By Red Wing Software

Overhead expenses are those production and non-production costs not readily traceable to specific profit centers or production center details. Although overhead expenses are not directly related to any specific area of your business, they do play a part in the profitability of each area. Account distributions can be used to automate the process of expensing overhead to profit centers or production center details.

Expenses can be distributed by percentage, by acre or by head, and can be distributed at the time the expenses are entered or later when you know exactly how they should be distributed. A distribution can be set up that distributes all overhead expenses, or distributions can be set up for various scenarios. For example, you could distribute utility costs to the various entities of the business. Distributions can also be used to distribute unallocated revenue, such as a government ag payment.

EXAMPLE:

Overhead expenses, such as insurance expenses, will be distributed to all profit centers based on each profit center’s percent of total gross revenue. In our example, dairy is 55% of the operation. Crop is 45% with two crops of corn (60%) and soybeans (40%).

If the insurance bill is $1,000:

• $550 insurance expense would be allocated to dairy.
• $270 insurance expense would be allocated to corn.
• $180 insurance expense would be allocated to soybeans.

Allocate your overhead expenses correctly with account distributions, and you’ll have a better idea about your true product costs.

By Stephanie Elsen

There are two things you know for sure about payroll. 1. Employees want their checks on time. 2. The government wants to receive their tax payments on time. Both are serious and important reasons for choosing wisely when selecting payroll software or a payroll service. Making the mistake of choosing the first or cheapest payroll option can result in frustration, and more importantly can hinder your ability to pay employees and the government on time! Here are some real things to look for when searching for a payroll company.

Service. Are you frequently in a hurry to get payroll completed? Many businesses are! What happens when you run into a problem the day that you are doing payroll? Maybe, at the last minute, you need to set up a brand new pay code or an employee garnishment and you need some help. Who will be there to help you? Be sure you choose a payroll company that offers excellent service. And make sure that service team is available and knows what they are doing! While you are sitting there reading this blog post, it might not seem important. But when the time actually comes, you will be thankful for choosing a payroll company that can really help you when you need it.

Options for paying employee taxes. You need to pay employee taxes by a certain date. If not, your company will be faced with dreaded fines! Be sure you can get the information you need out of your payroll system, so that you can send tax payments to the appropriate party in a timely manner. More and more states are requiring tax filing to be done online, instead of via printed forms. Make sure you have the options within your payroll software that can help you accomplish this!

Of course features are also extremely important within your payroll software or system. Once you find a payroll system that has all the features you need, be sure that company can also provide the service and tax filing capabilities you need to pay your employees and make tax payments in a timely manner!

By Stephanie Elsen

Thousands of companies nationwide are using CenterPoint Payroll Software, and there are also many companies that administer 401K/Roth investments dollars. Employers need to report employee 401K/Roth deductions and the employer matching benefits to these plan administrators. The plan administrator normally prefers to get the employee and employer matching dollars reported on a pay period or monthly basis in a unique CSV or Excel file format. The required file formats can vary among different 401K management companies. If you need to pull out a unique set of data, how will you handle it?

Red Wing Software has a tool available for use with CenterPoint Payroll that allows the Red Wing Software staff to create a file export to match your 401K/Roth administrator’s unique format. If you need a custom export for your 401K, give us a call to discuss whether the tool would work for you. Our standard tool can handle 90%+ of custom 401K exports. However if the file format required by your 401K administrator is more complex than normal, we still may be able to help. Contact Red Wing Software to learn more! Call 800-732-9464 or e-mail info@redwingsoftware.com.

By Stephanie Elsen

Today is National Clean Out Your Computer Day! Originally sponsored by the Institute for Business Technology in 2000, this day provides you an opportunity to officially go in and clean out that stuff you’ve been meaning to do for quite some time. Cleaning out your computer can make a significant difference in your computer’s speed! Take those huge files that are taking up space and save them to a separate hard drive. Uninstall programs you no longer want or need. Got lots of emails that linger on inside your ‘deleted’ box? Get rid of them. And while you’re at it, why not dust the whole system, including the bottom side of your oft-used but never-cleaned mouse. You might just be surprised how refreshed you feel with a cleaner and faster computer!

By Stephanie Elsen

If you are a Red Wing Software customer, chances are you know the benefits of a good audit trail. That’s because this feature has always been a top priority for our payroll and accounting software over the years.

A good audit trail can help prevent and detect fraud. Being able to see every action within your system by user can help you monitor their activity. If users know their activity is monitored, they are much less likely to commit fraudulent activity.

A good audit trail enables you to provide necessary documentation for third party organizations (such as banks and investors) that require it.

A good audit trail helps reconstruct events once an issue is detected.

Having a good audit trail in your accounting software provides peace of mind, knowing that events are being recorded by user and that information can be accessed anytime to look back at the history to solve problems.