Account 4It Canada Inc.

Toronto, Ontario, Canada - Everything you need to confidently manage, track, and understand your finances.

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Saturday Personal Finance Tip

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Plan for a vacation

People often ask me  how to organize their personal finances and I have come up with a simple solution you can implement in 3 easy steps:

  • Step 1 is to have two bank accounts – One will be where you deposit your pay cheque and pay your fixed expenses (eg. mortgage and utility bills); the other bank account is for the portion of your budget for stuff like groceries, clothing, meals & entertainment, or other discretionary spending.
  • Step 2 is to track your spending so you can actually make a plan, or a budget.  Some people loose interest at this task; however, modern technology has actually made this easy, try using a program like Mint, Wave,  QuickBooks Online or another similar software to track where your money is going.  After a few months of tracking you should be in a good position to make a plan.
  • Step 3 is to make and review your plan. I call it a plan as opposed to a budget as like all plans you should review it frequently and make changes as necessary. I suggest a quarterly review and then adjust the plan for the next quarter based on what is actually happening in your life and spending.

Organizing, tracking and monitoring your spending is an ongoing process. By mindfully monitoring your spending it will help you find and save cash.  Watch for unnecessary spending in places like bank charges, interest, and other service charges which you can begin to eliminate based on your plan.  Be sure to budget a small savings for a vacation, it will make you feel good about having a plan when you are chilling under a palm tree.

The Paperless office is Possible

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Save a tree Go Paperless!

Several years ago my home office was filled with filing cabinets storing a small forest of supporting documents for all my clients.  Then I read an article about having a paperless office and my journey began.  Today I have a two drawer filing cabinet, one drawer is documents I am saving for sentimental reasons; like my marriage certificate, and report cards!?

My first step to a paperless office required a few upgrades!  I bought a second monitor to make viewing and posting at the same time possible without having to toggle back and forth between programs. Next I added a high speed scanner and after testing several I found the ScanSnap ix500 to be the most reliable, uncomplicated and easy to use.

Armed with the new upgrades in my office I set-out to find an online cloud file system to store my scanned documents and the options seemed endless; Google, Hubdocs, LedgerDocs, Microsoft 365, QuickBooks Online and many more. In future posts I will share with you my experiences and recommendations in getting out from under the pile of paper.

Although it may take time to initially set-up a paperless office; in the end it will save you time and money – less toner, paper and supplies are needed.  The best part of this process is you really will be saving trees –  an all important part of our environment.

Mileage tracking for Business made Easy!

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For many years people have asked me how I track my mileage for tax purposes; and my response surprised them when I told them I had a manual pencil and logbook system. I liked it that way – it seemed easy?! Now don’t get me wrong, I have researched several automated options over the years; however, I never found one that made me think of giving up my pencil and log-book system.

Then earlier this year I discovered MileIQ. My mind has been changed and I no longer have a pencil or logbook in my car. I no longer forget to note my trip or agonize over where I drove.  MileIQ does it all for me, and at the end of the month I have a nice neat expense report that I use to be reimbursed by my company.

MileIQ is an automatic mileage tracker that takes the hassle out of keeping a logbook. I think you’ll find it helpful for logging your business drives!

The MileIQ app runs in the background on your iOS or Android phone and logs every drive automatically. You swipe each drive to classify it as business or personal, and MileIQ calculates the value of your deductible kilometers. You can add details like parking, tolls, purpose and vehicle and have a complete, accurate mileage log practically effortlessly! Your log gets synced to the cloud, so you can get to it any time, even years down the road. You’ll be able to claim the full value of your mileage deduction with total peace of mind.

This year, MileIQ is offering my clients a 20% discount on annual unlimited-drive plans. Subscriptions are regularly priced at $7.99/mo. or $79.99/yr. (Here’s how to redeem promo codes.)

You can try MileIQ by downloading the free app for iOS or Android. To get an annual unlimited-drive plan at a 20% discount, sign in to your MileIQ web dashboard, click “Get Unlimited Drives” and use promo code PCAS714A at checkout. (Note that the discount is not valid for in-app upgrades or monthly plans.)

Want more information? Check out their site for more info..

What Credit Card Processor Is Right for You – QuickBooks Payments?

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Credit Card Pic
Credit Card Costs

I recently converted a QuickBooks desktop client to QuickBooks online. The client historically processed credit card transactions using Moneris. After conversion we set-up the QuickBooks credit card payment feature; with an introductory offer of 2.5% + $0.25 per transaction was rather competitive. I noted that another credit card processor (Stripe) is offering 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

Finding out the credit card discount rate from many of the merchant providers is hard to determine, as the fee you are actually paying is dependant on everything from how you process the transaction (keyed or swiped), to the number of bells and whistles the customer has on that particular credit card. I like these new processors offering this straight forward pricing – easy to understand as well as anticipate costs for budgeting purposes.

In an effort to justify clients using the QuickBooks online processing feature, I analyzed a companies’ credit card transactions from October through December 2015. This particular company processed $31,812 in 47 transactions. This company was using Moneris and had paid $914 including all associated fees. Had this company used Stripe their costs would have been $937; and using QuickBooks online payment feature directly through their online platform, it would have cost $807, a significant savings.

Now it should be noted that many clients also pay for deposits made to their bank accounts, as such you have to understand their banking package. This company pays a flat fee per month and as such there is no additional costs to deposit these transactions; however, they could be charged for a fee transaction as QuickBooks discount may show separately in their bank.

QuickBooks accepts Visa, MasterCard, and Discover. Moneris and Stripe accept Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

I can now confidently recommend clients use the QuickBooks payment solution knowing the rate is competitive, the deposits show up within a few days and because its directly through QuickBooks, the information is automated, secure and backed-up in the cloud.

Rule Of The Road – Vehicle Use & Your Business

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If you own your own business chances are that you use your car for your business. You pick up inventory, or supplies, perhaps you visit clients, or hopefully go to the bank to do deposits. If you use your car for anything like the above examples you can expense a portion of your use to your business.  That said, there is (of course) some rules that apply in order to stay clear and clean with the Canada Revenue Agency.

The first rule and recommendation is that you log your travel. If you want to expense it you must quantify it, and have support for your expenses. Keep a book in the car and log the date, mileage and reason for each trip. This will go a long way in determining the cost related to your car. Also if you ever get audited you can prove the business use of your vehicle.  Keep all your receipts for gas, maintenance, leases etc as they will be needed to calculate costs, and the percentage that can get allocated to your business.

As with everything for a small business, things need to be kept in proportion with the business itself. For example, if you are a hair dresser with a storefront, your mileage will be minimal, as you will more often than not be in your store working, however if you are a real estate agent, your car is your office and your travel will be extreme. Keep it in line with what you do and keep a log of travel and you will be able to take advantage of your vehicle expense.

Meals & Entertainment Basics

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So you want to claim a meal or entertainment expense that was incurred for the purpose of earning income, there are some rules you need to follow in order to keep the tax man happy when he drops by to audit your business expenses, here are some general rules:

  1. Be sure to keep both the detailed receipt issued by the restaurant or establishment showing the details of the expense, along with the credit card slip (if that is your form of payment) showing the total paid including a reasonable tip.
  2. Note on the back of the receipt, the names and business addresses of the customers, or persons being entertained, including the relationship and reason for the claim (eg. Joe Smith, 123 Any Street – ABC Corporation – Potential New Client).

It should be noted that there are special rules under certain circumstances, for example while attending a conference, convention or seminar and when the cost of a meal is included in a transportation fee.  It is best to review the Canada Revenue Agency’s IT-518R for specifics on unusual circumstances.

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tp/it518r/it518r-e.pdf