10 Minute Payroll is now going back to it’s old name Van Cleve Payroll. We have a new website at:

www.vanclevepayroll.com

Still at 2800 West 21st Street, Erie, PA

It was Reagan’s favorite joke. Worried that their son was too optimistic,

the parents of a little boy took him to a psychiatrist. Trying to dampen

the boy’s spirits, the psychiatrist showed him into a room piled high with

nothing but horse manure. Yet instead of displaying distaste, the little

boy clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to all fours, and began

digging.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the psychiatrist asked.

“With all this manure,” the little boy replied, beaming, “there must be a

pony in here somewhere.”

I’ve always believed we choose our destiny, that we could plan our lives. I thought I could have long term life goals and through shear determination, anyone could accomplish anything. It’s taken me a while, but I now realize life does not work like that at all. Thinking back to the things in my life that I am most thankful for, none of them happened as a result of my planning. What you CAN do is look for the pony in the pile of manure, keep your mind open to the opportunities that only present themselves in the midst of bad circumstances that life throws at you.

Another man who knew a thing or two about getting things done, Dwight Eisenhower said “…plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” by which he meant that the exercise of planning prepares you to meet opportunities but don’t delude yourself into thinking your one plan for success will win.

What does this have to do with my payroll service? Nothing directly. Sometimes we delude ourselves by thinking we have control, that we are in charge, you need to re-think that, I’ll admit I was wrong about that. The place I find myself in life and in business has had nothing to do with my planning it that way and everything to do with keeping my mind open to possibilities. This can be fostered by simplifying your life, getting rid of chores, worries, stresses that distract and occupy your mind. Free yourself, you just might discover something wonderful.

]]> http://10minpay.com/2010/04/goal-setting-mea-culpa/feed/ 1 http://10minpay.com/2010/02/time-clocks-time-cards-its-about-time/ http://10minpay.com/2010/02/time-clocks-time-cards-its-about-time/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:04:29 +0000 bruce http://10minpay.com/?p=405

Want to save a ton of time adding up time cards?Get a new time clock. If the one you have is an electronic kind that can be reprogrammed, you won’t have to buy a new one.

Get a time clock that does military time, and also one that increments in 10ths of an hour.

Every 10th is 6 minutes. So 0.1 is 6 minutes, 0.2 is 12 minutes. Once you get used to this, it’s incredibly easy. The clock will round when someone punches in and out.

The military time takes a little longer to get used to, however, you really don’t have to get used to it at all anyway, it’s just for purposes of time card entries so who cares? In other words, it’s not like you have to learn military time for everything, it’s just to make figuring timecards a whole bunch easier.

Now all you have to do is subtract the start time from end time. Wow, that was hard!

End time ……………..17.6 (5:36 pm)

Start time……………..8.2 (8:12 am)

less 1 hr for lunch = 8.4 hours

Got it? Now hit the floor and give me 20!

Here we go again. Another case of fraud. http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southeast/2010/01/25/106812.htm

How could this have been prevented? Owners need to either open their own checking statements and look through the cancelled checks or go online and click on checks to view them. I know many banks have gotten away from returning the cancelled checks and make you pay dearly for that but it might be worth it. I’ve also heard of banks charging a fee just so you can view the checks online. Find out, make some changes, or switch banks today. As the owner of a small business it is your job to look for someone creating bogus checks. A million dollars went out the front door, right under the nose of the owner!

I believe my small business is a rational expression of my core beliefs in freedom and service. I embrace free-market, entrepreneurialism, capitalism, the freedom of running a small business. The freedom to work to advance my own goals, which means freedom from working to advance someone else’s goals…Running my own life- instead of having my life run by others; a boss, big corporations, a big government, any who wish to make me subservient to serve their interests. I reject slavery in all it’s forms: corporate consumerism, personal consumer debt, or politician’s greed for power. Although an  independent person, I know that I am also part of a society. I don’t at all mind paying taxes when I know that I’m paying for infrastructure, a legal system with laws that protect me, police and fire protection- anything that supports the free environment in which we live and work and worship as we choose. Although I receive much from society, I don’t think I’m entitled to ask a lot  from society. We all benefit by the patriotism and the hard work of past generations, which we can only repay forward. We are also a naturally confident people. We need to be reminded that we can do anything we put our mind and hand to. We create and invent opportunities for the world. American SMALL business (20 and fewer employees) is the greatest economic wealth producing engine in the history of the planet! Politicians only seem to get in our way. I vote for a government which does not actively work against me and against those who do. I seek the protection from harm by my government as my birthright. Our system of self-government was designed to protect us FROM government, we need to limit it’s power over us before it’s too late. I fight those who serve only their own need for power at my expense. Remember, they work for us, not the other way around. I believe in the freedom to work and earn financial security, without being punished if you earn more than a figure some pinhead thinks is too much.

I believe we should each focus on our core, on the things that are important. I’m building my small business by helping others grow theirs. I serve my own self-interest by serving others. Taking care of my family, being a friend, having good and decent friends of my own choosing. I try not to imitate, or be lead by others. I try to think for myself in a cool and deliberate manner, not to act out of fear. I seek to be positive, not just find fault with everything as some do. I believe in the numerous benefits of hard work. I am conscientious. I pay my bills. I don’t seek to blame others for the misfortunes of life, I’d rather just get busy fixing. I know that to make my life bear fruit, not consume itself, to not waste it, I can only achieve this by learning how to give it. If these things make me a “square”, then I wear that badge with honor. I believe we each have something special to give to the world and it’s our job to find out what that talent is. Whatever your small  business does- do that!, with all your energy, and outsource the rest. Stick to your core. Strip away all the nonsense and distractions, all the superfluous crap. Lighten your baggage. Do what YOU do best. Be remarkable, conquer your fear. Serve your customer. Free yourself, free your limited time and energy, to grow and prosper. Our time here is short. It’s time to get busy living. It’s time to grow.

Payroll fraud seems to happen a lot, we hear about the bigger cases on the news but like an iceberg, I’m sure there’s 90% more under the surface that we never hear about- probably because they are small instances. If small business would take steps I’ll spell out, they could eliminate this problem. The last thing I want as a small business owner in the payroll business, is to be regulated by the pinheads in Washington but it may come to that.

First, if you use one of the big payroll services like Paychex or ADP, or a large regional one, you’ll be fine. These large service bureaus take all the funds from your account and remit the taxes. These big outfits are audited each year by accounting firms who make sure they are fulfilling their obligations. Many of these big ones won’t bother with some or all of your small local taxes so you will have to handle those yourself, so be aware of that.

Beware of the small payroll services if they are taking custody of all your payroll funds, the pay and the taxes, and remitting the taxes themselves, there is real danger here! What happens is they don’t remit the taxes, and because they make you sign a power-of-attorney that has all correspondence from the government be re-directed to them, you’ll never know when the late notices show up.

Be aware, in case after case, the IRS has ruled even when you’ve been defrauded, YOU are responsible for all taxes and fines. Good luck suing someone who is in jail, skipped town, and has already spent the money. I know of an instance in my hometown where a small payroll service guy defrauded hundreds of small businesses and went to jail, it actually drove businesses into bankruptcy. The guy was living well for a while, trips to Europe, etc. Disgusting. You need to find out if they are audited! Who’s watching them. If not audited, I’d stay away for sure. Too risky.

Other than the small services that impound your funds, fraud happens too when it’s your own employee most of the time. Usually the owner of the small business never had a clue because the person was the bookkeeper, had access to the mail, and intercepted all the nastygrams. How to prevent this? Easy, as the small business owner, either insist all mail come to you first, unopened, or get a P.O. Box so you know you get the mail. Watch for late notices from IRS, State, and local. Insist that bank statements be unopened and you open and look for the tax payments coming out. Get proof that your taxes have been remitted, do not take their word for it, if your employee is stealing, they are already lying to you!  Also make sure there are no phony employees on the payroll, check the records. And for God’s sake, do NOT allow your bookkeeper to sign checks! That’s your job!

At my payroll service, we do not have you sign over power-of-attorney, notices go to the business, but the biggest thing is we do not take custody of payroll monies. We print all checks using the client’s checking account numbers. They can go online every day if they want and SEE that the taxes are indeed getting paid. Everything is completely up front, out in the open, and safe. We have NO access to money, in essence, we are just doing the calculations, and PRINTING the checks for you to sign. It works like a charm.

You run your own small business. You need your payroll done. Here are the least and the most expensive ways I’ve ever seen to get your payroll done.

LEAST EXPENSIVE PAYROLL: Your wife was a CPA who retired when children came along. You get her to make a spreadsheet that calculates payroll. She works for free. Spouses and family members working for free actually make up a measurable portion of how payroll gets done.

MOST EXPENSIVE PAYROLL: You only have a few employees so you figure you will do payroll in-house. You use QuickBooks. So for your one company with, say, 4 employees, full and part-time, you spend $299 each and every year for their tax table. Every 3 years Intuit forces you (to get the tax table) to upgrade the program itself, another $200. You buy their checks, their envelopes, their support plan because you need help getting the employees taxes, local taxes, garnishments, court orders, 401k set up. You have your CPA help (at $200/hr.) with setup or with the Quarterly tax returns and W2’s (you buy those from QuickBooks too). Now you either pay your receptionist to do it until what everyone makes starts getting around the gossip round, or a IRS tax penalty adds another $670 to the cost. Fact: that’s the average penalty incurred by 25% of businesses. So you take the job away from the receptionist and start doing it yourself because it has to be right. Congratulations, you’ve been promoted to the unpaid company clerk. You have not bothered to add up all the costs but you think this is saving money. You work for less than free. You could be smoozing customers, building your business, collecting receivables, but you are too busy.

I really shouldn’t say “tools” when I mean “people”. Allow me to rephrase: Matching the right person/skill-set to the task of a small business’s accounting function. As an Freelance Accountant for small businesses, I have seen many ways of getting the books done. Here are the major variations:

1.) Owner or owner’s spouse does the bookkeeping and payroll themselves, someone else does the taxes.

2.) Secretary/receptionist employee doubles as the bookkeeper/payroll person, CPA does the tax returns, also the payroll quarterlies.

3.) CPA keeps the books for the owner and does the payroll and the tax returns.

I’ve seen these basic scenarios, jumbled around a bit, but that’s about the way it usually is configured. Now let’s look at what is bad about these methods, because they are not efficient, not cost effective and none of these usual methods produce good results!

Generally, receptionists and owner’s spouses are not trained accountants and do not know how to handle accounting’s sometimes tricky aspects. I don’t want to hurt any one’s feelings  but it’s true. Doing everything with a non-paid spouse or a $8/hr. employee is like trying to bring down an elephant armed only with a BB gun. One of my accounting professors used to remind us that if accounting were easy, everybody could do it! Typically, the books are a mess by the time the CPA gets them and require a lot of adjusting and fixing. By mess, I mean there are lots of errors that have to be corrected, accounts don’t balance or reconcile, and account balances are way off. This can be very expensive! CPA’s charge between $100-$200 per hour. Also, the owner never really knows month-to-month how he/she is REALLY doing and is forced to gauge things by cash in the bank or “gut instinct”. Not good, and I see this situation ALL THE TIME. The owner is forced to have the CPA to clean up the books at $100-$200 per hour, or live with inaccurate information throughout the year.

Sometimes the owner does their own books. That is the worst thing they can do! That is not the owner’s job! In these cases, the owner “owns” a job, not a business. Can’t they find better things to do with their time an an owner? The owner who does everything themselves is likely a bit paranoid, a control type who will never grow beyond a one-person show. It is usually based on not trusting anyone else, but what a waste of their valuable time! I often hear of owners sitting there at 11:00 PM working on their books! Sorry, that’s foolish, they are wasting their energy. Their duty is to build the business, not be a clerk.

Sometimes the CPA handles everything or just the “heavy lifting” work, usually for a monthly flat fee of like $250-$500. That is like killing a fruit fly in your house with a sledge hammer! CPA’s are good, but also expensive, and they don’t like getting a mess handed to them.

The least expensive and best results are obtained for small business by having an employee as a clerk/receptionist type person who does strictly routine data entry; creating invoices, receipting in payments, entering bills and preparing checks only. Payroll should be outsourced to a payroll service. Why? Add up the costs of doing it yourself sometime- tax tables, software upgrades, checks, envelopes, the time it takes, IRS penalties, etc, you’ll see. Then have a freelance degreed accountant (not a CPA) work once a month to reconcile bank statements, balance the books, fix errors, make month-end adjusting entries, sit down and go over the monthly financial statements with the owner and explain everything going on in the business. Their rate is usually $25-$60 per hour, depending on experience and education. Another set of eyes looking at the financials, every month, making recommendations on saving money, is invaluable. Then at year-end, the CPA gets the year-end financials from the freelance accountant, reviews the books, gets any other info needed to do the taxes, books depreciation, and make a few closing entries. The most expensive person’s work (the CPA), is minimized. And yes, a CPA should do the taxes, their job is to keep up on all the constantly changing laws, no one else can do that as well.

A warning; NEVER allow the bookkeeper to sign checks, that IS the owner’s job! Also, when you get the checks to sign to pay bills, get the bills as well, so you can look at them and see who you are paying, and question ones that are unknown. Also, insist that bank statements come to you unopened, open them yourself and look through the cancelled checks for ones YOU did not sign. Don’t assume the bank is going to check this, they don’t anymore. Other things you can do yourself; make the bank deposits and you should be watching accounts receivables. In other words, you should be double-checking the clerk, not BEING the clerk.

The most expensive help is minimized without compromising quality, and the least expensive help is maximized without chewing up time and wasting money on getting errors fixed. The freelance accountant is watching over the clerk, the CPA is watching over them both. Fraud is a lot less likely in this arrangement. The CPA does what they do best- tax returns, with a minimum of adjusting first. Finally, the owner gets timely and accurate financials each month, which is the most important goal!

He would loan money to some customers so they could finally pay your invoices.

He would give your vendors/suppliers an IOU for product.

He would cut your employee’s wages in half in exchange for job security, thereby “saving” those jobs.

He would give away money to new customers so they would hopefully buy something from you.

He would completely piss off 52% of your customers who WERE paying their bills.

He would meet with your competitors and sign agreements not to compete anymore, getting nothing in return.

He would speak no more and ban the use of certain words, like “sale” “good customers” and that really dirty one, “profit”.

He would bring the competition in, show them around, so they would like us and know we mean them no harm.

He would have unlimited stock offerings, diluting the shares to worthless pieces of paper.

He would count the new hires at customers and vendors as jobs “HE” created.

He would remove all signs and stop all advertising so we don’t seem like braggadocios cowboys.

He would turn over a key territory to your biggest competitor as a sign of goodwill.

He would cancel certain patents and trademark rights you held, you know, to be fair.

He would change your invoice terms to 0% 10, net 365.

He would announce that we are no longer the lone supplier of your product, please go somewhere else, so do not rely on us.

He would visit your customers and apologize for taking advantage them in the past.

He would turn over the writing of a new policy manual to a stupid, vapid, lemir-eyed dunce of a woman.

Please add some of your own below. Please use the same format. I will eliminate duplications.

Open letter to Barry, Harry, Nancy and all our other employees…

2010 is a year I hope will change.

I’ve decided I’d like my country back. I don’t like what you guys are trying to change my country into. Freedom, personal liberty, and the opportunity to build our lives into whatever we really want, these have made our country into the best place to live on the planet. I get the distinct feeling now that you guys don’t like those things which made us prosper and you want us to become more equal to Canada or Norway. Well, sorry, and no thanks, we think we hit on something pretty damn good here and we’d like to keep it.

You guys are ramming all your changes through as rapidly as possible because you know that once we learn about it, we don’t want it. You know these things are political suicide which is why you seem hell-bent to shove it down our throats before we can do anything to stop you. People are wondering why you don’t get the message, oh, you got the message alright, you just don’t give a rat’s rear-end, you know you have a very small window here and you are not going to let it go un-used.

While we are waiting patiently for election day, we are deciding to change our lives. We are getting out of debt. We are taking classes. We are starting businesses. We are exercising freedoms to become more independent from you. We are like a sleeping giant, much bigger and way more powerful than you. A little groggy because we just woke up, the realization of what you guys are all about is sinking in, and we are now paying attention. We are a patient and tolerant people, peaceful by nature. The pioneer spirit is alive and well and we will be exercising freedom in 2010 like never before in recent history.

Those of us that you haven’t outraged, you’ve pissed off, and those you haven’t pissed off, you have profoundly disappointed. We are Americans and that means we don’t just take it, we act. We are re-grouping, doing a little community organizing of our own, we called them tea parties, you insulted that. We are realizing maybe our grandparents were on to something, so we’re getting debt-free and living a little more simply. We understand now to our core that there is no such thing as job security, and so we are building our own security and it does not involve you guys.

We are awake, we are aware, we are watching everything you guys do. Until election day rolls around, we are busy building our lives and new businesses, becoming stronger and more self-sufficient every day. Our confidence is growing. We’re not afraid of failing anymore, we are afraid of not really trying.

We want the future to be better than the past. We want to have hope for our children and grandchildren but we must have the freedom to pursue advancement and success, not accept what you offer, genuflecting to mediocrity. We want you to rein in big business to make it play fair, not handcuff small business to make it unprofitable. Small business creates real jobs, you need to get the hell out of our way. We love small business and true capitalism so much, we want to build one on the side, even while we have a job, it’s so easy to do now because of the internet, and we can get all the help we need right online. God, it’s a  good time to be alive!

A small, free business of my own! Genuine security. Real change. Hope for a brighter future. 100% pure American attitude.

Here’s hoping we can give you the same opportunity starting next year.