8 Tips for a Smooth Auditing Process

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article | 8 Tips for a Smooth Auditing ProcessAfter you file your small or midsize business’s taxes for the year, you think you’re done with taxes. However, sometimes you’re contacted about the process that most business owners dread: an audit. While being audited is a long process that takes extra time, by following these eight tips, you ease your worries and help the process go more smoothly.

1. Don’t Panic

If you’ve filed your taxes honestly, you don’t have anything to fear from auditing services. Most auditors look for blatant fraud such as inaccurately reporting your gross income. They also examine your accounting procedures and make sure that they’re sufficient for your business’s size. For example, if you don’t have an accounting department and your business is growing, they may recommend that you hire a full-time employee to oversee your finances. Remember, all you have to do is cooperate with the auditors’ questions, so take a deep breath and get ready for your audit.

2. Keep Your Records

Audits are usually ordered within seven months of when you originally filed your taxes, but the Internal Revenue Service can audit your reports from up to two years ago. For example, if you’re audited in July 2021, the audit could be for your 2020 or 2019 taxes. As a result, it’s critical that you hold on to all your tax forms:

Don’t forget to retain your employees’ tax information as well and the forms verifying their ability to work. Keep all these forms organized by year, even after you’ve filed your taxes, so that you’re ready when it’s time for an audit and assurance.

If you’re overwhelmed by all the paperwork, it’s time to find a new organizational system. Scan your paperwork and store it in well-labeled online folders that you can access from any computer. To streamline this process, use a service such as DocuSign rather than printing your forms.

3. Plan Ahead

Scrambling to prepare for an audit makes you look unprofessional and increases the probability that you’ll make a sloppy error. As soon as you find out that you’re being audited, start working with your accounting team to get the forms ready and make sure your books are up-to-date. Leave room in your schedule to take off work during the audit so that you can answer the auditors’ questions. Finally, choose one of your accountants to serve as the primary contact for your auditing team.

4. Think About Your Changes

Has your small business undergone any major changes that affect your accounting procedures in the relevant tax year? For example, did the tax laws change for your industry, or did you upgrade your personal reporting requirements? Consider whether the leadership of your office changed or was restructured, and note any grants or loans you received. By telling your auditors about these factors before the audit begins, you help them understand potential discrepancies in your books.

5. Learn About Tax Laws

Tax laws change frequently, but they don’t always affect your business. It’s critical that you follow all the developments in financial legislation so you’re ready to implement a change. You don’t want to discover during an audit that you’re required to keep your records a certain way. If you’re struggling to understand the laws on your own, reach out to a lawyer, a certified public accountant, or a professional from the Financial Accounting Standards Board.

6. Look Back

If you’ve been audited before, now is a good time to review that auditing report. Did you fix the issues that the previous auditors pointed out, or are you still making them? What parts of your books were confusing or misleading from their perspective? Looking at your auditing report also gives you an idea of how long the process will take and how much you need to be involved.

7. Speak Up

When an auditor asks you a question and you’re not sure what he or she means, don’t be afraid to speak up. Ask follow-up questions and request clarifications; otherwise, you can’t give your auditing team the correct information. If your auditors ask for a record and you don’t think it’s relevant, explain why you don’t think it’s necessary and ask for their perspective.

8. Read the Report

When the auditing process is over, read through the finished report and decide what changes you need to make. Where did you succeed, and where did you fall short of your industry’s requirements? Keep this report close at hand so you can refer to it as you implement changes in your accounting procedures.

No one wants to be audited, but the process is actually beneficial to you. You learn about your accounting mistakes and adjust your practice to align with the law. Just make sure to stay calm, be honest, and keep good records.

Feedback For Staff Is Essential, Now More Than Ever

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article |Feedback for Staff|Feedback For Staff Is Essential, Now More Than EverAmong all the challenges that work from home poses, the challenge of having a feedback call when employees and managers work from home should be noted. The big question is how to have a zoom feedback conversation with an employee who is at home, when the manager who delivers the feedback is also at home. Despite the difficulties and challenges, it is important to be careful about the feedback, for several reasons: First, performance testing has a significant impact on employee motivation. Do they need additional training or should they use their own initiative to look at something such as Kallibr for the future.

Employees who receive serious feedback about the tasks they have performed, thereby receiving a message from the organization, that the organization sees what they have contributed to the company and is aware of their contribution. At the same time, regarding tasks whose performance was lower than required, they can get assistance from the direct manager and even from the staff regarding improving the performance of these tasks in the future. Studies conducted in the United States show that the chance of workers receiving constructive feedback to invest more in work is 2.9 times higher than in the past. If so, what is the feedback: This is an employee performance review, which is the official evaluation of employee performance. Here are some questions managers may ask during a performance review:

  1. What the employee thinks he can do to help their own career and company.
  2. Which tasks in the opinion of the employee, they performed excellently, which were in a good, mediocre manner and which tasks did not meet the objectives, and how they plan to improve in the future.
  3. The employee should be asked to perform a self-assessment, identify what his or her main contributions to the company were, and where he or she identifies opportunities to improve performance.
  4. At the end of the survey, a discussion should be held on the employee’s performance, and it should be examined how they were in relation to the requirements and objectives.

Feedback is good for all areas of business

Existence of a feedback process focused on the well-being of employees (rather than reprimands for unattainable goals) conveys to employees that the company in which they work assumes a commitment to their growth and development. This situation allows employees to be retained while helping them improve performance. Here are 2 key benefits to the feedback that is given in the way described here, helping the employee to develop:

  1. It is three times more likely that employees will recommend the organization as a great place to work.
  2. 2.4 times 2.4 employees will continue to work in the organization even in two years from today.

There are very many ways that allow organizations to improve the feedback process. One is to manage employee expectations from the first moment. Another way is to reduce the tension that feedback evokes among employees. Surveys conducted in the US show that only about 14% of employees responded that they “strongly agree” with the statement that the feedback they received encourages them to improve.

Essential Elements Of A Business Website in 2021

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Essential Elements Of A Business Website in 2021

Early adopters of the internet will remember just how odd our early engagements with the web were. While there was increasing access to the web from the middle of the 1990s, Google didn’t arrive until 1998, and wasn’t in particularly widespread usage for a while after that. Often, as an early adopter, you would type in a URL from a piece of paper you’d scrawled it upon, and this would take you to a website with a background that made overly heavy use of graphics. It was probably a GeoCities effort, built by someone hoping to drive business by using the new, exciting World Wide Web.

How far we have come, when most businesses now have their own websites, and few of them are as migraine-inducingly messy as they used to be. Now, the issue is less one of wholesale changes, and more one of details. If you want your website to be all it can be now, it is a matter of finding a few tweaks here and there. However, those changes are still important, because everyone is on the internet these days, and a small change in the way your site works can give you a change in traffic that looks small – but which, in such a competitive atmosphere, can be monumental for your business. Such changes include the following:

Hooking the viewer within the first few seconds

There is something to be gained by remembering the eyesore websites of the mid-1990s when you are designing a website for the present day. One of the issues with early websites is that there was simply too much going on, and it wasn’t very well organised. The chances of someone staying for long on a website that does that today are next to none. If you want someone to stick around on your site, then the first thing they see needs to be clean, uncluttered and at the same time somehow informative.

Ideally, the home page will operate as a menu in the first instance. From here you should be able to navigate to anywhere else on the site within two clicks, and it should be easy to see how you do that. Here is not where you use a lot of pictures, text or graphics, because that can be visually off-putting, and the one rule of a decent home page is to not give anyone a reason to click away to something else right away. All you need on the first view of your site is a navigation menu, and potentially the basics of some content – if your site is an online store, perhaps have a banner that takes visitors straight to some of your most popular products or ranges. Nothing flashier than that, though – don’t overwhelm anyone.

Getting the ideal Content Management System in place

Continuing the theme of how different the internet was a couple of decades ago, it’s worth remembering that the websites back then were designed and often coded by people who put a lot of time into teaching themselves the tricks. While there were some drag-and-drop options that allowed you to build at least a home page, making a website was a labor of love – much though that may surprise a few people.

In the present day, it is easier than ever for someone with no real coding experience to create a website themselves. It’s still not necessarily always a good idea, but it is easier, and the range of options that we have for making it work is greater than ever. The level of choice we have is impressive, but you have to make sure that for you it is a blessing rather than a curse. Modern content management systems offer you the chance to radically change the look of your site and what it offers – but they can quickly become confusing if you try to do too much. Ensure you’re using a CMS that is easy to work with – because quite apart from anything, if something goes wrong and knocks your website offline, you want to be able to fix it without having to dig around for the fault.

Content is still king

A website is your own corner of the internet that allows people to learn about your business, communicate with you and maybe make a purchase or two. When people land on your website with the intention of engaging, there is a truth you need to recognize: they could, with a change of luck, have landed with any of your competitors. And if you don’t give them a user experience worthy of the name, there is still a very good chance that they will find your competitors after navigating away. You need to keep them interested with useful content, which takes time to create.

You’ll hear it said of website creation that “content is king”, and that’s an undeniably true statement. An attractive website with bad content is probably worth less than a garish website with good content, because if you can get past the visual assault at least you can enjoy reading the latter, and you’ll come back to it. If a website bores you, you’ll navigate away and not have a reason to come back. This is why website creators, or SEO agencies should focus on user engagement primarily. It could be informative blog posts, relevant video content or useful widgets, but you need to make sure your site hosts items your target customers want to see.

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article |Business Website|Essential Elements Of A Business Website in 2021Everything needs to work

This rule might sound obvious, but it’s surprising how often you’ll find a site that includes broken links, features red Xs where you should be seeing pictures, or just seems to have gone wrong somehow. This website is, as we have noted, your little corner of the internet, and it is more or less constantly receiving visitors (if the SEO basics have been done right, anyway). Now, if your home was repeatedly hosting visitors, most of them strangers to you up to now, would you feel comfortable if the carpets hadn’t been hoovered, or one of your chairs was upside down? Of course not, but it’s all too easy for the digital equivalent of this to damage things for you.

A regular audit of your site, picking up on and removing broken links and images, will make the site work faster and look better. Perhaps more importantly than either of these points, it will likely ensure that your visitors are more likely to return – and when they do, they’re likely to have brought money with them. If the broken links and images are in blog posts they will usually be very simple to remove, but remember that if they are generated by the CMS backend that they may take a lot more work to either fix or remove. Also, once removed, you need to make sure that they don’t leave a glaring empty space.

Old broken links and missing pictures have much the same effect for your site that boarded-up windows would for a brick-and-mortar store – you might be open for business, but it won’t look that way.

Your “About us” page isn’t just filler

If you’ve ever used WordPress or Joomla or a similar CMS, then you’ll be used to the presence of an “About us/me/the author” section in the backend of the system. It is possible to delete this from your site, and some people choose to do so thinking that it is an unnecessary addition to the bandwidth the site will need to use. They are mistaken.

The About Us section is where people will go if they are looking out for information that isn’t immediately obvious from the rest of the site. You can include an FAQ here, but of primary importance is that you set out some information about your company. When was it founded, how many people work for you, where are you based? All of these will be useful information for someone looking to learn more about you and potentially become a customer.

Equally, this is the chance to lay out something of a mission statement, or at least lay out certain policies that your business has. If you are selling cosmetics, for example, you can include in the “About us” statement that you only handle products that are cruelty-free. If you sell coffee, you can make clear here that all of your coffees are grown under Fair Trade rules. In a market that is increasingly concerned with living up to strict ethics, this is the kind of thing that people are going to want to know – and including it in the About Us section also makes you more likely to show up when people search for “fair trade coffee” or “cruelty-free cosmetics”.

We’ve come a long way in 25 years when it comes to website building. If it sometimes feels like we have a lot further to go, it’s because the internet is so powerful it can allow us to create wonderful things. It’s worth taking the time to ensure your website has everything it needs to succeed, because the results are worth the work.

Top Tips on How to Reduce Your Debt in 2021

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Reduce your Debt|Top Tips on How to Reduce Your Debt in 2021While the coronavirus may have had a dramatic impact on household finances in the UK, it only really accelerated a trend for rising debt levels that was already prevalent nationwide.

More specifically, people in the UK owed an estimated £1,688.5 billion by the end of October 2020, with this having increased by 21.8 billion year-on-year. This translates to a rise in debt of £412 per UK adult over the year, which is worrying when you consider the wide scale job losses that have already occurred as a partial result of lockdown measures.

In this article, we’ll consider the primary risks of accumulating debt, while offering some tips on how to reduce and effectively manage your burden in 2021.

What are the Risks of Debt?

Debt mounts when you continue to spend outside of your means, and are subsequently unable to repay your individual bills consistently or on time.

As a consequence of this, your individual debts start to accrue late payment charges and interest fees, creating a scenario where even minimum payments do little to eat into your original liability.

While this is problematic from the perspective of unsecured debts (as debt can continue to mount before creditors look to pursue court action), it’s even more damaging when dealing with secured liabilities.

This means debts pertaining to mortgages and car financing, and failing to pay these entities could ultimately cause you to default on your agreements and lose the underlying asset.

Why Online and Mobile Banking are Crucial When Controlling Debt

In the fundamental fight against rising debts, one of the best and most accessible weapons is online (or mobile) banking.

Both entities have become increasingly popular in recent times, with an estimated four out of every 10 UK adults now regularly using relevant mobile banking apps.

Virtual banking definitely offers advantages in the quest to combat debt, not least because you retain instant access to your account and can view transactions in real-time.

This makes it incredibly easy to review your spending and make achievable cash savings, which can in turn boost your disposable income levels and the amount that can be committed to paying off debts.

The type of instant online accounts offered by Monese are especially purposeful in this respect, as they can also be synched seamlessly with third-party budgeting apps to help you manage your spending in real-time.

Most importantly, you can secure a Monese account without needing to undergo a credit check, which may prove crucial for those struggling with debt and a history of missed or late payments.

How Else Can You Look to Manage Your Debts?

By using this type of account and a budgeting app in unison, you can begin to take control of your finances and structure a viable debt repayment plan.

Assuming that your budget has created enough for more discretionary spending, this will help you to concentrate a higher proportion of money on debt repayment and help you to begin repaying more than just the accrual of monthly interest.

Once you’ve begun to repay your debts on a regular and timely basis, you can open a line of communication with creditors and create the opportunity to ask for interest rates to be lowered (either temporarily or permanently).

This will really help the fight against debt, by reducing the time taken to settle accounts and the total amount repayable over time.

Communication Levels- Importance of Quality Communication Channels

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StrategyDriven Business Communications Article |Communication|Communication Levels- Importance of Quality Communication ChannelsCommunication is an integral part of any business’s operations and growth. Employees understand their roles, coordinate with one another, and operations run more smoothly. There are different levels of communication ranging from an upward, lateral and downward movement of information.

Upwards Flow

Communication starts from the subordinate levels to the supervisors, then the managers and finally reaches the executive. The upward flow of information enables the management to get feedback, state of affairs, clients’ needs and day to day reports and suggestions. The subordinate staff handle clients and other vital operations. They better understand the company’s needs and status and communicate the same to their supervisors or managers. To make the communication flow better, invest in collaboration solutions that improve and encourage free communication. It makes communication more transparent, faster, effective.

Lateral Flow

Different departments have their communication channels which enable a smoother flow of duties, coordination and transparency. Employees of a particular department can collaborate efforts and then pass reports to their managers. Managers have their horizontal communication channels where they compare performance and operations in the departments and detect any problems then extend the information to the executive. Lateral communication builds working relationships and friendships between team members and improves teamwork. Improved communication helps members work together to achieve a unified goal.

Downwards Flow

Communication about the company’s goals, vision and structural operations is passed down from the owner to the managers who work together with the supervisors to ensure the subordinate staff understand and work unitedly to achieve growth. The communication is not just through word of mouth but also the company website, training sessions, brochures, retreats and feedback reports. Through communication, a business owner can structure the operations to best suit the company vision, clients’ needs and current demands.

The Open Door Policy

Most organizations, although still uphold the three forms of communication, encourage the open door policy. Employees can freely walk to the manager or the executive without going through their supervisors and managers. The information flows more quickly, and employees and the company at large get faster solutions to problems. It also helps the managerial team better understand their employees, building more solid work relationships. Nowadays, most small businesses find it easier to work with lateral or horizontal communication channels as it encourages the team spirit.

Benefits of Improved Communication Systems

There is a better and faster flow of information, meaning that when there is a problem, it is detected, the concerned parties notified immediately leading to quicker solutions. Employees work better when they have stable communication structures. They build better relationships with their bosses and each other. Clients too are happier and more satisfied with the service delivery. Their needs and grievances are communicated fast and the appropriate measures sought in time. Everyone in the company better understands the businesses status and can easily access the information they need. Documents can be retrieved or shared easily, and knowledge passed on to different departments more efficiently.

Effective communication improves productivity which boosts company profits. In the end, everyone is happy.