Using ratio analysis can make a big difference for your farm. Incorporating a ratio module within your accounting system, can help you pinpoint areas of strength, and weakness, to help you increase profits and reverse negative trends. Here's how.

Track Financial Condition

Ratio analysis allows you to see the data behind the indicators, and trend information can be shown in meaningful ways, such as a graph or chart for any number of years available. This helps you see your financial condition in a way that is meaningful to you, so you can start making improvements where necessary, or have the confidence to continue with your efforts as they are.

Compare Your Farm to Your Competition

Looking at the trends of your competitors can be of great value to your farm. Ratio calculations allow you to view industry standards and illustrate financial trends, so you understand where your farm stands against your competition. The success, progress, or shortfalls of your farm, can be understood and addressed, so proper action can be taken. By knowing where you stand against your competitors, you know where to improve, giving you a competitive advantage.

Compare Various Time Frames

Understanding your current situation is crucial. And yet it may be even more important to compare data from two different time frames. Perhaps the past year wasn′t profitable and you want to turn it around. Or maybe you want to understand why you were struggling so much last month. Use ratio analysis as a high-level tool to see trends over longer periods of time, so you can achieve long-term financial growth.

By using Ratio analysis, you can access information and trends that you may not have noticed, so you can make changes accordingly, which will benefit your farm!

The reporting of tax liabilities to multiple state and federal agencies is one of the most onerous and scary requirements of having employees.

Over 25% of businesses experience a penalty for errors, late filings, or other mistakes filing employment tax, averaging over $700 each year.
(Source: IRS data book 2010)

Large companies may make deposits and file reports several times a week. That’s hundreds of filings in multiple states each year. Automating this process provides significant savings.

No matter what size the company, compliance to eFiling requirements, ever-changing forms, and meeting new guidelines legislated into existence during the year is difficult, and opens you to significant fines and penalties for non-compliance.

Moving to eFiling

Any change in the way your business operates should be made for the purpose of improving efficiencies, lowering expenses, limiting liabilities, or to keep up with changing requirements in regulations or marketplace.

Changing payroll reporting and payments to eFiling meets many, if not all, of these reasons. The simple interface and comprehensive nature of many of the forms and payments solutions available, provide efficiencies to virtually any other reporting and payment options. Automated error-checking functions eliminate virtually all rejections, as well as eliminating the liabilities associated with potential fines and penalties. One of the biggest changes in the business regulation environment is the stated goal of the IRS and SSA to make all communications and business practices to be conducted electronically.

Since many states take their lead from the federal standards, it will not be long before virtually all state and federal payments will be required to be sent electronically.

The Problem

Moving to electronic payments is inevitable. The question is how to go about changing over from your current process to electronic delivery.

With over 170 state and federal taxing agencies and myriad different processes, formats, forms, and deadlines, many businesses have just thrown up their hands and outsourced reporting to payroll services and paid very significant fees to do so. In many cases they simply felt they had no choice. The threat of non-compliance is just too scary.

Other companies have hired additional staff and decided to use agency websites to process payments and reports. Again the business is faced with going to several different sites, none of which have the same process. Those businesses are faced with unique logins for each site, separate tracking methods for each site, and multiple contacts to try to resolve any issues that may occur while transcribing in payroll data or attempting to export/download multiple files for the various sites.

The Solution

Find a solution that is integrated in your payroll module and does not require transcribing information, creating exported files, or transcribing to a website. The solution should provide automated payroll reports that are filled in automatically with your payroll data and can be eFiled with just a few clicks. The interface should be intuitive and simple to understand. A replica of the actual form displayed onscreen and the review process very simple. The steps required to eFile should be few and well defined.

The solution should support all of the federal and state agencies you file with and include unemployment, wage withholding, and new hire reports and payments.

There should be a single login to eFile and view all filing histories. Any filing should be time-stamped and dated to provide an audit trail.

There should be a calendar system that provides reminders for filing deadlines that could be received via email, desktop alerts, or even text messages to your cellular devices.

Compliance guarantees should be part of the service. All negotiations with state and federal agencies concerning filings should be conducted by representatives of the service. Any fines or penalties incurred because of service errors should be paid by the service.

Finally it needs to be affordable. An annual subscription that includes all of your filings for twelve months should be based on how many employees you have and should be less than outsourcing to a payroll service.

Wow, lots of these new tech startups are creating applications that can really help businesses! Global mobile payments solutions with super low fees, a new tool for people to learn JavaScript, and a way to have 17,000 PhD level scientist contribute to solving a problem. Exciting advancements in technology! Read the full story here.

Red Wing Software offers such time saving features as direct deposit, online tax filing and more. We are excited to now provide our customers the option of offering their employees pay cards, via our partner, smartOne Pay Card.

The smartOne Pay Card is safer than carrying cash, more convenient than having to seek out check cashing facility, and cheaper than paying to have a check cashed. It also gives employees access to a Visa or Mastercard debit Card, which allows them to make in-store, online or over-the phone purchases. In addition to all of this, employees will be able to more effectively track your spending habits with the monthly personal statements of card activity.

In order to use smartOne Pay Cards for your employees along with CenterPoint Payroll, direct deposit is required. To add direct deposit to your system, contact Red Wing Software at 800-732-9464. For more information about adding smartOne Pay Cards, contact our product expert Wade Speelman directly at: 402-602-4052, e-mail: wspeelman@tsys.com, or visit www.smartonesolutions.com.

If you do anything online, you have probably heard of the term 'phishing'. Phishing is a type of scam whereby the scammer sends e-mails, posing as a real organization, in an effort to try and capture your personal information. The e-mails are typically made to look official, and sometimes it's hard to tell whether the e-mail is real or fake. Often, the tone of a phishing e-mail will be urgent, and will request you click on their link right away or your account will be frozen, or some such bad result. Phishing e-mails can be made to look like they come from your bank, internet provider, eBay, etc.

The IRS has a good page about phishing, where they describe what it is, examples of what it might look like, and what to do if you receive such an e-mail. Click here to go to their site and read the fully story.