Accounting, Bookkeeping, Income Tax Preparation, And Consulting Forum

I have uploaded a revised listing of my Canadian Prime Rates excel spreadsheet to the internet, for the taking. It is current up to yesterday’s date .. November 17, 2010. Canadian Prime Rate is currently 3.00% (last change approximate September 15, 2010) You can have for the taking … at the following location: http://1800HART.com/stuff/1800HART_Prime_Rates.xls It contains the changes of Canadian Prime Rates since April 16, 1974 … to November 17, 2010 .. that’s like… more than 36-1/2 years of updates! Since my last update to May 25, 2006 my source (Royal Bank of Canada) has been reluctant to assist me [More]

I will be giving you the generalized version, but here is the thing with Canada Revenue Agency and if you owe Income Taxes: Unless you make less than you did in the following year .. you are required to remit at least the amount you owed in the previous year – in advance – as instalments for the current and future taxation year. If you end up owing MORE taxes next year, than you did last year .. you are only required to remit up to the amount you owed last year. If you end up owing LESS taxes next [More]

October marks the second anniversary of my HART-Empire Network and I published my Year 2 in Review post over on the HART-Empire blog. There are many people and bloggers out there ALSO celebrating their “Blogiversary” in October 2007 .. and most will hopefully be over at Liz Strauss’ http://Successful-Blog.com chatting on an all-day Open-Mike comment day! An Ode To Liz Strauss If you don’t know who Liz Strauss is, and you blog .. then you are blogging in all of the wrong places! Liz has always been one of my favorite bloggers on the internet. When it was “cool” to [More]

I received my first EVDO (MTS Mobility) statement today. It is for the period June 29, 2007 until August 7, 2007 – and geesh that screws me up. First of all, this bill was for $145.77 allocated as follows: Activation Fee (Jun29) – $35.00 Service (Jun29-Jul07) – $34.00 Service (Jul08-Aug07) – $60.00 (discounted from $90 for next three months) PST 7% and GST 6% – $16.77 >> Total $145.77 I’m quite pissed. I knew about the activation fee, but I had absolutely no idea about the pro-rated billing cut-off. I have signed up for the maximum 500MB Data transfer account, [More]

* You know * I’ve been meaning to find a good place for this .. but – if you click on the TALKR button .. you can subscribe to the RSS of this feed .. and an .mp3 link appears at the end of each post (or it should be doing that anyway). This way, you can just click the audio and actually LISTEN to the words of each post TALKR itself! That icon has been in the sidebar since Version 1.0 of this blog, but not promoted or publicized much. Feel free to check it out! Or, you can [More]

Darren over at Blog-Republic blog started an interesting post today .. (well, interesting to me anyway – go see my comment) .. Pre-writing Blog Posts And Posting Later. As you may have noticed that I have many blogs in the HART-Empire Network and I thought you might be wondering how I can keep up with them all .. Now I will tell you: I’m having trouble keeping up with them all and have to pick and choose sometimes which ones to nourish and which ones to grow flowers and sit with no new posts. Fortunately, on the slower blogs I [More]

Mmmmm .. HART’s Famous Pasta Salad .. Yummy! 🙂 Well .. my wife thinks it’s famous anyway … Click on the picture for the recipe!

I have uploaded a revised listing of my Canadian Prime Rates excel spreadsheet to the internet, for the taking. It is current up to today’s date .. September 19, 2006. Canadian Prime Rate is currently 6.00% (last changed May 25, 2006) You can have for the taking … at the following location: http://1800HART.com/stuff/1800HART_Prime_Rates.xls It contains the changes of Canadian Prime Rates since April 16, 1974 … to May 25, 2006 .. that’s over 30 years of changes! FYI … HIGHEST RATE: was August 7, 1981 at 22.75% LOWEST RATE: (tied) was 3.75% on both January 16, 2002 and again April [More]

Suppose you have an accounting blog .. like .. HART (1-800-HART) … and you want to show off your accounting knowledge …. READER: Dear HART … I just purchased a new car that was financed over 3 years, for $25,000.00 .. I put down $3,000.00 which included the first month’s loan payment of $500.00. What’s my journal entry? HART (1-800-HART): Congratulations on your new purchase .. I hope you have many years enjoyment with your new car. Here’s how to “book” the journal entry into your accounting records. JOURNAL ENTRY DEBIT CREDIT (1) DR. AUTOMOBILES $25,000     CR. CAR [More]

This is Part (II) of two parts, because the original post seemed to be getting long. In Part (I), I had tried to identify some of the common difficulties that can arise and problems that can stir up during the bank reconciliation process. In this part, I will discuss ways in which I overcome each of those situations and provide you with some tips to help make reconciling your banks and cash accounts easier. Reconciling – Computer Cheques Firstly, I ask them to sort the cheques in numerical order when they get the cancelled cheques with their bank statement. Lately, [More]

I have many clients who have automated payroll services. By using the word “automated”, I mean specifically: * Companies who use payroll services like Ceridian Canada etc. * Companies who have accounting software with a Payroll Module and pay for periodic and/or annual updates But, I also have many clients that are just single owner/shareholders or small businesses that only have 2-5 employees and find that that it is too costly to keep paying for an updated payroll service or hire a company like Ceridian. Here is what I suggest that my clients do Let’s face it .. I would [More]

As an accountant and Income Tax preparer and E-Filer .. I have items that need to be filed with Canada Revenue Agency all the time. This is what I do. I have a bin on an office shelf in my office that I keep everything that has to go to Canada Revenue Agency. Unless there are special deadlines or requests to file, I generally deliver all the documents either on the last day of the month, or on the weekend. Sometimes, I’m just too busy to hand deliver and I call the courier to deliver an envelope directly, but with [More]

I posted a complete list of prime rates that I had been keeping on my local computer, since January 7, 1986 .. current up to December 7, 2005 .. at the URL .. HERE I would like to thank Tony C. from Montréal, Qué. who sent me the following email March 21, 2006: Hi , I found your excel spreadsheet about Royal Bank prime rates very useful today. But I needed since 1974. So I called Royal bank and got the missing information over the phone, and I would like to share this with you because you shared with us. [More]

It’s tax time here and I have many ways to keep track of clients who come in and bring me their records and income tax information. I have to … I do a lot of Income Tax Preparation during the months of March and April and well, actually all the way through until June 15th – which in Canada, is the deadline for individuals with business income. When I meet with a client, I try to take notes. For every client or group of clients (e.g. for head of house only) I start a new “T1-Transit Mem0”. This is my [More]

Top Five Reasons Why A Business Might Want To Use A Petty Cash Fund 1) The owner does not have to be available 24 hours to write a cheque for every little expense all of the time 2) To have the ability to make change for your customer wanting to pay an invoice on account 3) To reimburse an employee replenishing office supplies they had purchased for the business 4) To systematically keep track of all cash purchases in one logical place 5) To give an employee greater responsibility in helping running the affairs of the business Top Five Reasons [More]

While I am very ‘computerized’ in my own business, I still type invoices manually on MS Word, even though I can generate them automatically. I prefer to do that this way, because my invoices look better printed on a colour letterhead of my own making. I then post the invoice into my Time and Billing (T&B) Software program, which keeps track of both my work in progress and accounts receivable. I don’t bother entering my invoices individually into my General Ledger program (which, I usually wait until the last possible minute during Income Tax time – “clients first”), but rather [More]

Oh – I forgot to post this a few days ago … Enjoy … here’s the rest of it .. http://1800HART.com/stuff/12daysofxmas.txt … Just click on the Txt file and SAVE AS to your own computer..

HART’s mind works in mysterious ways …. I have kept a record of every Prime Rate change since January 1, 1986. I guess I’m anal that way. There are many times working on year end financial statements that I have to accrue interest on loan balances. Quite contrary to common belief .. “term loan rates” are not that common for business. Mind you, I shouldn’t say that as if I am making a fact, but rather an observation. Usually with my experience, when there are company loans that involve general security arrangements, I have noted that these loans tend to [More]

Comparing “Net Income” and “Cash Flow” is like comparing “Apples” to “Oranges”. These are two different concepts. You can have a positive cash flow and still lose money. You might be experiencing a negative cash flow but are making money and profits. Sometimes your banker or investor will ask you to prepare a basic business plan and a Pro-Forma Cash Flow. There’s a reason they want to see this Pro-Forma statement. They want to know if you have the ability to generate cash in your business to pay back their loan and/or return on their investment. Except for the desire [More]

Okay .. I was watching FUTURAMA recently .. the episode with one of the best comic genius lines in all animated cartoons … Leela: Fry this isn’t healthy. You’re living in the past. Fry: I’m rich! I can live whenever I want. Leela: But we’re your friends and we live here in the year 3000. Bender: Yeah. Now are you gonna come to the squid fights with us or sit here wallowing in your prehistoric junk? Fry: Junk? Maybe you can’t understand this but I’ve finally found what I need to be happy, and it’s not friends. It’s things. “ [More]

Generally, you can deduct the costs used in your business. According to bodies such as our Canada Revenue Agency and the Internal Revenue Service as … there is another stipulation to this general rule. A business expense is a cost you incur for the sole purpose of earning business income. So, you can’t just deduct everything and all expenses and costs you incur throughout your day in your business. Personal expenses just don’t belong here. There are additional rules for various type of deductions. If you want to read up on the general guidelines, try this … RC4070 – Guide [More]

I have been using Typing Reports for everything and for years. It’s my way of finalizing a job. For all of my personal income tax files, each file will have a T1 Transit Memo at the top of the file, above the actual printed and final tax return, and my envelope of tax receipts (due to E-File). It’s the same way with my annual T4, T4A, or T5 Preparation too. I have a different control sheet, which I named it as my T4/T4A/T5 Transit Memo. It’s no different for publishing financial statements. I call this my Typing Report .. plain [More]

This is basically the design of my own fax cover sheet. Let’s face it .. you need a good fax cover sheet … so, why not use mine? I keep a folder filled with a bunch printed off of my Laser printer, in black and white, and a bunch printed off of my Deskjet printer, in color. I often send faxes to clients who also have all-in-one color printers doubling as their fax machine. Even if they don’t, I always staple the fax cover page to its documents, with a printed acknowledgement generated by my fax machine, and either place [More]

Click on the following link …. a new window will pop up … http://1800hart.com/fishtank/fishtank.htm Do you like? Do you want it? HERE! Take it! 1) Download and save to your computer: http://1800hart.com/fishtank/1800HART.com_fishtank.zip 2) Copy all files into a new folder or a folder of your choice, and run fishtank.htm

Usually, while I’m working on a client’s file, there is a good chance you will be missing information. I try to get around this issue, but preparing a general checklist for the client to follow. It’s quite easy to create a checklist on recurring jobs, because you can basically go through last year’s file and make a list of everything that is in there, that your client can provide. I have found it to be true, that if you provide a ‘professional looking’ checklist, your client will make a better attempt to providing you with the information you need. So, [More]

Usually, while I’m working on a client’s file, there might be questions that I need to ask or information that I require to obtain to complete their year end financial statements. You can’t phone your client everytime you have a question because it’s not only inefficient, but gets on their nerves. So, I do stuff like this …. I create a “QUERY FORM” and jot down the questions that I have on the left side, and fax it over to my client. The answers are jotted back on the right side, and then faxed back to my Toll-Free fax line. [More]