Direct deposit is an expected form of payment now. It means your employees can skip running to the bank each pay date, and they can easily access online paystubs. It also accommodates fully remote employees and helps you cut down on paper, ink, and delivery fees. However, it can feel less tangible of a concept to some employers than a paper check does.

When you own a small business, you want to make sure your employees get paid on time. This means you need to know how much money to have in the correct account by a certain time. If your payroll service doesn’t disclose this information clearly, you can end up with additional fees or, worse yet, unpaid and unhappy employees.

At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we’ve worked with thousands of small business owners over the past few decades. Often, these owners want to know:

• When do I need to report my payroll information?
• When does my payroll specialist process and collect my direct deposit funds?
• When does my payroll specialist collect my payroll taxes?
• How much is payroll tax?

If you're like most small business owners, you have an accountant that you meet with to get your annual taxes done. Because you don't meet regularly outside of that time, you hesitate to reach out before tax season. Your accountant seems very busy and may even charge by the minute if you call them, so you want to ensure that you're only reaching out when necessary.

Accountants can help you beyond just filing annual taxes, and you should consider them a financial partner. Reaching out for help prior to a business decision – even a small one – can result in tax savings, cost cutting, and increased profitability.

Because of this, if you don't talk to your accountant more than once a year, you're not getting enough value out of them.

At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we believe in the power of monthly accounting. After all, we've helped thousands of small business owners achieve their goals by implementing this year-round method. Outside of tax season, here are three times when you should reach out to your accountant.

Many small businesses take on loans to purchase a large piece of equipment, obtain another business, and even just to get cash flow money so they can expand. It can be a daunting process. Even if you're prepared to show forecasts and solid research to support your loan application, that won’t always be enough to guarantee success. What do you do then?

When you're looking for a small business loan, you don’t have to go into it alone. Turn to your accountant to help you secure a small business loan! Here are the steps an accountant can help with:

• Loan planning
• Preparing and gathering financial data
• Creating an ideal presentation

At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we've helped many of our clients obtain loans over the past 50+ years. Do you know what your accountant can do for you? Here are three steps an accountant can take to help you secure a small business loan.

When you’re searching for an accounting or payroll service for your small business, you don’t have the time to sit through consultations from services that aren’t a good fit for your business. After all, isn’t wanting more time back in your day a big reason why you wanted to outsource in the first place?

On that same note, CSI Accounting & Payroll consultants would also love to get some time back instead of meeting with small business owners who aren’t a good fit for our services. We’re not going to be a perfect match with everybody! Continue reading to learn about the technical components and values that it takes for us to be a bad match.

If you own a small business, you probably don't have a very high-level knowledge of accounting - but why would you? When you hear "closing out your books," you might not know everything that entails.

Closing your books is a necessary part of preparing to file your taxes, and it’s important to make sure that transactions are recorded in the right place at the end of each year. For this reason, you need to close your books at least once a year. However, most businesses close out their books every month.

CSI Accounting & Payroll has handled accounting for small businesses for more than 50 years, but we believe that owners should have access to bookkeeping details that can help their business whether they come on board as a client or not.

Here, we help you learn more about the advantages of a monthly routine and the four steps it takes to close your books each month.

It’s hard enough to implement year-round tax strategy, prepare, and file your business taxes - but there’s an added element of difficulty when you’re not sure which taxes you should be paying.

Do you have to pay unemployment taxes? Social Security taxes? What about payroll and income taxes? (And if they do have to be paid, is it you who’s responsible - or your employees?)

CSI Accounting & Payroll has worked with small business taxes for more than 50 years (and payroll taxes for over a decade), so we know a thing or two about the different types of taxes and who’s responsible to pay them. 

Let’s take a deeper dive into payroll taxes and income taxes - which we consider to be separate taxes.

With an overwhelming number of tax credits out there, it can be hard to pick the ones your business is eligible for out of the crowd. Whose job is it to find these credits - yours or your accountant’s?

If you’ve read our other articles, you may fully expect us to answer that we’ll do the heavy lifting here for you. After all, a major reason to work with a monthly accounting service is to let an accountant take the bookkeeping and tax work off your plate. 

However, even the most perfect accountant we can imagine wouldn’t have a complete success rate in obtaining every tax credit you’re eligible for. You should always keep an ear out for business tax credits just in case. After all, a claimed tax credit is a directly-lowered tax liability.

A quality accountant should, however, have a decent understanding of some of their most-claimed tax credits and know your eligibility. They might not have this same awareness when it comes to the specific or rare ones, but they can still check your eligibility for them if you ask! At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we’ve been helping our clients claim tax credits in this manner for over 50 years.

Here, we discuss the top six credits we believe you should ask your accountant to see if you qualify for.

With the rise of remote and hybrid work over the past few years, some excitement - and confusion - has grown around the idea.

Remote work was originally thought of as only possible for large businesses or the self-employed, one-man show. Now, even some small and medium-sized business owners have begun to adopt this work style if it's possible for their industry.

As a business owner, you may have questions about remote and hybrid work. CSI Accounting & Payroll supports many small and medium-sized businesses with this work style, so we're familiar with the answers to these commonly-asked questions:

• Will having remote employees cost more?
• What are the benefits and downsides of remote employees?
• How are remote workers taxed?

What makes you want to do your own business accounting? If your answer is along the lines of, “I want to save money”, you may be surprised to hear that many small business owners worry about their finances even after they’ve reached a comfortable level of growth. That can mean they also see avoiding expenses as a safer option than making an investment. This is not true for every situation.

When you outsource accounting, it’s an extremely valuable investment. Plus, it costs much less than hiring an accountant - or any employee - to do it in-house. Consider the costs of hiring and onboarding, providing a salary and benefits, subscribing to a bookkeeping software, and maybe even working with an annual tax accountant as well.

At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we’ve spoken with thousands of small business owners over the past several decades, so we know what commonly drives people to want to do their own accounting. Here, we go over:

• The value of accounting
• Doing your own business accounting
• What your time is worth

We all want to find ways to save money. Besides being human, that’s one thing that you have in common with most people in the world.

Many business owners associate tax season with paying a large tax bill from the government - so how can you cut the bill down? One way to reduce what you owe in taxes is to take advantage of all of your tax deductions.

If you’re researching tax deductions yourself, then you’re not getting enough value out of your accountant. You shouldn’t have to reach out with questions and be billed by the minute. If your accountant doesn’t take the time to explain tax strategies to you, then they aren’t implementing tax strategies. Not to mention, an annual tax accountant can’t properly assist with tax planning since they don’t meet with you year-round.

At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we’ve helped small business owners legally minimize their tax liability for more than 50 years. We know what we’re talking about! We also know some of the common questions about tax deductions, such as:

• What are tax deductions?
• What is tax-deductible?
• What is not tax-deductible?