Early Retirement

This is IT, folks!
You can catch me zoomin' off into the sunset leaving the World of Bookkeeping for Others behind in a golden cloud of dust and denial. My final words include:

1. If you don't really want to take 100% responsibility for your business, then you best get an Employer to do it for you.

2. If you assume your bookkeeper double agents as a personal
assistant, then you need a more expensive accountant to explain how it all works.

3. Don't forget to let your bookkeeper talk to your accountant. If you don't have an accountant, get one. The accountant helps you make some decisions about how to run your business and the bookkeeper can then keep your records according to those choices you've made. If you think the bookkeeper is going to make the decisions for you, you are out of your mind.

4. Have Fun!

Don't forget to vote

No, really, Don't forget to vote:

Find out where you need to go if you don't yet know:

smartvoter.org
or
1-800-MY-VOTE-1


Election tampering, vote suppression, or other dirty tricks can be reported to the non-partisan National Campaign for Fair Elections at:

nationalcampaignforfairelections.org
or
1-886-OUR-VOTE

Post Apocalyptic Post

Ya know, every time I quit my job to run off with the circus, my world gets a whole lot better.

http://srl.org/shows/sanjose/

Many new bookkeeping opportunities have come out of the recent get-together in the form of collaborative projects that I'm designing/fabricating and tracking income/expenses for reality-based creative + technical fun. Does it get any cooler than that? No. No it doesn't.

Progress

Slightly over a year into this bookkeeping adventure, I have just walked away from clients #3 and #6. I've seen about as much resistance to organizational sanity as I can handle. I have seen how much people spend on pens, popcorn and propane, and I've seen how often and I've seen the anxieties related to processing the data. I have weeded my client roster to one small service business, my own small service business, my own household records and my new creative venture- the baby t shirts.

Putting accurate data into an accounting program and then compiling reports is a rewarding and satisfying process for those who actually want to know what is going on with their efforts to make a profit at what they do. I certainly do, and the one remaining client from my first year of client seeking does as well. She listened to my advice and suggestions about how to collect and input the agonizingly mundane details, and now it takes me half the time to process her paper trail. She knows what the hell is actually going on in her accounts. She knows that it's possible to expand into new areas of interest for herself and her clients. We have a winner, folks!!

No Sooner Were the Words...

out of my mouth and onto the page...After extolling the virtues of autopay and consolidating routine payments, I lost my wallet. It was just before I made a master list of everything in it, and what is linked to what. DOH!!

I had to pull out all records and scramble around on a Saturday night (instead of going to the movies) to find all my autopayments and which card it was on to cancel and reinstate with the new credit card number. SO- putting everything you can onto autopay is still a grand thing, just do yourself a favor and make a cheat sheet with what lives where in the event of a sudden change.

AutoPay Everything

It aint no huge thang, but actually it is...put as many routine bills as possible onto autopay from either a credit card or bank account. It's the way of the future. The time saved by not having to remember to pay a bill, let alone, the gathering of the papers and missing envelope and do I have a stamp and did I get it into the mail soon enough to avoid a late fee is enough of a good argument to render NOT doing it "ridiculous".

Mastering Correction of Accounting Errors

Posting incorrectly is an accounting fact of life, and it's a party how to figure out what happened, and what to do when you find the error. How to handle an error is completely dependent on when it is discovered. Many errors are caught during the end of year adjustments.

Here's an alphabetized list of nine (9!!) common accounting errors:

Accrual or Deferral: incorrectly tracking A/R and A/P, or paid in advance.
Arithmetic: your math stinks!
Categorization: posting to the wrong account, i.e. Rent Expense instead of Picnic Supplies Expense.
Improper Doubtful % Estimates: you guessed 4% when it's really 6%.
Incorrect Accounting Principle: you expensed when you ought to have capitalized.
Omission: ooops! forgot to post.
Posting: you said deb-it when you meant cred-it.
Slide: decimal in the wrong place. 100 instead of 1000. Whoah!
Transposition: switching 2 numbers a la $82.34 instead of $82.43...I was surpised to see how often I did this in the beginning.

AIPB & QB

I am really impressed with the material in the books I bought from the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers. After reading many other textbooks and how-to guides, I feel satisfied with the quality of the explanations and quiz formatting. It's not easy stuff to explain or absorb because things are happening on a number of simultaneous conceptual levels over a time factor. Also, the revolution in accounting software has made the process more accessible to those who haven't got a clue about what's going on behind the interface...but it's not like the accounting principles have been simplified in any way. These books cover what's actually happening behind the scenes, with an occasional shout out to the more modern ways.

Anniversary Coming Up

The 15th of July will be the first year anniversary of AB,B. The training wheels come off and I'm gonna raise my rates. w00t!
I'm also celebrating my first year wedding anniversary this weekend. Go Team!