Clayton Accounting & Tax Service

I’m finding out I’m not much of a blogger!  It’s amazing how fast time flies by.  One day it’s August, the next it’s almost New Year’s Eve!

So much has happened since the last entry.  It was challenging coming up with topics for the previous posts, just as it will be a challenge to come up with topics for future posts, but I’m going to try.

The last few months saw my family celebrating my mother-in-law’s 80th birthday over Labor Day weekend.  (Most of the family was able to make it for the weekend and so did many friends.  We had lots of good food, some prepared by my niece’s husband – Mt. Hood’s  Timberline Lodge Executive Chef Jason Stoller-Smith, some prepared by my nephew Tyler Stoller of Sawtooth Caulking, and some prepared by my husband – a great cook in his own right, some Willamette Valley wine tasting, and lots of conversation).

October was busy filing last minute tax returns, my own included, though we are preparing tax returns all year long for businesses.  It just so happens that October is the last time an individual return can be electronically filed for that fast refund option.

November went by so fast I hardly remember it, same goes for December.   I’ve been overly busy because one of my key people, Gerry Ohler, has been out with some severe medical problems.  We’re all praying that he’ll be ready for surgery soon and back to work later next year.  In the mean time, we’re trying to keep everybody’s work caught up.  Sometimes we don’t realize the workload of the people we work with until we have to add that to our workload, but we will survive!

In the mean time, we’re all trying to rest up because we know that January will be very busy and we want to be ready for it.

Labor Day Weekend is upon us.  Here in the Tri-Cities, schools are starting or have started and 2011 is streaming by at a rapid rate.  I still have 2010 work to get done; how am I ever going to get caught up!

CenturyLink has been providing me coaching on how a blog can help my business in exchange for blogging about CenturyLink.  For this whole thing to work correctly I still need to work on going through my Facebook friends and my contacts list and letting them know about the website and request they “like” Clayton Accounting through Facebook.  I’m sure there are lots of clients with Facebook pages that don’ necessarily want to be friends through Facebook (and I’m fine with that), but that doesn’t prevent them from “liking” Clayton Accounting.  If they like the site they will get the blog updates which is the whole point of this exercise – me passing information to my clients.

I promised clients I would only use their e-mail information for business purposes and since I can put a link to Clayton Accounting in an e-mail letter, the e-mail message can be short, and the main body of information provided through the link.  CenturyLink has a plan on how to market small businesses online and through social media.  It’s been requiring me to be pro-active and believe me, it requires me to think of things to write about and then actually write (but my coach has been very patient).  I’m a person that likes to write, so that shouldn’t be a problem; the problem is conveying the information in such a manner as to not appear to be rambling (I’ve read blogs from other accounting professionals, and I have a lot to learn.  Perhaps I’ll insert links to their blogs in my blog so they get credit!).

While I can’t say I’ve seen increased business, I haven’t sent out the invitations, either, which means I need to get busy updating my contacts list and e-mail addresses (more to learn!).   I have a lot of clients that have blanks in the e-mail space, and clients that probably have really old e-mail addresses.   I’m going to have to send out some snail mail, too, to let the rest of the client database know we need e-mail addresses, if they have one, and to remind them of up-coming deadlines.

It’s so hard to believe that September is almost here; schools’ starting and there are still people who need to get their income tax information together to file their return and time is running out.  Extension deadlines are coming on faster than we think.  Corporate extensions have a September 15 deadline.  If returns aren’t filed, there are penalties.

I fall in the category of needing to complete my return, but I’ve been working on getting everything gathered up.  My husband says its my responsibility to keep track of everything – that’s why he married me.  Over the years we’ve had more than one business that’s I’ve had to manage the books for, too, so you’d think I’d have everything down pat, but, hey, I’m human just like everyone else (and those that have seen my office know what I’m talking about!).

Is the reason you haven’t managed to get everything ready because you’re procrastinating, or that you have so much to go through?  People in the first category need lots of prodding.  People in the second category need suggestions as to how to get through everything.  The first suggestion is to take a realistic look at your receipts.  You can call the pharmacy to get a printout of your prescription purchases thereby eliminating having to add up all those receipts.

Your charitable contributions to your church should have an annual acknowledgement, or some kind of individual acknowledgement, and any non-cash contributions should not only have a receipt, you should also have a list of the donations and the fair market value YOU want to place on the items.  If you need help figuring out what to value those items, a good source is Goodwill or Salvation Army .  And, remember, to qualify donations must be for “gently used” items.  If the items are broken they should not be donated because usually there is no way for the recipient organization to fix a broken item.  Sometimes you can find individuals that do repair items, but you should check, first.

Have you ever been to a consignment store or a second hand store?  They don’t take junk because they don’t want to sell junk.  Same goes for Goodwill or the Salvation Army stores.  People that shop at Goodwill or the Salvation Army Thrift stores are looking for bargains and if you’re a savvy shopper you will find them.  There are lots of people that only wear this seasons clothing and they have to money to buy new clothes frequently.  What to do with last seasons clothes – donate them and get a tax deduction!

If you’re having a problem figuring out if you should take the time to include certain things, please, call your tax preparer and ask them.  They can usually tell you if something should be included or not.  Might just possibly eliminate some of your headaches.  And, remember, we tax preparers reserve the right to charge more the closer to the deadline you bring in your stuff; we have enough stress with the April deadline; we don’t need that same stress in October!

Over the past several weeks I have been working on marketing my accounting business via a blog – with the help of some really great advisors from CenturyLink.  I was given assistance redoing my website AND given coaching on things like blogging and social networking through Facebook, etc.  All this if I would write (honestly) about my experience.

My experience has been great.  Granted, I am having a hard time writing a weekly blog, but as time goes on I hope to get more comfortable in the whole process and be able to incorporate some real client relative information in to the posts and maybe get lucky enough to see comments from actual clients, not just spammers and people I don’t know.  Sure, it’s nice to know people are looking at the site, but are those people from the Tri-Cities looking for accounting, bookkeeping or income tax help, or from who-knows-where just looking to try and sell me something?

Another thing CenturyLink helped me with with re-bundling my services (phone, internet, etc.).  Several years ago I was contacted by another company that told me they could offer me much better prices on my phone service that I left CenturyLink.  It took a several months before I realized I wasn’t saving anything, but I was locked in.

Fortunately, I left my DSL/Internet with CenturyLink and when my commitment with the other guys was up I was ready to go back to CenturyLink but I had already been working on re-developing the website, etc., all because I finally looked at some of the promotional advertising CenturyLink had been sending me on a regular basis (sometimes it’s not just junk mail; sometimes it’s good stuff!!).

Once I finally decided to read some of the stuff I found out that CenturyLink had all these cool things to offer to help small businesses with hosting and building a website, marketing their business online, and assisting them with a new form of advertising – social media.  For those of us that are uneducated in the ways of social media and how beneficial it can be to our business, this is really great.

I know I’m going to miss the weekly discussions with my coaches, but I also know they’re only an e-mail away should I need help with something.

Life’s never fair.  Our lives are constantly changing; sometimes life throws a fast ball you can hit over the centerfield fence for a home run in the bottom of the 9^th for a grand slam, and sometimes it’s a curve ball for strike three, game over.  Those are the hardest.  My best friend just called me with what’s got to be the absolute worst thing that can happen to a parent and it’s happened to her twice in a lifetime.  There’s nothing you can say at such a time other than “my heart’s breaking for you” because unless you’ve been there, you don’t truly know how they feel.

There’s also nothing worse than reading the paper and seeing the name of a client in the obituary section, especially when you only see most tax clients once a year.  Then you have to hope a family member will call you so you can find out what happened.  We consider our clients friends because even though we see some of them only one or two times a year, some have been coming to us for years and it’s always nice to catch up on what’s been happening; good to hear things like new additions to the family and sad when we hear of the loss of a loved one or some other negative happening.

The past couple of years have been hard on so many people, financially too.  Job layoffs create a situation where people start watching their spending and stop using the services of businesses that deal in non-essentials.  People think longer about their major purchases, real estate becomes a buyer’s market.  Sometimes it becomes necessary to move to find work; sometimes you’re forced into foreclosure on your home or your car is repossessed and sometimes bankruptcy is the only way to get the situation under control.

Situations such as bankruptcy or foreclosure can have tax consequences.  Debt forgiveness can have unforeseen tax consequences.  When it comes to preparing your tax return, we need to know what’s been going on in your life because “life” could affect your return.

Blogging is totally new to me.  Sure, I’m one of those people that used to write long letters to friends, and now have a tendency to write long e-mails to friends, but blogging…that’s not exactly the same.  I’ve actually gone out and looked at the blogs of other accountants to get ideas.  Some appear to have been doing their blog for a long time.

My coach at Qwest (now Century Link) has been very patient with me learning all this stuff, and has helped me understand that these blogs don’t have to be all that formal.  I’m sharing news and information with my clients both near (here in the Tri-Cites) and far (places like California, New Hampshire, Nevada, Florida, Singapore – yes, we’re international!!), and I can ramble on, but only a bit.  The suggestion is “write like you would talk to someone; keeps it friendly”.  Through this experience Qwest has been helping me learn to market my business online (in exchange for me blogging about my Qwest experience) in a way a phone book ad just can’t do!  Who know, one of these days I might get brave enough to include pictures.

We’ve had a few people (other than potential spammers) look at the site and give feedback, and we’re slowly getting people to “like” us on Facebook, but then, we haven’t actively sent out requests through Facebook yet, but that will be coming up shortly.  We’re going to work on getting e-mail information on more clients, and start sending out little reminder e-mails to check what’s new on the website.  In the past we sent out a little news letter only around Christmas.  Now we can keep in contact with clients more frequently because life changes happen every day, not just at year end.

Qwest bundled up my phone services, internet service and are hosting my website; they helped me build that website and will work with me to keep that site from getting stale.  All it takes is an e-mail and major changes, such as the picture or general theme, can be changed.  Phone books are necessary for people that don’t use the internet, but with more and more people using the internet and social media to find services, it only makes sense to focus on keeping a website attractive.

I want to make this blog as affective as possible and that means writing on a regular basis and topics should be about things of interest to clients, as a way to keep in touch during the non-tax season, so please write comments if there is something you might like me to discuss (I’m open to suggestions!).  Remember, we’re here to help you.

Can you believe July is almost over?  We filed tax extensions for a number of clients in April and while we realize many people take their vacations this time of year, we would like to encourage those extended clients take some time, now, to begin gathering up their tax documents and getting them in to us so we can work on them during August so we’re not under the gun come October.  October of last year reminded us of April and it was not fun.

This time of year is also a good time to review where you stand with regard to your income tax withholding, especially those of you that make estimate payments, to review your income, investment returns, etc.  While it’s great to get a big refund, it’s better if YOU have that money during the year!  Please give us a call if you would like to have us do a quick review.  The next 1040ES payment is due September 15, and if the estimate that was created when we did your return seems high, we can adjust it for the September payment and even the January payment.

Besides doing income tax returns, this time of year we have also been busy doing state revenue and payroll tax returns for our small business clients.  As accountants, we never seem to run out of things that need to be done – from payroll preparation to business bookkeeping to income tax return preparation – we do it all.  Heck, we’ve even helped people get their personal check register reconciled!

If you had looked at the Clayton Accounting & Tax Service website in the last few months you would have noticed it didn’t look like it did in previous years.  Previously I had paid for a canned (beautiful) website, but the cost to maintain such a site just got to be too much, so I had decided to save money and develop my own website.  Well, that didn’t turn out like I had hoped, so a few weeks ago I decided it was time to seriously do something about that and called Qwest, now Century Link, to take advantage of an advertising offer I’d received.

That offer included not only tools to allow me to create my website, but also weekly coaching to teach me about social media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) in exchange for my honest views on Qwest services.  As of right now, WOW!  The coaches I’ve been assigned for this little project have been so very helpful for someone totally uneducated in “social media”, and on assisting me with the setup of the various pages on the website and how to get the right “look”.  The weekly coaching sessions kept me on track to accomplish what I had set out to do.  Yes, I still have things to work on, but right now there’s at least something there thanks to my Qwest coaches.

Sure, I have a personal Facebook account (only because my daughter needed to expand on her Farmville game), but now, not only do I have a personal Facebook account, Clayton Accounting & Tax Service has a Facebook presence also.  I would hope my clients with Facebook accounts become fans of Clayton Accounting & Tax Service!

I continue to learn, and hopefully these blogs will be informative.  Please – become a fan, and write comments (good or bad).  Comments will help me understand if my blogs are doing what they should, or are just ramblings.

Wow, updated (new) web site and a BLOG!

From what I understand a blog is suppose to be a way to communicate to our current and future clients; a way to let them know a little about us and hopefully communicate tidbits of information that may of be helpful.

Of course, the hardest part of starting something like this blog is where to start:  Do I start with a history of who we are? Or would it be better to discuss the services we offer?  I guess that just shows there’s lots of potential for future blogs.

Our Clients:  We have a pretty diverse group of clients.  And because of this diversity we offer a wide variety of services to our clients.  We have your everyday, run of the mill, group of clients we see once a year to prepare their income tax return, we have clients that see us a couple of times a year because their particular situation sometimes needs a mid-year review just to make sure everything’s on track, and we have clients we see frequently because their particular needs involve regular payroll preparation, regular incoming reporting to the state Department of Revenue, regular payroll tax reporting.

There’s also that infrequent group of people we help that call us for help with issues such as understanding letters from the IRS.  Sometimes they have prepared their own return, or they had their return prepared by a competitor.  We don’t discriminate because by helping a non-client we might gain a client; for sure we’ve helped someone.

We’re like our clients, current and future, and we want to be able to offer them whatever type of accounting or tax service they need.  If there’s a service you (client or future client) need, by all means, please give us a call.