Bryan Weatherford :
Folks, as you know, here on the show, not just my show, not just the network, but frankly, our entire center, Post Media Company, we are here to help small businesses. Any way we can for the most part is to share their stories. But occasionally we get to have guests here on All In. They too are small business owners, but they’re small businesses. They’re solely to help other small businesses be as productive and frankly, as profitable as they can be. So pay attention. You’re probably going to learn some things today that if they can’t help you, they’re obviously going to help anyone you know who is an entrepreneur. The name of the business today is Affordable Bookkeeping and Payroll Services with our guest Candy Messer right here on the show. Hey Candy. How are you?
Candy Messer:
I’m great. Thank you.
Bryan Weatherford :
Well, I’m so glad you’re here today because as we chatted while we were off the air, we’re all into small businesses. You are a small business. You help all small businesses. It doesn’t matter what they’re into, what their product, good, or service is because frankly, any small business is going to have payroll and other accounting related bookkeeping obstacles. Shall we say that they frankly don’t know how to do? And if they start trying to figure it out, they’re either going to do it wrong or they’re going to spend so much time on it that they’re not going to focus on their business and the business goes away. So thank you for being here today. I love your title, a profitability growth advisor. Tell us a little bit about your background before you started on your own. How did you get to where you are today?
Candy Messer :
Sure. Well, I did go to school for business management, but I didn’t actually think I would be a business owner. But someone had asked me to help her and her husband’s business after knowing what I had done. I’d been a full charge bookkeeper for about six years. So she’s the reason that I have a business. And since then I’ve helped the small business owners with their tasks that they generally don’t want to do, but they have to, and then we give them the peace of mind knowing that it’s handled.
Bryan Weatherford :
Yeah. It’s funny. You talk about the taxes they don’t want to do, but they have to. I don’t know any taxes that anybody looks forward to doing, but we have to do all of them. And it’s nice to bring in a pro like yourself, especially in times like this, because there’s all this new stuff coming in. For example, talk to me about this Employee Retention Tax Credit and how that relates to the PPP loans a lot of people are familiar with. Can you do both of those at the same time?
Candy Messer :
You can. Now originally you had to pick one or the other. And with legislation that was passed at the end of 2020, they now can go back and claim the employer retention tax credit If they qualify with either a 50% reduction of their revenue compared to the same period in 2019, or if there were mandatory closures or reductions of their potential clients. Because the restaurants couldn’t have dining or with the social distancing, they couldn’t have as many people working, they could qualify. And then that has been extended through 2021 as well. Where now you only need a 20% reduction of the revenue compared to 2019, or again, if you had those mandatory shutdowns. And with the PPP, basically you can’t use the same funds. So we just want them to make sure they’re tracking. There’s not enough time to go into all of this on this, the 10 minutes we have today, but they have to track what they’re using for forgiveness versus what they’re going to use for the employer retention tax credit. But they now can have both.
Bryan Weatherford :
Yeah, I think the overriding factor today is going to be this, quite frankly. Candy people need to, you need to focus on your business. Don’t worry about this stuff. Call Candy, quite frankly, because you keep up with it. It’s what you do. And, and you’re very passionate about it. I can see that in your eyes, the way you talk about this stuff, people just need to go to you, let you handle this. They handle their business. All right. Speaking of handling their business, a lot of small business owners, particularly when they get started, they have a problem, shall we say, with co-mingling their funds. They have money going back and forth between their business and their individual account, personal accounts. Why is that an issue and why do we not need to do that?
Candy Messer :
Well, business owners often think it’s easier to have one bank account when they first start not realizing if you’re going to do your bookkeeping, you would have to track every transaction. If you’re going to reconcile that account in your accounting software, or if you’re not going to want to put everything into your business books, you have to go through your statements and then highlight everything that is business-related and then track that. So it’s actually more work, but it’s also a risk because the IRS does not want you mixing business and personal funds. And if you have any type of entity, you really aren’t supposed to at all, it’s completely separate.
Bryan Weatherford :
Well, it’s all about keeping things straight. And again, that’s why you need to bring in a professional. There’s a lot of small business owners that we talk to. They frankly, they got to be pretty good at something as a hobby and decided to turn it into a business, but they still treat it like a hobby. And you can’t do that. Once you claim that you’re a business, you’ve got to keep it separate. You know, you mentioned talking about financial statements to where everything’s divvied up and whatnot. Those things are tough to understand at times, is that something you offer? Can you help small business owners actually understand what the heck a financial statement means?
Candy Messer :
Sure. With our clients, we do offer the opportunity to sit down with us and really dig deep into what those financial statements mean and what they can do with that information to use the details to make wise business decisions and make changes to bring about greater profitability. But I also created a guide that is financial lingo because a lot of people find the terms confusing and they don’t know the difference between cashflow and profit. So, I actually created a free report that anyone who’s interested can download from our website. And if they just go to www.affordablebookkeepingandpayroll.com/free-report, they can get that. And that will help them understand a little bit more of the lingo that’s used in the accounting field.
Bryan Weatherford :
It’s a whole different world out there for guys like me who are pretty good at sales and marketing. And don’t have a clue on to what you do. Thank you for that, because it would give us an opportunity to at least semi understand, at least enough, to understand the point that we don’t know what the heck’s going on. And again, call Candy. All right, last but not least, and this is a big one. A lot of people don’t realize that if they were in a situation where they have a business and they conduct business in other states, even though they’re not physically located in the states, there are times and instances to where they need to collect sales tax for those individual states. Talk to me about that because that has to be a big burden for a lot of people.
Candy Messer :
It is. And if someone is used to their state’s sales tax return that says, “Did you sell something out of state?” And if so, you generally don’t have to collect the tax on that. But in 2018, there was a case that was South Dakota versus Wayfair. And they were saying that there were sales being done in their state, even though there was no physical location. And the Supreme court actually found in their favor and now allows states to collect tax from out-of-state sellers who have a specific number in their state. Now, the amount that South Dakota had selected is what a lot of the States are doing. If you have a $100,000 of revenue or you have 200 sales in that year, then you now have to remit the sales tax directly to that state as well. So businesses really need to be tracking where they’re doing their business and start collecting those. Or if they’re using someone like Amazon, Amazon may collect from them and then pay it for them. So depending on the third party that they’re using. But businesses really need to be aware that you may have a liability that you originally did not have.
Bryan Weatherford :
So does this apply to, like, if I have a business in California, I have an online store and somebody purchases something online and they’re in New Jersey, do I need to collect sales tax for New Jersey? Is that what we’re talking here?
Candy Messer :
Yeah. So if you meet their reporting requirements for how many sales that you have, then you would need to register and then collect from your customers and then remit that to that state. In your own state, you would still say those are out of state sales, but in the state that you’re selling into, if you meet their qualifications, you now have to collect and remit to them as well.
Bryan Weatherford :
Candy, I have to think that the overall word here is compliance. And that’s one of the big things that you do. You help businesses to stay compliant with everything, whether it’s state sales tax, federal, whatever. And I can’t even imagine how many different parameters there are. Each state probably has its own set of rules in the states that do have state sales tax. You got to keep up with all that, don’t you? There’s a lot to know.
Candy Messer :
You know, each state has their own terms of what is taxable, what is not taxable and there are different tax rates. It’s not one rate for the whole state of California or the state of New York or things. There are different locations that have different rates too. So keeping up with everything does take a lot of work. And so that’s where business owners can get overwhelmed as well if they’re trying to do it all, and they’re not sure how to even figure out what’s taxable or non-taxable. And so that’s where we can come in and help,
Bryan Weatherford :
You know, I’m out of time now, but if you’ll allow me, I want to summarize quickly in a nutshell, big businesses have entire departments devoted to exactly what you do, but through your company, you allow the smaller businesses to get treated like a big business, to get everything done the way it needs to do. Hey, thanks for being here today. Wonderful stuff you share with us. I sincerely appreciate it. Thank you for taking care of all the small businesses everywhere. See you.
