If you have a business, then you have tax payments. This is one of those “good” problems to have lol!** One quick and easy way to make those payments is using the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System, or EFTPS.
If you already have an EIN, then you might also have one of those little yellow covered coupon books for your tax payments. (If you need a Federal Tax ID#, and EIN, go here.) I’m talking about the book with the yellow cover and the little blue coupons that you take to the bank to make your payroll or income tax payments. Well, with EFTPS, you don’t have to do that anymore. No more coupons, no more trips to the bank. Life is just a small tid of a bit easier. ☺
Once you have an EIN , you can then apply for an EFTPS account by going to www.eftps.com. You can access your EFTPS account either online or via the internet, whichever you’re more comfortable with. I usually choose the internet because it’s a bit faster than having to dial through all the menus on the telephone, but whichever you feel more comfortable with is fine. This is one of those times where whatever makes you feel good and gets the task done is the way to go.
Know What You’re Selling
Do you know what you’re selling? If you say “hammers” or “Avon” or even “windows”, believe it or not, you might want to think about it some more.
In general, people evaluate a purchase intellectually, but they decide what to purchase emotionally. That’s a very important point to remember when creating marketing collateral (Which is just a fancy word for your advertising, etc.).
What does Beyoncé sell? Well, when you get right down to it, she sells sex. How? By getting YOU to feel sexy. Come on, you hear her music, your booty starts bouncing, and you find yourself dancing across the office shaking your hips and singing, right? No? Okay, maybe that’s just me. ☺
Even Presidents and Queens Do It
That’s the bottom line: Everybody sells something. Whether you’re a school, a boutique, a grocery store, or the ruler of the free world, you’re selling something. What’s more, the “something” isn’t always a tangible product, even if said “something” is represented by a tangible product, like say, a CD.
One of my goals with this blog is to explain the fundamentals of accounting and bookkeeping. I truly believe that if you don’t understand basic accounting and bookkeeping and financial statements, then you probably shouldn’t be in business. I know, harsh, but the simple fact is, if you don’t know where your money is, then you don’t KNOW WHERE YOUR MONEY IS.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve met a potential client and the first thing they tell me about is how they hired someone to do their accounting and that person ripped them off. It always comes down to one thing: they didn’t understand accounting. I don’t want that to happen to you!
Over the last three days, we’ve discussed what financial statements are, and the two main reports: the Balance Sheet and the Income Statement (aka Profit and Loss Statement).
The Income Statement or Profit and Loss Statement, sometimes known as the “P&L”, is the report that totals up all the Revenue you’ve earned and all the Expenses you’ve incurred during a certain period. The Profit and Loss and the Balance Sheet make up what most people refer to as your “Financial Statements”. (There’s this other report called the Statement of Cash Flows, but that thing even confuses me, and I purportedly know what I’m doing. So we’re going to table it for much later. ☺)
Here are the pieces of the Profit and Loss Statment:
Revenue – Total of all the Sales you’ve made.
Cost of Goods Sold – What you paid for what you sold.
