient nor financially-sound checking account management. I would counter that, for me, it was much more efficient than spending who knows how many hours on ultimately fruitless self-improvement attempts. My checks didn’t bounce and I had all sorts of time for television and Windows Solitaire. I rest my case.

My business-related bookkeeping practices are just  a little step up from my former (meaning pre-married) personal bookkeeping habits. Here’s what I do every month to keep my accounts up to date.

1. I put all incoming payments in a folder unless I’m paid via wire transfer and then just watch it go into my on-line account. (Going to the mailbox and discovering payments has never gotten old. Recording those payments in an accounting system as soon as they came in was immediately boring.).

2. At the end of the month, I enter all my payments in a spreadsheet that includes the client name, the invoice, the payment amount, the check number (if there is one), the payment date. The spreadsheet does all the heavy lifting on addition.

3. If I notice that an invoice went out and no payment came in I call the client.

Is it bad to let payments pile up before recording them? I think not. Then again, I deal with 5 – 8 invoices a month. I suppose if you sell thousands of things for .50 each you should keep track as you go or end of the month data entry will be a killer.

What about expenses you ask? Well, on average, my business expenses are $2.50 per month unless I buy a new computer like I did this year. It took me about 2 minutes to put that in the right spot on my expense tracking worksheet this past Sunday. (Tracking mileage expenses is a whole different kettle of fish and I’ll write about that next.) The keys to effective slacker cost tracking are:

1. remembering to save receipts

2. having a  carefully labelled folder or envelope  in which to put those receipts

3. remembering where that folder or envelope is kept

4. actually putting the receipts in the folder or envelope

I know that sounds strenuous but try entering your receipts onto a spreadsheet as you actually incur the expense. That’s downright exhausting.

Since I spend so little, I create an annual expense sheet at the end of the year when my husband says, “It’s time to start getting your tax information together so I can bring it all to the accountant.”

Which brings me back to that first bit of advice.

A rip in the time-space continuum

I always suffer sensory overload on the last day of a vacation. Soon after I get out of bed I start thinking of all the things I want to do before going back to work and then I think of all the things I’ll have to do the next day at work. Where did I leave off? Do I have any meetings? Do I need to prepare for anything? By noon a slight headache sets in as I readjust from a state of relaxation to one of constant, low-level stress.

Today is the last day of my long holiday break. I did a bit of work over vacation but nothing too strenuous. This morning I began making my impossibly long list of things I wanted to get out of the way before resuming my normal work routine. On top of the list was trip to the pharmacy. While Christmas helped us replenish our sock drawers and stash of Ninetendo DS games, we were woefully low on some personal hygiene items.

I decided to cheer up my deodorant/shampoo/soap/etc. run by tuning into NPR. Because its Jan. 3 I found myself listening to 2009 retrospectives and predictions for 2010. Yes, its New Year’s time. Early January. The first of the year. How time flies. To think it was only just Christmas. Ah Christmas. I hummed a bit of a carol as I strolled into the strip-mall mega-pharmacy and was immediately confronted with…

VALENTINE’S DAY CRAP!

Valentine’s cards. Valentine’s candy. Valentine’s stuffed animals. Valentine’s collectibles. The entire front of the store was red and pink and frilly. There were balloons. Heart-shaped.

Naturally I panicked because if it had gone from New Year’s to Valentine’s Day in the time it took me to walk from the car to the store it would certainly be tax day by the time I got home. And I HATE doing my taxes.

I’m not at all opposed to taxes in general. I like an excellent school system and snow removal sure comes in handy this time of year. While I wish we didn’t need national security we certainly do and I have gratefully received unemployment benefits in the past. Paying taxes is not my beef. Calculating the payment is a stumbling block.

This is a whole area of woe for me – financial administration/bookkeeping. I love sending out invoices. I REALLY love receiving payment. I hate noting down all the outgo and income. Logging mileage is harder than lifting weights. It’s not the math. My business accounting is nothing more than adding and subtracting. I’m fine and dandy with spreadsheets. It’s just all so boooooorrrrring.

I’ll write more about taxes and the way they shine a light on the strengths and weaknesses of my in-house financial systems and processes. Getting an accounting system (Who yawned when they just read “accounting system?”) in place, using it, tracking revenue and expenses, and filing taxes is critical to business success. Maybe if I write about implementing a good system I’ll get myself to actually use one.

Time to Par-tay!

Holiday office parties. Yuck. There’s always someone who does something so, um, non office like, that they’re hard to look at the next day. There are some co-workers that should just never be seen out of context. 

About ten years ago an administrative assistant at the company I worked for showed up to the holiday party wearing a strapless dress. It was a formalish party and a strapless party dress, while a bit much, wasn’t too much. It was the fact that she was wearing a non-strapless bra that put the outfit over the top.

Who does that – wear regular old over the shoulder bra with a strapless dress? Did she not know what strapless means? Of course everyone noticed. People choked on their drinks when she walked confidently by, waving and yelling hello to people across the room.

I remember the evening as a tortured attempt to not look in her direction and to keep criticisms, observations, and theories (Maybe she’s gone insane?) to myself. Believe me, that’s the kind of thing I would have loved to talk about – a lot. But I was a VP at the time and it didn’t seem cool to mock this person who was fairly competant (except at choosing the correct outfit-specific undergarments) and very nice. Several weeks later I saw her chugging cough medicine straight out of the bottle and I couldn’t help wondering if she was wearing a strapless bra underneath her turtleneck sweater.

Anyway, that memory and many others makes me glad that I am no longer required to attend an office holiday party.

Sometimes clients invite me to their office parties and that’s a nice thing. It’s usually a luncheon or a late afternoon beer-sort-of-thing. I attend office parties with my husband from time to time and that’s fun because I don’t have to work with those people every day. People can be as bizarre as they want.  I can just enjoy it.

The other day I got a thank you message from a client who had just received a little holiday goodie box I’d sent her. She joked about sharing them, or not, with her colleagues and it gave me a little twinge. Colleagues. Goodie sharing. That festive holiday office feeling when chocolate circulates the cubicles and corporate greeting cards are hanging here and there. Sigh.

I emailed Rebecca, my Mafundi sister, and we planned our own holiday party lunch. In a couple of weeks we’ll shut down our little shops for an hour or so and go to a great little Italian place for some good food and laughs.

I wonder what she’ll wear?

All Hail the IT department!

I don’t have an IT department. Sometimes I wish I did. In fact, if I ever decided to grow my company beyond just me, an IT person would likely be my first hire.

Because, even though I write about software all day long, and feel extremely comfortable installing new software and playing with it, I know absolutely nothing about hardware. And when things break — as they often do — I find myself staring at the screen, wondering what dialog box I can open or what button I can click to make things better.

Sometimes this works.

Often, it doesn’t. And then I start to whine. And sometimes cry.

And then I pretend like I don’t really need that thing to work anyway.

For instance. Several years ago, when I started my business, I set up my “office” in a guestroom. I bought the cheapest little desk I could find, and an equally cheap chair ($25 at Staples!). What I spent money on was a really nice laptop, some vital software, and a good printer. I went for an all-in-one printer that would allow me to print, fax, scan, copy, and bake brownies (I wish). And, get this, it was a wireless printer! Yeah, that’s right! I could print to it even without it being physically connected to my computer.

200 years ago they would have accused me of witchcraft for claiming such a thing.

When I set up the printer, I read the instructions carefully, took an afternoon (yes, it took that long) to go through it all step-by-step, and it worked. I printed wirelessly to my heart’s content.

Not long after that, we had to move out of our house for six months, and I set up my office in our temporary home. Wireless printing suddenly wasn’t working, but I was in a hurry, so I plugged the printer directly into the computer and decided to worry about it when we moved back home.

We moved back home. I had my spiffy new office. I couldn’t find the original cords for my printer. Nor the detailed instruction “poster” I had followed so religiously all those months ago. So long, wireless printing.

Then I upgraded my computer. For whatever reason, the printer drivers got confused when I reinstalled them. So long, faxing (which I didn’t really use). So long, scanning (which I did). At least it still printed, as long as it was connected directly to my computer via its cable.

Meanwhile, our family added other computers to the household. And since they were not in my office, directly connected to the printer, they were cut off from the joy of printing.

Last weekend, my husband (after hearing years of my whimpering about the printer situation), picked up an inexpensive all-in-one printer. A tinier, shinier version of the printer we already had.

It took a day out of his life, but let me tell you, any time I want, I can click the Print button and print whatever I want, from whatever computer I’m using. Wirelessly. Effortlessly.

He’s hired.

When I grow up

Every now and then someone asks my kids what they want to be “when they grow up.” Actually, no one asks that any more. It seems politically incorrect. We’re not supposed to push. People usually ask, “And what kinds of things are you interested in?”

My son typically launches into a soliloquy about cars and how he wants to design them or maybe be a valet parker and run them in and out of garages. I focus on the “design them” and chuckle to myself about how high tuition at MIT will be by the time he enrolls in the mechanical engineering program.

My daughter usually says that she wants to be an Egyptologist (a word which, when said just the right way, rhymes with “unemployed”) or an artist and live in Manhattan across from the Museum of Natural History. I’m going to have to leave the real estate section of the NY Times lying around so that she can adjust either her intended occupation or address.

It makes me wonder what my mother would have thought if I’d ever voiced my plan to be a freelance writer.

Frankly, little girl from the middle class suburbs where everyone’s dad worked for General Electric, I’m still stunned myself that I can make a decent living as a freelance writer/marketer. Sure some months are more decent than others but, overall, this is a good gig.

Last week, a friend who actually is an artist and actually does live in Manhattan (not across from the Museum of Natural History but in a really nice apartment) gave me a heads up on his boyfriend Jeff”s Today Show appearance. Jeff is an actor, the mother of all freelance positions.

Here’ s his Today Show appearance. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/vp/33618078#33618078

Did Jeff make money doing this? I don’t know. Will this little Today Show bit snag him all sorts of lucrative acting work. Who knows? That’s for his mother to worry about. For my part, I love knowing that people spend time doing things like this. Maybe I’ll be an improv singer when I grow up.

What the…?

Time really flies. The last few weeks have been a complete blur with all sorts of new work and work arrangements. I’m not one of the leading economic indicators but if you were to look at my desk you’d say that things are looking up.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a client who runs a medium-sized manufacturing business. I didn’t come right out and ask him how business had been this year but it came up in conversation that “flat is the new up.” I loved that phrase. Flat is the new up.

I think that’s what I’m feeling now – business wise. Clients all hunkered down last spring when the economy was on the fast slide down. They found ways to save money by cancelling and postponing projects. The projects that stayed on the table were scaled down. Anxiety attacks and restrategizing dragged things out. Everyone was being strategically quiet and slow.

Then late summer and early fall came along and everyone seemed to look around and say, “Hey, we’re still here. We thought our sales would tank but they’re merely flat. Maybe if we did some marketing we could do a little better than flat. Let’s Go!”

And now I’m pleasantly swamped.

October was a crazy month of recalibrating – everything. I’m back to one cup of coffee. I’d been doing a lot of recreational coffee making - two cups for myself and then a pot for the carpenters who were outside residing the house. I read news sites during a quick lunch break rather than first thing in the morning so that I can get right to early morning email to Europe. I figured out how to get the kids resettled after school so that I can squeeze in some more work time before dinner.

Now that I see that written down it doesn’t seem like a very big deal but let me tell you, cutting back on the coffee making and drinking was excruciating. And getting the kids to stay out of my hair after school…we’re going to be in therapy so we can process that process.

But now I’m all reset and ready. And if the recession kicks in again, no biggie. It’ll take me and the kids about a minute to completely backslide.

Friday fun: A little in-joke

Apparently, Google’s tech writers won the thumb wrestle this week.

How are you today?

There’s this little shop I like in town. It carries a great selection, the quality of the products is excellent, the prices are reasonable, the shop hours are convenient, and there’s parking nearby. I usually find just what I’m looking for, plus a few other fun things I hadn’t seen before. Every time I plan to go, I get a bit excited thinking I’m going to find all the things on my list and have fun browsing the cool little extras they also carry. But every time I go, I get a bit bummed out, and I’ve noticed lately that sometimes I leave without buying anything, before I really take the time to browse.

So what’s the problem? The shop has what I want for prices I’m willing to pay. So why do I hurry out? Or feel unhappy shopping there?

The problem is the owner. Or, more precisely, the owner’s attitude. She’s chatty and friendly, and she knows her business and her products like the back of her hand. If I have a question or need a special order, she’s polite, knowledgeable, and quick. But she’s an Eeyore. She has a complaint about everything, and she’s not afraid to let you know. You know the kind of person who, when you ask, “How are you?” will say, “Well, I’m okay, but my back is kinda hurting and I just had a bad phone call with someone and…”? That’s her.

Usually, her complaints are about suppliers or slow business or product quality (or the weather). But she’s also complained (to me) about other customers (she doesn’t name them, thankfully). She’ll toss off a complaint, and smile and wink at me, like I’m in on it and understand her plight. Honestly, I do understand, but it still makes me feel bad — and uncomfortable. And it makes me wonder what she’s saying about me to the next customer.

I think about this nearly every time I have a meeting or interaction with a client. It’s really easy, after you get into a long-term relationship with a client, to relax into thinking you’re buddies and can share all your life’s ups and downs. Sometimes you do become buddies, but not always, even if you’ve worked together for years. And if you do, the time to share those general complaints about life is probably not at your next status meeting with the director of development.

It’s easy to get a reputation as a downer or a complainer if you tend to show up with a sour look and a negative response to things more often than not. Obviously, you need to be honest, and you need to point out problems and issues where they exist, but if that’s all you ever do, even if your work is stellar and you deliver on time, your clients might opt for another “shop” in town.

How am I today? Fine, thanks. And you?

No sexual harassment here

This weekend I bumped into a friend of a friend who also runs her own little enterprise. (She’s an interior painter/plasterer.) We traded notes on current workloads and then listed various benefits of being on our own. We both confessed that it would be hard to sacrifice the schedule flexibility we enjoy as sole proprietors.

This past week, David Letterman’s confession that he had sex with women on his staff (an, um, that doesn’t sound quite right), reminded me of another benefit of working alone. No sexual harassment.

Only the hopelessly naive think that David Letterman is the first boss to have slept with his staff. Sexual harassment is still common enough.

Whenever I think about sexual harassment I get an immediate mental picture of Mr. Ick (not his real name) and the  stench of Polo cologne which he was routinely doused in. Mr. Ick was the store manager of a department store where I was a management trainee.  I was just out of college and rabidly feminist but I don’t think I was being oversensitive in objecting to his touching my thigh while he delivered my performance review.

Turns out, Mr. Ick had put his arm around another trainee during her review, stroked the shoulder of yet another, and sat waaay too close to the fourth. We all complained to our group managers – who were both women – and were told that he was harmless. We should ignore it. Ah, those were the days.

I don’t know where Mr. Ick is now, but I’m here in my office and no one like him is anywhere in sight. And that is such a great thing.

How’s the writing going?

Whenever someone asks me “How’s the writing going?” I know that they don’t understand what I do. They think I’m selfishly toiling away on a mid-life crisis inspired novel, failing to contribute to the household coffers, and quite possibly ignoring my children.

Since I know that’s running through their minds (I’m not paranoid, I can see it in their eyes and hear the quotation marks in their inflections – How’s the “writing” going?), I quickly attempt to explain that I’m not a novelist or poet. I write business and marketing communications – things like press releases and white papers and web sites.

“Websites?” they often ask. “You “write” websites?”

I then try to explain that, contrary to popular belief, website content is not randomly generated.  It is written in a special way by a writer (no quotation marks) who thinks long and hard about the many, many things that have to be said and then struggles to say them in 5 words or less because studies continually show that “people don’t read.”

There are relatively few frustrations in my job but the two that crop up the most are:

1. People don’t seen to understand that a person writes the things they are reading.

2. People really don’t read.

More and more I blame Facebook and MySpace and Twitter. The content on those sites is generated by the readers themselves – everyone on Facebook “writes” websites.

And those websites limit people to a certain number of words and encourage abbreviations. “I made meatloaf today! LOL!” “I made meatloaf today too! LOLACOMN!” (laughed out load and food came out my nose).

The other day my daughter wandered into my office and found me entering copy into a client’s content management system. She asked what I was doing and I said, “Watch this.” A couple of clicks later a new web page appeared in all its glory and I said, “See, that’s a new web page on this site. I wrote that. All those words. That’s what I was doing.”

She said, “That’s what you write?” I think she’s bummed that there’s no novel.