FM Walsh & Associates Inc.

A friend recently sent this Irish poem over and I thought it was timely to share it with you as the US celebrates Thanksgiving this week and we all face the madness of December.

Take time to work, it is the price of success
Take time to think, it is the source of power
Take time to play, it is the secret of perpetual youth
Take time to read, it is the foundation of wisdom
Take time to be friendly, it is the road to happiness
Take time to love and be loved, it is the privilege of the gods
Take time to share, life is too short to be selfish
Take time to laugh, laughter is the mask of the soul.

As women we often take too much time to work.  I have been guilty of not taking enough time lately to play, laugh  or read.
So my challenge to myself and to you for this December is - What will you do to play more in December?  What will you do to make yourself laugh more?
Focus on having more fun this December, rather than just getting sucked into the frantic, longer to-do list most of us succumb to.

Have you ever felt disregarded in a business venture with a partner when dealing with a third party?  Well last week my business partner and I met with a company that wants to do business with us, after the meeting they only sent him a follow up e-mail and overlooked my presence.  The best reaction to this treatment is to show this company that my partner and I work as a team and make decisions jointly, but to do this is a respectful manor so not to lose any business alliances.

Did you know?!??! Some tax tips that you may not know about.

1)      Generally meals or other entertainment related expenses are only partially deductible  for  tax purposes. However, did you know that in a year, a company may deduct 100% of the expense for 6 events where all the employees of the company are invited to attend?  Examples of these types of events would be Christmas parties or summer picnics.

2)     If you own more than 40% of your company, and you are an employee of that company, you are likely EI exempt.  This means that you do not have to make EI remittances to the government on your earnings.  This is a bit of a catch-22 though.  You’ll have more cash to use in your business, but if you have to close up the business, you really can’t collect EI as being “laid-off” since you weren’t paying into the EI system.

3)     Life Insurance.  As a business owner, you likely have life insurance.  Did you know that this is not a deductible expense for your business?  However, even if it isn’t a deductible expense for your business, it is still better for the company to pay for it, since you’re paying for the premiums with pre-taxed revenues, rather than out of the salary that you receive from your company which is “after-tax” dollars.

4)     Back to Meals and Entertainment expenses.  Did you know that since you only get to deduct 50% of the expenses for most meals and entertainment expenses, you only get to claim 50% of the Input Tax Credit for GST purposes?

Dayna Holland is a Chartered Accountant whose mission is to make numbers and taxes less intimidating to business owners.  Most of her career has been working with various High-Tech and telecommunications companies to minimize their tax burden.  Now running her own company, she currently works with a variety of businesses to improve their profitability and handle their taxes.  Please visit her website for more information.

We just put up the Ghost CEO November ezine.  It has some great articles on business planning, licensing and building your professional value.  Check it out here.

And click on the quiz below the ezine to see if you are a rainmaker or not!

I recently sat down with Mhairi Petrovic of Out-Smarts Marketing to do a podcast discussing the key attributes of successful entrepreneurs, how to grow your business in a recession and how entreprenuers can use social media to their benefit.  You can listen to it here.

I recently filmed a segment on the Weekend Daily Edition with Todd Cantelon, an extremely interesting and provocative interviewer!  We had a lot of fun and a few differences of opinion talking about women in the business world, gender equality and where we’re at in this age of rights and free speech.  You can catch it here.

And I bet that I just lost a bunch of you at the word IFRS.  Funny how many accounting acronyms are four-letters (GAAP, FIFO, etc.), which are synonymous with other nasty four-letter words – not sure why TAX isn’t spelled TAXX or something like that.   I just sat through an 9 hour course on this topic.  And as far as I can see, it’s going to turn the accounting world upside down.  

IFRS is the new accounting standard that’s coming into effect in 2011.  (Yes it seems like a long way off – but realistically that’s only 2 years away).  It stands for International Financial Reporting Standards.  After the hey-days of Enron, Worldcom, and other crazy companies, the financial regulating bodies in the world got together and decided that one of the ways to prevent similar financial disasters would be to come up with a way to have a single set of standards.  No longer will there be one set for the US, one set for Canada, one set for the UK, one set for Japan, etc.  Or at least that is the idea.  Canada, and the EU are a couple of countries that are supporting this concept.  The US is slowly coming to terms with it –they have yet to fully embrace the idea – but rumour has it that they’re working towards accepting this in 2014. 

Basically, if your company currently is reporting under “Canadian GAAP” and you’re having an external accounting firm audit your financial statements, you’ll start hearing that things are going to have to change according to the new IFRS standards. 

In short, some things won’t change, but depending on your industry, you’ll find that there will be some new ways of accounting for various transactions. 

The best advice I can give you regarding these new standards and how they may impact your company is to ask your accountant.  As I said in another blog entry, these are your statements.  You need to understand what they have to say.  And you need to be aware how these new standards are going to impact your debt covenants and other financial metrics.  

Dayna Holland is a Chartered Accountant whose mission is to make numbers and taxes less intimidating to business owners.  Most of her career has been working with various High-Tech and telecommunications companies to minimize their tax burden.  Now running her own company, she currently works with a variety of businesses to improve their profitability and handle their taxes.  Please visit her website for more information.

How important is it to keep current customers happy and satisfied with their products?  Very.  While I was riding on BC Ferries this weekend, I was working on my pink Apple Computer and was approached by a worker who asked me if she should buy a Mac or PC laptop.  I suggested she buy a Mac, not only because I was satisfied with the product, but also because of the great customer service that I continually receive if I don’t understand something.  The worker walked away convinced Mac was the way to go.  Mac just received a new consumer with little effort on their part.  Happy customers are the best way to sell your products, they get the word out for free.

Do you look at your financials each month?  And if you do, do you understand what they’re telling you? They are a good tool to use to see how profitable your business really is.  Chances are you have an accountant/bookkeeper to help you out with the day-to-day accounting.  But this doesn’t mean that they should have full responsibility for everything financially-related in your business. 

Be vigilant - it’s your company.   Understand your financial statements by asking questions.  Compare your statements month after month.  If you think that you had one of your best months in sales, then you should see an increase in revenues.  And if it doesn’t show, ask why?  The accountant may not have the full answer, since the answer may not be solely in the numbers, but your sales manager may be able to corroborate what the financial statements show.  Maybe the number of your competitors increased so your sales people needed to offer bigger price discounts. 

These are things that a profitable business owner knows. You will be able to better react towards both negative and positive events.  By not spending the time each month reviewing your financial statements, you may not realize that your sales department is offering too many incentives to your customers.  Or you may not see that the marketing department did a stellar job in the last ad campaign to increase sales.  Your reaction time as the leader in the business to recognize these issues may be delayed and the business may not be as efficient or as profitable as it could be. 

My suggestion is to spend a half day every month looking at your financials.  And make sure that you are comfortable with the story that the financial information is telling you.  It’s your company.

Dayna Holland is a Chartered Accountant whose mission is to make numbers and taxes less intimidating to business owners.  Most of her career has been working with various High-Tech and telecommunications companies to minimize their tax burden.  Now running her own company, she currently works with a variety of businesses to improve their profitability and handle their taxes.  Please visit her website for more information.