Every month I look forward to Tuesday’s Together!! After being at the RTS leaders retreat last weekend I was SO excited to get back to our group and share with them some ideas we had. If you haven’t heard of Tuesday’s together here is a little bit about it. We meet the 2nd Tuesday of each month and have been since June. We have been meeting at 10:30am at the Roosevelt Coffeehouse on Long street in downtown Columbus. Each month we average around 25 people there. We have a different topic each month and we get together to discuss it, share the way we do things and to build relationships with other creatives. If you are a creative in ANY way or own your own business this is for YOU! We would love to have you a part of this. We are a community of people who believe in community over competition and bettering our industry to encourage and build up one another. We want all creatives to be apart all of those photographers, bakers, makers, designers, hair stylist, make up artists, planners, you name it we want you to be a part. Working your own business can be lonely and this is all about community. So come check us out or email me for more information! 

This month was a little different then the last ones. We not only had our normal morning meet up but we also had an evening meet up. It worked out this month to do that and I was so excited to meet more people. As tax season is here and April 15th is coming closer every day, this months topic was on Accounting & bookkeeping aka “preparing yourself for tax season” We had a special guest, who has also been attending many of our meet ups, Eric who owns www.Charitax.com there to share with us information we need to know about preparing for taxes along with answering any questions we had. It was a huge help to everyone, so THANK YOU so so much!!!!! If you have any questions be sure to contact him.

I want to highlight a few things we did chat about that I think is important for all small business owners to makes sure you are doing to prepare yourself for tax season each here! 

5 tips to help you stay organized!

1. Be sure to track all of your income! The best way to do so is by getting an online system to help you such as, 17 hats or honey books. these are both amazing programs that keeps track of all your invoicing plus sooo much more!
2. Track your expenses. This is KEY. You want those write offs! Do this by getting a business account and scanning those receipts so you always have them. Break down your expenses into categories so the IRS knows where that money is going. You want to do this well and not fudge it, this is a big no no. A few good scanners we talked about for saving your receipts are “Neat Scanner” & “Fujitsu scanner”.
3. Track your Miles. Every mile you drive for your business needs to be tracked. You can do this by an app or by writing it down each time you travel somewhere. Keep of log of where you went just in case! Make sure to count your miles round trip. You are given .54 cents for each mile. This is super if you are driving a lot, like us!! An app that are good is MileIQ.
4. Keep your books up to date!! Don’t wait until it gets TOO far behind. We were challenged to take 30-60 minutes once a week to make sure all income, expenses and miles were up to date. This will make tax season SO much better. /
5. DONT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE. Seriously guys! This time of year is STRESSFUL. I can be terribly organized when it comes to this stuff and I know there are things I need to change now, so next year at this time I am not a stress ball. So if you struggle in this year of your business reach out to Eric. Don’t wait until the last minute! 🙂

I hope that these tips are helpful for you! I am ready to start putting things into practice now and not wait until the last minute!!! 🙂 Hope to see you at the Next Tuesday together Creative!

xoxox