Sunday, June 29, 2014

Wave - An Accounting Solution For Small Business

Amanda Wilkie for Perigee Technology writes:  As promised in last week's post, I want to highlight another solution provider that made an impression on me at the ACIPA Practitioner Symposium & Tech+ conference in Las Vegas earlier this month. Today, I'd like to introduce you to Wave, a Toronto-based team that boasts of making "awesome, cloud-based, integrated software and tools for small businesses"

At a conference, I'm always drawn into a vendor's booth when the folks inside look like they're having fun, which Brooke and her team certainly looked like a fun crowd. Once I was in, she promised to completely train me to use Wave in about 60 seconds. Okay, maybe I didn't learn everything I needed to know but Brooke did a great job hitting the highpoints and left me intrigued. 

Most fascinating was Wave's price. It's free! Yes, free. Well, mostly free. Wave provides the ability to accept credit card payments for which there is a small processing fee. Additionally, the payroll module is a premium feature but the fees are very reasonable. Wave also covers its costs by selling ad space in the application; however, I'm so accustomed to on-line ads these days that I found the ads along the right side of Wave easy to ignore. 

After a few minutes with Brooke (and after she gave me some really cool socks - see the pictures below), I decided to try Wave out and see for myself. I half expected a watered down accounting application but I was wrong. Here are few things I found:
  • Wave is very easy to use. I quickly linked my accounts and transactions came pouring in. I had to spend some time categorizing the transactions but Wave quickly learned recurring transactions and successfully categorized them for me.
  • On-the-fly set up was cool. On-the-fly meaning I did not have to sit down and enter all my vendors, customers, or even products. I can actually add them from the invoicing screen when the need arises. However, an import option would have been cool.
  • The reporting is sufficient. You can't create custom reports but Wave provides all the basic reporting you need – balance sheet, sale tax report, aged AR and AP, etc.
  • Personal finance tracking is included. This is a cool feature. If you comingle business and personal transactions Wave allows you to code each entry as such. However, I chose to keep my personal accounts out of Wave as my accountant has always recommended completely separate of business and personal accounts.
  • Mobility is always good. Wave has two great iPhone apps so you can upload receipts or create and process invoices from your phone. Android apps are in the works as well.
  • Access for your accountant and multi-business support. As a cloud-based solution, you don't have send files back and forth. You can give your accountant access to your Wave file and you can set up multiple businesses within the same login.
  • My favorite feature – receipts. I was able to upload receipts from my computer and my iPhone. I even emailed one and it was imported. Receipts can create a transaction or easily be attached to an existing transaction. My wallet will be 5 pounds lighter going forward.
  • Wave lost a few cool points on speed and navigation. Uploading statements and generating lists seemed to be a little slow at times; however, there are a few contributing factors (such as internet speed and file size) that could have effected responsiveness. And, more than once I wished the list of transactions had a scroll bar opposed to using the browser scroll bar.
  • Support options are pretty good if you don't care about talking to a live person. Wave's support page is well organized by module and the search feature returned applicable articles. You can email support for free and expect a response in 48 to 72 hours. Or, a monthly fee gets you access to a live "Support Hero". Wave University is a great resource for training and how-to questions as well.

Offering all the features other major accounting applications do, Wave is designed for small businesses under 9 employees. As a sole proprietor I can attest that it is easy to set up and easy to use; and I'm sure I haven't uncovered a fraction of the awesomeness Wave has to offer yet. However, I will continue using the application for my business, Perigee Technology, so you see them in a future post. After all, it's a great tool at an unbeatable price.
Posted on 3:48 PM | Categories:

Where does Accounting /ERP meet Bitcoin, Dollar, Euro & Yen?

Gary Boddington for CryptoBizMagazine.com  writes: Can you imagine a world where a crypto currency (something like Bitcoin) sits alongside the Dollar, Euro, and Yen? In a recent discussion at a Bitcoin meetup in Vancouver British Columbia, the topic turned to user adoption, and more specifically, what needs to be done to see crypto currency gain mass adoption on Main Street. This was encouraging, not least because I believe crypto currency discussions to date have been unnecessarily encumbered with technical one-upmanship, or arguments over monetary policy ideology, or a confusing cocktail of both.

Full disclosure; I am firmly in the camp that believes that crypto currency will ultimately reach its aspirational goals of main street adoption, but I am categorically under no illusion that this will happen either fast or soon. It is clear that there is a wide gamut of “traditional world” businesses across Banking, Legal, Accounting, Financial Services, Taxation, Gaming and Gambling that could be shaken to their core, so in the interest of invoking a discussion, and attempting to understand the crypto currency world we endeavour to live in, let’s use the accounting & ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) industry as an isolated example, for no reason other than this domain stands in line to be disrupted as much as any other.
The Accounting & ERP (vendors) landscape is an incredibly competitive landscape populated by multiple big and small vendors distributed globally, all of which cater to all sizes of organizations. So, how does crypto currency gain adoption amongst these vendors who influence millions of the world’s businesses through the software they produce and the associated advice their channel of integration partners offer? Well, at first glance it seems straightforward because crypto currency is just another currency; just like the Dollar, Euro and Yen. Almost all of these vendors have multicurrency functionality as standard. So it’s that simple then, vendors just communicate to their market that they already handle multi-currency as existing functionality, so everyone just go right ahead and transact in the crypto currency of your choice.
But hang on, not every crypto currency is made equal – certainly not in the hands of regulatory agencies globally anyway. Depending on the region of the world a vendor operates in, crypto currency has been treated dramatically – and with mass adoption aspirations in mind – damagingly, inconsistently, ranging from a traditional currency to an informal form of barter. The reactions of separate jurisdictions have ranged from enacting very strong pro-crypto regulations including strong privacy, to an attempt at an outright ban by certain states.
Regardless, for vendors to ponder adoption of crypto currency for their install base, this represents a potentially harmful legislative minefield that poses a non-trivial challenge to adoption. Let’s steamroll that issue for the sake of this article and imagine for a moment we all live in a global crypto currency utopia; a place where all regulatory authorities give the green light to crypto currency on their turf.
Sounds great, but wait, there is already a wide range of digital currencies to choose from – and a whole range of new “derivatives” under construction in the crypto currency development community. So does each vendor need to accommodate all these currencies, or should they choose to support just a few? Does that mean, for example, that vendors need to consider an integration with one crypto currency exchange or will it need to support a few, or none? If there needs to be a collaboration with more than one, how does a vendor choose the most reliable and reputable exchange to integrate with? Where do the big guys that have operated in the money exchange space traditionally stand on their own crypto currency play? Should vendors wait and let this play out, choose not to integrate at all, or choose to build or buy something of their own?
In pursuit of user adoption, let’s keep moving forward regardless, and let’s imagine even further that the vendors have made their decisions about a currency, or currencies, to support and an associated crypto currency exchange to work with. So does it then elect to build its own wallet, integrate with an existing wallet, or many wallets? There are still more questions, and again certainly no trivial issues.
Vendors clearly have some planning ahead in the crypto currency space and early adopters have already started planning. Portland based, VersAccounts ERP, offers online ERP solutions designed for medium sized businesses with a global footprint, and CEO Sunil Pande has taken a long term view as an early adopter in saying, “We are 100% sure that crypto currencies will become an important vehicle for commerce in the near future and we are actively engaged in developing our plans around how to best support it for our customers as well as for ourselves and our channel partners”.
Pande’s reference to his partner channel is very representative of the Accounting & ERP industry in general insofar as it is built on an interdependent triumvirate of vendors, partners and consumers, which, when working in harmony form the B2B (business-to-business) backbone of the industry’s ecosystem. The partner typically will advise their customers which software to adopt and will offer professional services associated with the application they elect to support. Right now – and with apologies to the early adopters (and as a sweeping generalization – this underlying triumvirate reflects no more than a collective conglomerate of ignorance when it comes to crypto currency. It represents a concurrently massive educational challenge for the crypto currency industry to address if it is to achieve mass adoption in this lucrative B2B space.
The ranks of the early adopters are swelling in the partner community as well. Rusty Tarsches, a CPA who owns and runs Targo Advisors in Atlanta Georgia, supports XERO Accounting & VersAccounts ERP to offer cloud based accounting services for start-ups, emerging growth and mature business organizations. Rusty believes, “crypto currency has a huge potential for disruption in many industries and at Targo we make decisions about which vendors we support based on their progressive thinking, and we are very interested in how vendors will integrate crypto currency into their architecture. We are learning as the crypto industry emerges so we can give our customers the most informed professional advice possible”.
It seems certain that crypto currency is a tsunami in an ocean of small waves. It will have enormous implications. As vendors, and as partners providing mission critical services for these vendors, now is the time to become appropriately familiar with this space. Customer needs and opportunities are on the way.
For crypto currency adoption to happen in the Accounting & ERP space, a market greater than 3 million businesses worldwide, it’s the vendors that will need to ask and answer these questions for themselves before any users start to adopt new crypto currencies, and in my opinion it’s at the wallet level that you get to the user experience interaction, where “the rubber meets the road”. Main Street users will get to make their owndecisions about accepting a crypto currency alongside, or in substitute of, the Dollar, Euro, and the Yen.
Posted on 11:41 AM | Categories:

Tips for Deducting Volunteer Expenses When Traveling

Jennifer Deroin for Nichols writes: If you itemize your deductions for tax purposes, you should be deducting volunteer expenses. While a charitable deduction is not allowed for contribution of services, out-of-pocket expenses made in rendering gratuitous services to a charitable organization, may be deductible under Reg 1.170A-1(g).  Under an old Revenue Ruling (84-61), these expenditures are treated as direct payments to the charity. Before you start collecting those receipts, be advised that the expenditure must be nonpersonal and directly connect with rendering your service.
Examples of unreimbursed expenses include uniforms, equipment, print and copy charges, office supplies, postage, transportation and other travel expenditures, including meals (subject to the 50%) and lodging while rendering services for the charitable organization. Meals & lodging are only deductible if there is no significant personal pleasure, recreation, or vacation in the travel.

 The following are examples of possible items you could be deducting as volunteer expenses:

  • Mileage to the local airport
  • Meals (subject to 50%)
  • Lodging, if required, due to a multi-day travel itinerary (as long as you are not vacationing during the stay)
  • Cost of Travel;  Airline ticket, rental car, bus, etc.
  • Any payment to the nonprofit organization for hosting expenditures
  • Purchase of supplies required to assist with your service to the organization
  • Purchase of food donated for group meals
Substantiation is very important. First and foremost, because these expenditures will be greater than $250 for a single charitable activity, the volunteer must have a written receipt or acknowledgement from the charity that describes the services provided by the volunteer and whether or not they received any goods or services in consideration of his or her service.  Generally 501(c)3 organizations will list the dates and location of services provided by the volunteer and state that no goods or services were provided in exchange for this service.
It is the volunteer’s responsibility to keep detailed records of any out-of-pocket expense incurred. Receipts are the primary source of documentation – remember to make a copy.   The carbon papers will often fade over time and you need to retain these records for at least 3 years.  We also recommend retaining your boarding passes to prove that it was you who boarded the plane.
Posted on 11:37 AM | Categories: