bookkeeping serves two purposes - to enable the IRS to evaluate your operations, and to help manage your business. Your books make up one very important part of your overall business records and should include all transactions made by your business. As a standard practice, several pieces of information should always be kept in your books. Revenues and Expenses How much money is going out, where it's going, and what money is coming in are all questions that can be answered by recording the revenues and expenses of your business transactions. Records can be maintained through ajournal,a popular method that details receipts and expenses, or aledger, a method that records transactions as credits and debits. Cash Expenditures Important to record the cash your business spends so you'll have an accurate number of expenses each year. Writing reimbursable checks or keeping petty cash records are both valid methods of documenting cash expenditures. Inventory Maintain records of all inventory to prevent stealing and misplacing merchandise, keep inventory holdings to a minimum, and track business trends. Dates purchased, stock numbers, purchase prices, dates sold, and sale prices are all relevant information for inventory records. Accounts Receivable and Payable Always keep track ofwhat customers oweyou and what debts you owe others. It's prudent to record as much data as possible including invoice dates, numbers, amounts, terms, dates and amounts paid or due, balances, and client information. Employees Hiring even one employee invokes your responsibility to file and pay forms and payroll taxes. Employers are responsible for maintaining employee forms such as the W-4 (Withholding Allowance Certification) and the I-9 (Employment Eligibility Verification). You are responsible for maintaining records on withholding, employer matching, unemployment, and worker's compensation. Realtors are not exceptions to this rule. Often times realtors are so inundated with prospects and leads, and in good markets, clients, that its difficult to find time to keep the books. More often than not, accounting and bookkeeping practices have flat rates or hourly rates that aren't conducive to a realtors fluctuating income stream, effectively eliminating the option of hiring a professional to keep the realtors books. But not, with the emergence of Smith Hawthorne and Associates, LLC, a consulting firm designed by a licensed realtor, for licensed realtors. If real estate is the life's blood of the American economy, then realtors and agents are the veins. Without you, there is no industry and without the industry, there is no economy, so why aren't more services customized for the benefit of realtors?Unfortunately, I don't know that answer. What I do know is that the accurate records of realtors are serious business, and we handle them that way!
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