Stop Pretending

Payment Terms by Client

In business, we sometimes offer different payment terms to different clients.  Keeping a new client on a short leash with “net” payment terms is sometimes the way to go.  While other, long-term clients, earn the privelage of  extended payment terms such as “net 30″.

The Bee now offers a way for you to select payment terms on a client by client basis.  We have added a payment terms field to the client profile page.  If you enter payment terms in this field, the terms will be placed on any new invoices you create for this client.  If the terms field is left blank in the client profile, the Bee will continue to default the pament terms on new invoices to the last entry made on an invoice.

Improved Permissions for Team Members

To help our customers better manage their growing businesses, the Bee now supports a more granular approach to “permissions” for team members.  We’ve started by attacking the most critical areas based upon your feedback.

Now, Bee admins may restrict a team member’s access for Expenses and Time Entries, to allow the team member to only see their data.  Meaning, the time associated with that team member, and the expenses that the team member has entered.

These permissions are still found and maintained in Setup / Team.

The Bee adds Invoice Detail Report

The Bee’s new Invoice Detail Report is the swiss army knife of reports!  Here are just some of the things this report can do for you:

* Show how much business (revenue/sales)  you have done with client “X” over the past 90 days.

* Show the detail of all unpaid invoices.

* Show all the invoices with service / item “Y” for the past 6 months.

* Show the invoice detail for a specific category of service / items.

* Export the detail to a spreadsheet for further analysis.

How to Handle Product Sales in the Bee

The Bee was built to serve the invoicing and bookkeeping needs of service businesses and freelancers.  However, its common for a service business to also sell some tangible items  from time to time (ex. hardware, supplies).  Here are some tips on how best to handle product sales in the Bee.

* Invoice your clients for products you sell by setting up “items” in the Bee.

* From Setup, add a new Books account, “Cost of Sales”.

* At the end of the month, make a Books General Journal entry to record what you paid for the items you sold.

* Print a Profit and Loss report to show your profitability and the effect of Cost of Sales.

How to Select a Bank

When looking for a bank to do business with, ask the banker these questions:

1. Do you have online banking?

2. Do you have a business, “free checking”, account option.  Allows you to write checks and make deposits without incurring service charges.

3. Is there a minimum balance required for free checking?

4. How long after I make a deposit, do funds become available?  Many banks take 3-7 days before they make funds available.  Not good. Its your money!

Happy banking!

Getting Your EIN

One of the first steps in starting your business should be to procure an EIN.  Without an EIN, your will not be able to open a bank account in the name of the business. The Employer ID Number proves that your legal entity exists.  Many  people do not realize that an EIN may be acquired before you file documents to incorporate with your state.

If your business is organized as a sole proprietorship, your EIN will be your social security number.  However, sole proprietorship is less than ideal.  By forming a corporation (LLC), you shield your personal assets from liability.  Remember that client that threatened to sue you because their website went down?

Back to the EIN.   Getting your EIN is probably the easiest transactions you will ever do with the IRS.  You may apply online with the IRS or simply call them up.  The IRS will issue your EIN immediately.

You Know You Need a New Accountant When..

You know you need a new accountant when:

1. You ask them how they are doing business in the cloud, and they say, “What’s the cloud”.

2. They blindly recommend QuickBooks for your business without considering other options.

3. They force or threaten you to use QuickBooks by insinuating that bad things will happen to you if you don’t.

4. They complain about having to log into your cloud-based accounting system to help YOU.

5. They claim that their fees will be lower if you use a system that THEY are familiar with.

Don’t let that tail wag the dog.

The One Page Business Plan

Last night I gave a talk on how to develop a business plan for a small business.  The fifty women in the audience, were part of a Cincinnati entrepreneurship program, Bad Girl Ventures.  The energy and excitement in the room was sky high!  Imagine fifty entrepreneurs, beginning their business journey.

Writing a business plan, while a necessary requirement of starting a business, can be a major source of dread and anxiety for the entrepreneur.  Long, detailed, business plans that take hours and hours to complete are often pursued.  It doesn’t need to be this way.

A much shorter version, the “One Page Business Plan”, allows the entrepreneur to move quickly into action, summarizing her key assumptions about the marketplace.  Suffering and dread is dramatically reduced.

Here’s a link to my slide presentation, Zen and the Business Plan, that will get you started.

Enjoy!

User Permissions for Invoicing and Bookkeeping Added

The Bee has added “permissions” to our Invoicing and Bookkeeping service.   Now, when you add a new team member, you have the option of setting permissions for the team member.

Maybe you would like someone to enter their time, but not generate an invoice.  Or have an assistant enter some expenses, but not access your Books.  Team permissions give you control over the more sensitive areas of your business.  Here’s how it looks:

An Easy Alternative to QuickBooks

Finally. Its been two years in the making, but we now have an easy alternative to QuickBooks.  What started as an “online invoicing system”, has evolved into a simple and elegant bookkeeping system for small service businesses and freelancers.

We have heard from a lot of… QuickBooks “refugees”.  Thank you for taking time to tell us what you need, and most importantly, what you don’t. And a special thank you to those that took the plunge, ditched your QuickBooks, and became beta users.

To your success!