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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd
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Last Post Feb 3, 2006 11:05 AM by: deirdre@ebay.com
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deirdre@ebay.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Jan 30, 2006 6:58 PM
Topic: Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy

Host: dkennedycpa
Date: Friday 02/03
Time: 10:00 to 11:00 PT
Location: Workshop Board

Description: Accounting can be easy when you know what you're doing! Best-selling author and CPA Diane Kennedy will discuss basic bookkeeping techniques, why it is important to review and record your business transactions, and when certain bookkeeping tasks should be performed.

Hope you can join us!!!!

Deirdre
eBay Community Development
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dkennedycpa
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:29 PM
Hello. My name is Diane Kennedy. I’ve been a CPA and Tax Strategist for over 25 years. My specialty is working with small business owners and real estate investors. My tax education company, Tax Loopholes, teaches people through books like “Tax Loopholes for eBay Sellers”, tapes and seminars on how to take advantage of the legal tax loopholes available to everyone. First though, the stuff that our lawyers make us say: Laws and practices vary from state to state and if tax, accounting, legal and other specific expert advise is required, the services of a professional should be obtained.

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:29 PM
Welcome to “Accounting Made Easy.” I really wanted to call today’s workshop “Accounting Made FUN and Easy” but I thought that might be pushing it a little. Granted, I’m an accountant by trade and so I’m biased, but I have to tell you that one of the things I like most about having my own business is being able to read financial statements. Every financial statement tells a story and if you can figure out what that story is, you can figure what you need to do more of and what you need to do less of.

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:29 PM
Financial statements will only be as good as the accounting behind them. If you want to grow your business, make more money or plan for taxes, then you’ll need good accounting. So, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Of course, we can’t cover everything about accounting in just an hour, so I’ll cover some of the basics and give you my Top Tips for eBay Sellers. Then, I want to make sure we have time for your questions

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:30 PM
So, the first question is “How will you keep your eBay business records?” You have two real choices here: (1) hire a bookkeeper to do it for you, and (2) do it yourself. (Option (3) don’t do it at all, isn’t really a viable choice.)

Hiring an outside bookkeeper may be one of the easiest solutions. Depending on the volume of your business, you might find that the expense is well worth it. You won’t have to worry about keeping your own records. If you are already working full-time, the chances are good that your eBay business is going to be taking up a fair amount of your personal time, and adding bookkeeping on top of that may be more time than you are prepared to give up. Plus, giving up the bookkeeping function to someone else means you get to concentrate on what you do best – making more money!

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:31 PM
There are two important reasons why you can’t simply turn over the bookkeeping to someone and forget about it entirely. First, you will need to know how to find a good bookkeeper. That means you’ve got be able to tell the difference between a good one and a bad one. And, sadly, there are some really bad bookkeepers out there. In fact, it’s estimated that the US economy needs to have four percent of all college graduates become accountants. Since, 1990, however, exactly half of that number - two percent - have become accountants. Who has made up the difference? Bad bookkeepers! The second reason is that you also need to be able to talk to them. If it ever seems that accountants and lawyers have their own language, then guess what – they do!

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:31 PM
Being completely ignorant of how bookkeeping works also brings with it another set of problems. There are plenty of business owners (and ex-business owners) out there with horror stories about leaving everything to a bookkeeper he or she thought was trustworthy, and finding out later that the bookkeeper had systematically stripped the company of all funds before disappearing.

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:31 PM
Option #2 Do It Yourself
There are lots of ways to keep your books. Some people keep them manually, using a paper ledger system and a pencil. Others use a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel, which can also work, but not quite as well. The majority of business owners elect to purchase accounting software, like Peachtree, Simply Accounting or some form of QuickBooks.

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:32 PM
If you decide to do it yourself and you don’t have a bookkeeping background we recommend that you use computer accounting software that is specifically designed for this purpose. Manual accounting methods can be very time-consuming and have the highest probability of something going wrong. Usually what happens is that you forget to record one side or the other of a transaction, or, even worse, you transpose digits. Either way, your accounts don’t balance at the end of the day and you can spend hours of valuable time looking for the accounting equivalent of a needle in a haystack.

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:32 PM
With a spreadsheet, or even better, accounting software, that doesn’t happen, because it can’t. The system comes with built-in checks and balances, meaning you can’t enter a transaction if you don’t have your debits and credits in order, and for the same amounts.

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:32 PM
And, while there are several different software programs out on the market, our choice for operating an eBay business is QuickBooks Pro. That’s because it is so simple to use, and so widely used, that the chances are your bookkeeper or CPA will be familiar with the software. This allows you tremendous freedom in where your bookkeeper is located, as you can simply email your business’s file back and forth. In keeping with our ideal of shared record keeping, you can enter some transactions on your own, send the file to your bookkeeper along with any additional paper records, and your bookkeeper can easily check to make sure you have entered everything in the right place.

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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dkennedycpa
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:32 PM
There are really three versions of QuickBooks that are suited to an inventory-based business like eBay: QuickBooks Basic, QuickBooks Pro and QuickBooks Premier. For very large businesses, QuickBooks Enterprise Edition may also be suitable.

Of the three QuickBooks products listed above, QuickBooks Pro is, in our view, the best of the three. That’s because it offers the widest range of services and ability to grow and expand with your business.

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:32 PM
After you’ve installed your software, all QuickBooks programs will walk you through an interview. The interview has been developed by the programmers at Intuit to help establish the right parameters for QuickBooks to operate in and has been designed to be very user-friendly. But, you still need to know a few things going in, and if you aren’t familiar with accounting or bookkeeping terminology, you could end up with books that aren't properly set up, which could become a problem at tax time.

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:33 PM
Three Steps to Start Your Accounting
Step # 1: Review accounting software needs. If you have decided to have an outside bookkeeper perform all functions, you may still want to consider using the software for your personal financial statements.

Step #2: If you, like the majority of experienced eBay users, decide to use QuickBooks Pro, review the tutorial that accompanies the package.

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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Member Workshop: Accounting Made Easy - February 3rd

Feb 1, 2006 5:33 PM
Step #3: Begin set-up. Some of the items you'll need to know will be:
- Company name
- Address
- EIN (Tax ID Number)
- Beginning month of year-end
- Inventory List
- Asset List

The next step will be to set up your Chart of Accounts. The chart of accounts is the listing of accounts that your accounting software uses to prepare the financial statements. First let’s do a little review of the five types of accounts.

Diane Kennedy, CPA
www.taxloopholes.com
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