Year End for Small Businesses –
Year End – are you ready for Tax Filings? Let’s see what we can do to help you be prepared.
Many of us are pleased the pandemic, leap year is over. But don’t celebrate yet, small business owner, there’s much to do to prepare for tax filing day. And other tasks that need to be completed.
Many restaurants and small businesses are still closed. If your business is still closed, do not put these tasks aside waiting until you reopen. You need to be prepared for start-up whenever it’s made available. And if you’ve been open, get these done so you can go forward and focus on 2021.
General Business
Let’s start with General Business duties. Finishing 2020 requires having your year end records. Download documents, etc, from the cloud and conduct a website audit. Is everything current? Make sure your online caatalog matches your available offerings.
Financials
Run the reports off Quickbooks or other accounting software. There are a number of reports available and you should know what they are and how to use the information.
Get Your
Free Checklist
Sign up to get your free Small Business Year-End Checklist sent straight to your inbox.
You can review your profit and loss, monitor cash flow, maintain inventory, reconcile your accounts receivable and much more.
Employees
If you have employees, have you paid your year end benefits, SSI, and other payments? Make sure you or your CPA/Accountant have completed W-2’s for everyone, including yourself.
Note: Please don’t make the mistake of pulling cash out of your business as an owner draw. Pay yourself a salary, pay withholding taxes, state taxes and retirement from the business. Taking out the cash sounds great when you’re doing it but I’ve seen a number of owners that get to age 62, file for Social Security and there isn’t anything available for them. If they’re lucky they’ll get $300 a month.
2021 Set Up
At this point you should be ready to set up 2021’s books and set things in motion. Download the checklist to be sure.
Don’t forget to spend time creating your 2021 budget. You need to know how much you can spend on payroll, advertising/promotions, and inventory. Trade shows, whether in-person or virtual, will be happening soon and you need to know how much you have available to spend (or hope to). Keeping within your budget is very important and totally your responsibility.
Last, but not least
Goals, content strategy and marketing. We’ll go into those next week when we Write our ESG goals. What are they? See next week’s post.