Office Position Available

Job title:  Receptionist and Office Assistant

Reports to:   General Manager


Job purpose

We are looking for a receptionist and office assistant to interface with our clients and support

our accounting staff.  In addition, this position is responsible for client invoicing and payments.

The ideal candidate will be experienced in customer service and interaction.  This position is the

face and voice of the company, so this person MUST have the attributes and experience that

are required to manage client interactions and interface with staff to meet company goals.

Duties and responsibilities


Administration

 Greet and provide support to visitors

 Manage incoming calls, faxes, mail, and e-mails and distribute to staff

 Manage outgoing faxes and mail

 Manage office supply list and associated ordering

 File creation and filing

 Maintain general office organization

 Assist general manager with administrative tasks

 Create and manage production software, specifically with project creation


Accounts Receivable

 Create monthly, quarterly, and general invoices in QuickBooks and CRM

 Process recurring payments

 Process payments

 Client interaction, directed by general manager, for collection of payment


Production Assistance

 Scanning and copying for accountants

 Data entry during overflow periods


Qualifications

The ideal candidate will have many of these qualities.

 Reliable, prompt, and professional

 Comfort and skill working with clients that may be challenging at times

 Extremely organized

 Comfortable working with little oversight

 Willing to learn and perhaps improve on office practices


The ideal candidate will have these credentials.

 High school diploma or GED

 Proficiency in Microsoft Office (Outlook, Excel, & Word)

 Minimum of 3 years in customer service or equivalent

The ideal candidate will learn and grow in these areas

 Proficiency in Excel

 Proficiency in QuickBooks

 Proficiency in our contact and production management software


Working conditions

Our office is both professional and relaxed.  We are not a strictly hierarchical office, rather we

approach client service as a team, in which we all have different roles and responsibilities.

The office is located near the intersection of Parham and Patterson.  Beginning hours are

Monday through Thursday 9AM-1PM.  There is potential for increased hours and

responsibilities associated with this position.

Planning for the next stage of your growing business

     There are so many small businesses in RVA that are thriving and successful.  I thought this video was great to help those businesses in their next stage of growth and planning for the future.  That  it's highlighting the growth of a food truck business was icing on the cake considering our blossoming foodie scene here in Richmond.  It's all about cash flow and investing back into your own business. Oh, and don't forget to pay yourself!

Good Accounting Helps Make Sense of Growth

Starting a business is one thing.  Typically, you're going to be spending more than you're making— at first.  Then you see it grow.  People like what you’ve done, hooray!  You see sales are up and you start thinking growth.  But how? Which way?  How much?  It can all seem so unclear when you’re thinking about expanding while trying to keep up progress at the same time.  There’s one thing that can help make everything clear and it’s not magic— it’s good accounting.

I’ve written about ways to track growth and how good accounting can lead to smarter investments of your company’s money.  This article by Kangelon Dexter overviews those basic points by asking a few questions:

Can You Answer These Questions About Your Business?

When you’re growing your business, it’s a lot like being a race horse with blinders on. You’re focusing on the goal ahead, and not paying a lot of attention to what’s going on around you. It’s great to be hyper-focused in the short term, but eventually you’re going to need to take off your blinders and look around. Are you headed where you need to be? Do you know?

While you can’t predict the future, there are a lot of questions you can answer about your business with the right reporting. With built in reports, and business insights, Sage One can help you answer important questions and tell you exactly where you stand. Can you answer these important questions about your business?

How much are you *really* making?

Reviewing cash flow statements and assuring that you’re making money is important. But cash flow is only a piece of the picture. Profit and Loss statements are based on accruals, and will give you an overall picture of how your business is thriving – or not. Without it, you’re operating in the dark. Reviewing your profit and loss statement on a monthly basis will help you make important decisions about your business finances.

How much money will I be making – most likely?

This might be the closest thing you have to a crystal ball for your business – a cash flow forecast. This report estimates how much you will most likely bring in and how much you will most likely spend in the next set period of time. Using projected income and expenses, a cash flow report will help you predict any upcoming surpluses or shortages and plan accordingly.

Which clients are overdue on their invoices?

As a small business owner, you’re busy. You don’t have time to constantly follow up with clients who have overdue invoices. You need a clear way to see who owes you – and who is the most past due. An accounts receivable aging report breaks down unpaid invoices into 30 day chunks (typically) so you can see who is a month late and who has owed you for an entire season. It’s a simple way to get an at a glance view of who you need to follow up with.

For the full article featured on Sage, by Kangelon Dexter, click here.

E-Commerece & Inventory; calculate its true cost

This is a great article on e-commerce and how inventory can affect your expenses in unexpected ways.  This is for any small business owner, and especially speaks to the growing number of business owners who sell through sites like Etsy or Big Cartel.  Opportunity Cost is often overlooked, but this article by Michael Manzione outlines how to calculate the true cost of your inventory.


What's the True Cost of Inventory?

Inventory is often the largest asset of ecommerce merchants. Inventory defines merchants’ businesses and their position in the marketplace. It defines customers’ expectations of the business.

For most ecommerce merchants, the cost of inventory is the largest expense item and what leads to the most financial woes. There’s typically a direct correlation with inventory turns and company success. This seems obvious: You sell more, you turn more. However, even successful companies carry too much inventory and don’t fully recognize the financial impact.

In “SKU Management Ensures Inventory Profits,” my July article, I addressed SKU selection, answering the question: “Do I have the right item at the right margin?”

In this article, I expand the focus on profitability to managing the cost of inventory.

The true cost of inventory extends far beyond the inventory itself and the cost of goods sold. The cost of managing and maintaining inventory is a significant expense in its own right. But the true cost of inventory doesn’t even stop there. Inventory carrying costs add about 20 to 25 percent to the actual cost.

Understanding Inventory Carry Costs

To get a better understanding, one must measure the cost of carrying inventory. Let’s review some of the costs.

• Financing inventory. In its simplest form, you can calculate the cost of borrowing money to purchase inventory by looking at the interest rate payments. However, for some companies inventory financing may include part of a line of credit that is also used for working capital.

In many cases when you try to evaluate the real cost, this one line item may become daunting. But don’t be discouraged; come up with a best guess. It’s more critical to understand what is being financed externally versus internally to know what should be measured.

• Opportunity costs. This cost is almost always overlooked. For opportunity costs, we’re answering the question, “How else could I invest my money?” If it were invested in something else, what is the realistic return I can expect? If you’re unsure, default to the interest rate from a tax free municipal bond as a consistent and conservative way to apply this cost.

• Insurance and taxes. Many merchants overlook this cost, too. It should typically be a variable cost: It goes up and down with the amount of inventory you carry. Depending on the volume of your business and the swing in inventory, this number could be adjusted as frequently as every quarter.

If the inventory value is fairly consistent or if the value is small, don’t bother calculating this more than yearly. However, if you do have large swings from one season to another, any savings will go straight to the bottom line. Many companies today self-insure and keep a reserve to cover the associated risk. That reserve constitutes an additional opportunity cost that should be considered.

• Handling expenses. These expenses are made up mostly of wages and benefits, but also include lease payments and depreciation on material handling equipment, depreciation on automation, and miscellaneous expenses for supplies such as pallets, packaging, labeling materials, and the like.

• Warehouse overhead. The quickest way to measure this is to split the total expenses for rent, utilities, repairs and maintenance, and property taxes by the percentage of the building associated with processing customer orders.

Here is an example. Assume a merchant uses a third-party fulfillment company. The average rate for pallet space in the U.S. is $15.00 per month. For simplicity, assume 30 items occupy that space. The first month the merchant is paying $.50 per item. At the end of the second month, assume the merchant has 25 items left and therefore pays $.60 per item. So at the end of two months, the first 5 items cost the merchant $.50 each to store and by the end of the second month the remaining items costs $1.10 to store.

Therefore, the merchant’s margin shrinks each month that it carries this item. This is a simple example, but the way you are charged can vary. Many fulfillment companies —such as Fulfillment by Amazon — now charge more the longer the inventory sits.

• Inventory control and cycle counting. These expenses typically are comprised of wages and benefits, but may also include the depreciation or operating expenses of equipment, as well as any miscellaneous expenses directly related to your inventory control team.

• Inventory shrinkage, damage, and obsolescence. Accounting for these costs can become quite complicated. But for the sake of simplicity, capture these costs in the fiscal year they occurred or preferably in the same month.

Calculating Overall Carrying Cost

To determine your overall inventory carrying cost, roll up the components in each category annually and see how close you come to the 20 to 25 percent average. Don’t get bogged down with other aspects that should only be considered if you have a skilled accounting team. For example, in reality many of these carrying costs will vary by item, warehouse, product line, category, product size, and volume. You don’t have to get that detailed.

Here’s a example of how to calculate the overall carrying cost for a hypothetical item with a purchase cost of $10.00.

Purchase Cost of Item: $10.00

Financing: $.30
Opportunity Costs: $.50
Insurance and Taxes: $.10
Handling Expense: $.90
Warehouse Overhead: $.45
Inventory Control: $.12
Inventory Shrinkage, Damage, Obsolescence: $.10

True Cost: $12.47

Once you determine the true cost of inventory, you can better address how to evaluate and manage. You’ll also discover what inventory is essential and what is not. When you reduce inventory, not only are you freeing up capital, but you are also creating opportunities to reduce expenses, improve profitability, and increase cash flow.

It can be the difference between success and failure.

For the full article on Practicalecommerce.com, click here.

"Mental Accounting"

While this article has good advice for individuals, it is also food for thought for the small business owner.  Do you frivolously spend unexpected income, even if it's "for your business?"  Just because you have extra cash, doesn't mean that it has amnesty from your budget.  You'll be kicking yourself if you haven't saved enough for taxes, if your costs go up, or you don't have enough in your emergency fund.  Being aware of how you categorize your income is half the battle.

Behavioral Finance: Mental Accounting

The essence of successful financial planning is using your money to meet your life’s goals. In the process, one dollar is as good as another, but curiously our minds do not perceive it that way. We tend to fall prey to the fallacy that behavioral finance calls mental accounting, commonly known as the “two-pocket” theory of money. We treat money differently depending on its source.

It is as though we put earned income in one mental pocket and money we did not expect in another. Studies show we are much more willing to spend money impulsively out of this second pocket.

Our supposedly rational mind objects to mixing the money from the two different pockets. But our minds are tricking us because dollars are completely interchangeable.

To clarify, we are not talking about budgeting. Earmarking dollars for vacation, big-ticket purchases, house payments, college savings and toward retirement is clearly positive and very much encouraged. This type of positive mental accounting aligns perfectly with meeting your financial goals.

But the type of mental accounting that gets us in trouble is what happens when the way we acquired a dollar causes us to ignore our careful planning and spend it differently.

Imagine a university graduate student who budgets enough for rent and food and hopes to save $500 every month, but her take-home pay is only $1,500. Then she sells her textbooks at the end of the semester and finds herself with an extra $250. Rather than putting the additional $250 toward savings, she indulges in luxury items until she’s sure she has spent all the money.

Put yourself in this student’s situation. In your mind, it is as though you have $1,500 in one pocket where you put serious earned money and stick to your budget. In the other pocket, you put the $250, which you now regard as play money, and rationalize that you should only use it to make frivolous purchases.

Most of us find this tendency so strong and irresistible, we would all do well to find ways to forestall the impulsive spending that slows progress toward achieving our financial goals. Allocating your money to meet your needs and desires is an important step in the financial planning process. But first you must gather all the money available in a single pool and allocate it according to your family’s priorities. The source of the money shouldn’t matter. When it does, we cause ourselves unneeded harm.

Studies show that gamblers rarely leave the casino as winners. The reason is not simply because the house has an edge on every game. Mental accounting is also the problem. Gamblers consider their winnings as house money and reason that they can keep on gambling for free. So most gamblers only stop playing when they are losing.

Research has also revealed that when people receive money unexpectedly, they make impulse purchases, typically quite soon afterward. If the amount is significant, perhaps more than $10,000, they may spend 40% to 50% of their windfall. If the amount is small, such as $1,000, they may actually spend two and a half times more than they received.

This propensity is the hope behind the recent stimulus checks Americans received from the government. The rebate was designed to be a relatively small amount, $1,800 for a family of four. Even when people say they plan to use the rebate to pay down debt, they are already engaging in mental accounting, thinking of the money differently simply because of the source.

In polls, Americans claim they will spend only 18% to 40% of the rebate. But if we tracked their actual spending, mental accounting would have badly misled them.

Perhaps they will pay off some of their debt or put money into their 401(k). But most Americans will jump at the chance that they have some extra money to justify a purchase they would not otherwise have made. And they will probably do it more than once.

In fact, studies suggest that average consumers will spend an astonishing additional $4,500 in relatively small purchases simply because they received a $1,800 check: extra money on eating out, electronic toys, and large appliances. Children may be given their $300 as though it somehow belongs to them, and husbands and wives may rationalize using the money as an excuse to make that purchase their partner considers unnecessary. Past research supports the prediction that consumers will spend 250% of their rebate check without even realizing it.

Even the most rational of us who receive money this way spend more as a result. The psychology behind this thinking is so strong, we can safely assume we are all influenced by it.

Thus found money, the green stuff we do not earn or save, is easily spent, wasted, and risked. Most lottery winners are broke or worse within five years of their win. Unfortunately, winning encourages the worst tendencies of those with the temperament to play the lottery in the first place.

Although mental accounting is described as the two-pocket theory of money, I propose adding a third pocket. Earned income is linked to planned purchases in one pocket. Some money is gained unexpectedly and too often provokes impulse spending in the second. But in the third pocket, we could put automatic income, that is, money gained from investment interest, dividends and appreciation. Mental accounting often leaves this third pocket in an investment account to compound and appreciate, helping us reach our long-term goals.

You can’t spend apart from increasing your lifestyle. And when you increase your lifestyle, you increase by large multiples what you will need in retirement to support that lifestyle. Here’s a sobering fact: Every time you increase your spending by $1, you need $23 more in your investments when you retire.

If you get and spend an extra $1,000, you will need $23,000 more in retirement to support your increased lifestyle. You can spend your way into financial troubles, but you can never make your troubles worse by saving.

Another error of mental accounting is to differentiate between income and appreciation. If one stock trades at $100 per share paying a $6 dividend, it’s equivalent to another stock that pays no dividend whose share price rises from $100 to $106 per share. Some people mistakenly think the dividend-paying stock is better during retirement and the appreciating stock is better when you are younger.

Now there is a small distinction: The dividend-paying stock forces you to pay the capital gains rate on the dividend paid, whereas the appreciating stock allows you to defer the capital appreciation until later. But the difference in tax treatments doesn’t matter once you are retired. And it’s much less relevant now that qualified dividends are taxed the same as capital gains. In retirement you can simply sell appreciated stock and pay the capital gains to generate cash for withdrawals.

The real difference between dividend-paying stocks and appreciating stocks is in the type of company. A company with little growth potential, such as a utility, pays its profits out to shareholders in dividends. A different company, perhaps a restaurant with ambitions to open branches across the country, uses its profits to expand. As it does so, it generates more profits from more locations, which drives the share price up. Both types of companies provide portfolio returns that you can spend in retirement.

If you struggle with self-control, only taking the dividends allows you to limit your withdrawals. But it may also cause you to adjust your asset allocation to maximize dividends, putting all of your net worth in one type of investment.

The biggest mistake occurs when people believe they need interest and dividends to generate cash in retirement. As a result they put too great a percentage of their portfolio into fixed-income bonds and do not invest enough in stocks that will keep up with inflation and provide appreciation for the end of their retirement.

The source of your money, whether from interest, yield (dividends) or capital appreciation should not matter.

Part of the emotional push toward using a two-pocket theory of money may stem either from an effort to be disciplined or a failure to do so. In general, people both want to enjoy the money now and also plan for the future. This dilemma between a short-term and long-term focus requires a measure of discipline and willpower that most people don’t have. So they fudge by feeling guilty about using hard-earned money frivolously but fall prey to using easily received money quite carelessly.

There is an upside, however. You can use mental accounting to your advantage by using that third pocket of money and automating as much of your savings as possible. People tend not to count money that is automatically deducted from their paycheck as money they can spend. Increasing the amount you have withdrawn in your 401(k) or 403(b) account is an easy way to use the third pocket to your advantage.

It is also just as painless to have money transferred regularly from your checking account into an investment account. This automatic savings puts money into a mental accounting third pocket from which it is very difficult to spend emotionally. Add to this account any money you receive unexpectedly, and you will be well on the way to securing a successful retirement.

To read the full article by David John Marotta, click here.

Sales Tax Holiday August 7- 9

Recent legislation combined our 3 tax holidays into one big blowout weekend event!  That means qualifying items can be purchased all weekend long just in time for back to school shopping!  Not only can you get all the clothes, shoes and notebooks you need for the school year tax-free, you can also upgrade your home with qualifying Energy Star and WaterSense products.  

School Supplies, Clothing and Footwear:

• School supplies— $20 or less per item
• Clothing and footwear— $100 or less per item

Hurricane and Emergency Preparedness Items:

• Portable generators— $1,000 or less per item
• Gas powered chainsaws— $360 or less per item
• Chainsaw accessories— $60 or less per item
• Other specified hurricane preparedness items with a sales price of $60 or less per item.

Energy Star and WaterSense Items:

• Qualified Energy Star items include dishwashers, clothes washers air conditioners, ceiling fans, light bulbuls, dehumidifiers and refrigerators
• Qualifying WaterSense items include bathroom sink faucets, faucet accessories such as aerators and shower heads, toilets urinals and landscape irrigation controllers.

For more info on what is going to be tax-free this weekend, visit http://www.tax.virginia.gov/

Hardywood Park Brewery's Tax Dispute Finally Being Settled

     After disputing their tax bill since 2012, Hardywood and the City of Richmond are finally coming to a settlement.  Hardywood is an enormously successful brewery that got slapped with an unexpected tax bill that kept them in litigation until now.  Had they been a smaller business, would they have been able to afford to dispute their tax liability for this long?  

     Tax laws are constantly changing.  In order to protect your small business, it’s vital to be prepared for tax season.  With the third quarter tax due dates approaching, take advantage of my free one hour Quickbooks consultation and make an appointment today!

To read more about Hardywood’s tax dispute, read here.