Major changes are underway to the U.S. tax system this year. Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which is meant to reduce tax rates and modify policies, credits, and deductions for individuals and businesses. Many small business owners may be wondering how these changes will affect them and what it means for doing their taxes. The good news is that while these changes will take effect in 2018, they will generally not affect tax returns filed for the 2017 tax year. Businesses can still benefit from software programs to automate their processes with these seven tools in particular that will help streamline small business tax prep.
1. TurboTax
This platform works to guide you every step of the way when filing your taxes. TurboTax helps get your maximum refund by searching over 350 tax deductions with 100% accurate calculations guaranteed. Need to chat with a CPA? That’s an added option included with TurboTax Live — your tax expert will even help sign and file for you!
2. QuickBooks
Why do you need QuickBooks? This is one of the most popular pieces of accounting software on the market for good reason. You can connect the software to your business banking and PayPal business accounts and let it automatically keep track of your income, expense, and taxable mileage. Leverage the reports tool to generate profit and loss statements, a tax summary, tax details, and estimated quarterly tax payments.
Need help organizing expenses into personal and business categories? Mint MyBusiness gets your finances all into one place including cash flow, budgets, and bills. For $4.99 a month, you can keep track of Schedule C categorizations, store receipts, and track mileage. You can also connect all bank and credit card accounts, then itemize transactions as business and personal expenses, and track your expenses from one dashboard using the MyBusiness upgrade. Since Mint is also an Inuit company, it integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks and TurboTax.
4. Inventory tracking software
If you own a retail or eCommerce business, you’ll need to keep track of inventory. Whether you sell online or through a brick and mortar storefront, there are a ton of great software platforms to choose from that allow you to update, synchronize, and monitor your products. Shopify rounded up some of the best programs currently available including Syncee, Vend Point of Sale, and TradeGecko. My biggest tip for streamlined omnichannel analysis and reporting is to integrate inventory tracking software with your eCommerce platform and offline payment processing system.
5. BambooHR
How can an HR software be beneficial during tax season? One word: payroll. Some of the features BambooHR offers up include generating payroll reports, mastering employee data in one convenient database, time-off tracking, and HR reporting for further insights. If you hired an employee, this is a must-have program.
6. PlanGuru
This budget and finance software will help you make the most of your profits so that you can implement scaling throughout the year. PlanGuru provides entrepreneurs with forecast income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements so you can stop keeping track of your finances in complicated spreadsheets and maintain a rolling forecast throughout the year. Seeing this kind of real data in action will help you analyze opportunities, risks, and identify areas to increase your tax savings.
7. Shoeboxed
Toss out the shoebox you’ve been stuffing old receipts into and upgrade by turning this paperwork into digital data. Shoeboxed makes it easy to go paperless and keep your receipts organized, track mileage, and send expense reports from anywhere for simple accounting and bookkeeping.
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