Bookkeeping

Tips On Working with Your Bookkeeper

Ah, summer—the season of sunshine, vacations, and relaxation. But while you are soaking up the sun, your business’s financial health should not be on vacation as well. We are here with some essential tips for maintaining a smooth and effective relationship with your bookkeeper. Clear communication and proactive organization can make all the difference when it comes to managing your business’ finances.

Clear and Constant Communication: Clear communication lies at the heart of continuous successful collaboration with your bookkeeper. Whether it is sending receipts promptly or updating them on significant financial events, keeping the lines of communication open ensures your bookkeeper can accurately categorize expenses and maintain an up-to-date financial record. Remember, timely information prevents last-minute scrambles during tax season and helps in making informed financial decisions throughout the year.

Document Significant Events: Did you sell an asset, acquire new equipment, or secure a business loan? These events impact your financial statements. Providing your bookkeeper with sales documents, loan agreements, and other relevant paperwork ensures these transactions are properly recorded on your balance sheet. This proactive approach not only maintains accuracy but also simplifies audits and financial reviews.

Payroll Matters: From hiring to termination, every change in your workforce should be promptly communicated to your bookkeeper. Details such as hiring information, bonuses, cash advances, and termination notices are crucial for accurate payroll processing. By keeping your bookkeeper informed, you minimize the risk of payroll errors and ensure your employees are compensated correctly and on time.

Real-Time Recording: Avoid the year-end scramble by recording transactions in real time. Providing your bookkeeper with timely updates, complete with notes and attachments, streamlines the accounting process and reduces stress during tax season. This initiative will keep your financial records accurately up to date and allows your CPA to work efficiently when preparing your taxes.

Share Everything (Yes, Everything!): Remember, when it comes to financial information, there is no such thing as too much detail. Your bookkeeper would rather have more information than necessary than miss critical details that could impact your financial statements. Whether it is an unexpected expense, a new revenue stream, or a regulatory change, keeping your bookkeeper informed ensures that your financial records reflect the true state of your business.

Take a moment to review your financial and communication processes with your bookkeeper. Here is to a productive summer—and a well-managed financial future!

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Empowering Businesses and Enhancing Efficiency: Celebrating Four Years of Success with RPS

In today’s tireless and competitive business world, organization and efficiency is crucial for success. Picture yourself as a dedicated business owner juggling multiple invoices, receipts, and emails daily– it can be overwhelming! This is where Richardson Professional Solutions (RPS) has emerged as a meaningful change. We are here to make your life easier! 

  

Our goal at RPS is to help you simplify your back-office tasks and responsibilities, while boosting productivity. We offer multiple services such as checking PO boxes and scanning mail with precision. This means no more sorting through piles of paper and misplacing something important. With us, your mail is handled efficiently, digitized, and readily accessible whenever you need it. 

 

For business owners, staying organized is not just helpful – it is necessary. We understand the challenges you face and are committed to helping you manage the many responsibilities and moving pieces. By entrusting us with your mail and paperwork, you can save time and focus on growing your business and serving your clients better. 

  

This is just one example of the many ways RPS is making a change. As we celebrate and reflect on the past four years, our journey has been filled with unwavering dedication and support, and a strong commitment to positively impacting communities nationwide. We have provided efficient solutions for our clients that save them time and reduce stress. Whether it is managing back-office tasks, handling correspondence, or offering personalized support, our goal remains the same – creating more time for what truly matters, like spending time with loved ones. We take pride in the progress we have made empowering businesses, nonprofits, and families with services that simplify their lives. 

    

As we mark this significant milestone, we want to thank our clients, partners, and supporters who have each played a pivotal role in our journey. Your trust and collaboration continue to inspire us as we remain committed to serving you and positively impacting our communities. Happy anniversary, RPS! Here are too many more years of success, growth, and meaningful connections. 

 

 HELPING YOU MAKE TIME FOR WHAT MATTERS. ™ 

 

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The Power of Interactivity: Transform Your Business with Richardson Professional Solutions

Having a strong online presence is crucial for the success of any business. One key aspect of this is an interactive website that engages visitors and converts them into loyal customers. At Richardson Professional Solutions, we understand the importance of an interactive website and offer a range of services through Market and Website Research. In this blog post, we will explore the top three reasons why having an interactive website is beneficial for your business and how RPS can help you achieve this goal.

1. Enhanced User Engagement: An interactive website captivates visitors by encouraging them to explore and spend more time on your site. With the right design and features, users are more likely to interact with your content, products, and services. At RPS we ensure that your website not only looks visually appealing but also incorporates interactive elements that keep visitors engaged. From intuitive navigation to compelling calls to action, our team crafts websites that make a lasting impression on your audience.

2. Improved Customer Satisfaction: A website that provides a seamless and interactive experience contributes to higher customer satisfaction. We understand that a satisfied customer is more likely to become a repeat customer and a brand advocate. Through Market Research and Website Research, we identify your target audience’s preferences and behaviors. This information is then used to tailor the website to meet the specific needs of your customers, resulting in a positive user experience and increased satisfaction.

3. Increased Conversion Rates: An interactive website not only engages visitors but also influences their purchasing decisions. Whether through interactive product displays, personalized recommendations, or user-friendly interfaces, we focus on creating websites that drive conversions. By understanding the psychology of online consumers, we design websites that guide visitors through the sales funnel, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates and increased revenue for your business.
 
An interactive website is a powerful tool for business success in the digital age. With our extensive experience and commitment to excellence, we are well-equipped to help you transform your online presence. By choosing our website services, you not only enhance user engagement, improve customer satisfaction, and increase conversion rates but also gain a valuable partner dedicated to helping you make time for what matters most to you and your business.

At RPS our mission is clear: “Helping You Make Time For What Matters.™” Since January 2020, we have been supporting small businesses, non-profits, and family estates in the Augusta, GA area with a wide range of services. From bookkeeping and marketing support to IT/cyber and event management, our team serves as a one-stop shop for organizations. With a commitment to becoming an extension of your team, we build lasting relationships and help you save time for the things that matter most to you.

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Reaching your goals with a project manager

Imagine that you are in the middle of planning your biggest fundraising event. There are half-implemented ideas, lists of to-dos, and you’re missing key deadlines to kick off your event. Invitations, receipts, and sticky notes litter your office space. This is where a project manager comes into play.

A project is a set of tasks that must be completed to arrive at a unique goal or outcome. Depending on the size and scope of the project, these tasks may be simple or elaborate, but all projects can be broken down into objectives and what needs to be done to achieve them.

A project manager is the point person for all the project’s major goals by implementing important plans and managing teams. They follow a project from ideation to completion. At Richardson Professional Solutions, we help you make more time in your business by providing back-office solutions. One of the many services we provide is Project Management.

Here at RPS, we have a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) on staff and can help with any stage of a project, from brainstorming to budget/invoicing and risk management to day-to-day coordination for go-lives or events. We can help with as little or much as you need to help you be successful.

No two clients are the same, and neither are your projects. As a project manager, we are here to fill you in on three simple steps to help you keep your project on track.

1) To keep from losing touch with your project, schedule a set time to work on any open items or check in with your project manager. Put this time on your calendar, so that it’s in writing and so that you’ll get alerts. This scheduled time is particularly useful for answering unanswered emails, completing actionable items, and planning for the next project meeting or presentation.

2) Evaluate your project from multiple perspectives. It is extremely beneficial to run all the potential ways delays could happen in the project. Finding out this information early can allow you to begin working on getting what you need well in advance and have potential solutions mapped out.

3) Keep the group that is directly involved small. A project will only be as successful as the people working on it. Each person on a team should be picked for the skills and personality they bring to the project. Not everyone will be a great fit for every project, and your best team may not even include all your “best” people.

There are dozens of project management tips, and they all have different benefits and limitations that make them good for some environments and bad for others. Do you have a project in mind but don’t know where to start? Reach out to us, we can help point you in the right direction.

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Benefits of Outsourcing

Since Richardson Professional Solutions was born three years ago through my desire to be at home with my new son as much as possible, helping others make time for the things that matter most to them is extremely important to us at RPS. Essentially, it is why we do what we do.
 
Today I wanted to share three reasons outsourcing could benefit your organization.
 
1.     First, it can save you time by allowing you to get more done on the important work that needs your attention. Outsourcing those draining, repetitive tasks that distract you from your main role and goal can help you make up some time in your day.
2.     Second, it can save you money on not only traditional overhead items like office furniture and computers, but also the intangibles like benefits, wages, and the associated payroll taxes. Working with a vendor rather than an employee you also avoid things like paid time off, performance reviews, and raises. Although vendors may charge you a higher rate compared to a traditional employee, you tend to save money in the long run by avoiding the other items mentioned before that increase the true cost of an employee. So, make sure to keep an open mind when discussing pricing.
3.     Lastly, it can make your organization more money by improving your customer service, and productivity, and allowing your organization to thrive. For example- By giving up those mundane tasks mentioned earlier, you now have more time to focus where it’s needed, and your response time to customers improves. Outsourcing can also give you the freedom to grow your business in any direction you choose, meaning you can expand on your services and products because you are no longer limited to the skills and tools within your current team.
 
At Richardson Professional Solutions we love watching organizations grow and thrive! We can help with as little or much as you need to make time for the important things in your life. No two organizations are the same, and neither are the ways that we support clients.
 
Whether you would like more time for a new child or grandchild, a hobby, or traveling, I’m Amy Richardson of Richardson Professional Solutions, and my team and I look forward to helping you make time for what matters.

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Small Business Tips in 2023

It’s 2023 and we are celebrating our third anniversary here at Richardson Professional Solutions. We love seeing small businesses thrive, so this month we want to bring you some tips and tricks to take into this new year as a small business owner and/or operator.

Did you know that according to the Small Business Administration, 20% of startups fail within the first year, while half go under within five years? Sometimes a small business, although a highly creative idea, can eventually suffer because there is a lack of business sense. Here are 5 tips for small business owners:

  1. Stay organized. Control the chaos by keeping accurate records of business finances, setting and keeping deadlines, and planning ahead by using the scheduling software for things like social media, email marketing, and/or text campaigns.
  2. Maintain a personal touch. This can be as easy as a handwritten letter when a client joins your company or a small note to someone after meeting them at a networking event.
  3. Cut costs as needed. This is the key to staying afloat, especially as a fresh start-up. Decide where spending money is important to you and your business (maybe a special software or a higher-end swag item to make an impression), and where you can stand to shave off a few dollars (premium subscription to something or buying used rather than pre-loved office furniture).
  4. Prioritize customer support. These are the people who help keep your lights on. If they aren’t happy, it will be hard to keep your business running. Make sure to maintain expectations and boundaries, while keeping your promises and providing top-notch customer service.
  5. Build a strong team. A business can crumble in a flash if its workforce isn’t strong. Find people who are passionate about what they do and have the same mission and goals as your business.

Every business looks different to each individual owner. Always remember to set regular goals and change them as your business grows or as you accomplish them. Just like Dr. Ivan Misner said about networking, “Networking is more about farming than it is about hunting.” This too remains the same for small businesses. Enjoy the journey!

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Offering a helping hand in making estate plans

Today, I want to tell you why estate planning is important. But why would someone need help with their estate?

An estate plan is a vital component of any financial plan, regardless of the ages of your family members or your net worth. Whether you are single, married, or partnered, there are essential components of an estate plan that can help ensure your family’s financial security.

According to The Balance magazine, there are three key reasons why estate planning is essential for any family.

• Estate Planning Protects Beneficiaries. There are a number of estate planning tools and resources you can use depending on your financial situation. A life insurance policy is among one of them. This quickly provides your beneficiary with a death benefit after you pass away (and they file a claim). The proceeds of a policy can help cover things like final expenses, mortgage payments, and future college tuition for kids or grandkids.

• Estate Planning Protects Your Assets. Without a will and other estate planning resources in place, your assets will be distributed based on the law of the state where you live. Each state has its own set of laws. Even though the recipients of your assets are your spouse and your bloodline, things can quickly become complicated.

• Estate Plans Simplify Things for Your Family. Without a will and other directives in place when you die, you may inadvertently stir up hard conversations between family members. And it’s not always about money. This is especially important with blended families, which may include ex-spouses, new spouses, biological children, and stepchildren. Since each state has its own process for determining heirs, not having a will may cause you to unwittingly exclude someone you care about who isn’t a blood relative or include relatives you don’t want to inherit anything.

At Richardson Professional Solutions, we are a small business that helps other small businesses, non-profits and family estates across the country make time for what matters most by handling their back-office tasks.

Although we clearly have a passion for small businesses, one of our favorite and most rewarding services we provide is estate assistance. What this means is that a family member brings us in to help with tasks for the family like picking up, sorting, and scanning the mail for the estate; paying bills for the estate; being a professional liaison on behalf of the estate with an accountant or lawyer; handling the bookkeeping and document maintenance for the Estate’s accounts; providing fraud monitoring; and so much more.

A quick example is a family who has allowed us to assist them in lifting the burden of the financials off of the family members so they can spend more time with the aging family member in declining health. Not only do we handle the bookkeeping and bill pay, but we have also been a liaison with the repair man, landscaper, and accountant on their behalf, removing that stress.

We also assisted the family with moving the client into an assisted living facility by preparing paperwork for the facility, establishing a post office box, handling mail forwarding and address changes – things that must be done, but are not where the family needs to be focused on spending their time in this stage of life.

We can help with as little or much as your family needs to make time for the important things in your life. No two people or families are the same, and neither are the ways that we support families.

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Keeping Your Online Office Safe

At Richardson Professional Solutions (RPS), we utilize a variety of software and applications to complete our work. Since most positions are remote, learning how to use these is critical to our job.

Some of the programs we use include email and cloud storage tools; bookkeeping and bill pay software; time tracking, project management, and task tracking applications; digital marketing and graphic design tools; and password and critical data storage applications.

Utilization of a password and critical data storage application, such as LastPass, is critical in RPS since we deal with a lot of confidential client information. LastPass is a password and data manager that stores your passwords and helps to create strong, complex passwords when creating new accounts for different programs. Safely sharing business passwords is crucial in keeping your online office safe.

Amber Steel from LastPass explains it best why keeping everyone in sync is crucial when your team is working on a project: “Passwords are a fact of work life. We use passwords to access company email, the corporate network, cloud apps, databases, subscriptions, client portals, and dozens more accounts in the workplace. As team members collaborate on projects or manage shared tasks, password sharing is often required. The challenge is to share those passwords securely, especially when team members are in different locations.

“In the past, team members have relied on sticky notes, shared spreadsheets, emails, or text messages to share passwords. Unfortunately, in addition to being insecure, all those methods are tedious timewasters. Searching out a password every time you need it, bothering team members for the correct password, interrupting your workflow to remember where you can find that password – this style of password sharing is inefficient and disruptive. The lack of encryption or verification also means that data is open to cyberattacks and theft. With 80% of data breaches traced back to poor password management, using a password manager to securely share passwords can reduce your organization’s risk of a data breach.”

At RPS we help you make more time in your business by providing back-office solutions such as bookkeeping, marketing, or project management. This, in turn, provides small business owners the flexibility to do the things that matter most to them – like building their business, continuing their education, traveling, or spending time with family.

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Amy Richardson’s Got Your Back for Business

BY MITZI OXFORD, PHOTOS BY MELISSA GORDON

Are you the owner of one of the thousands of businesses in the CSRA? Do you have time for bookkeeping, IT, marketing, recruitment, project, or event management?

If not, maybe it’s time to call for backup. Amy Richardson created Richardson Professional Solutions to help solve the issues most business owners may not have time to address when their time can be better spent building a successful company. In other words, she has created a one-stop shop for all those backend jobs.

Her company provides a balance for business owners. Initially, she started it to create her own balance.

When her son was born in November 2019, she launched her company two months later.

“It started as a side hustle with a baby on my hip,” Richardson explained. “When COVID hit, we were bombarded. The company I started allowed me to work from home, focus on building the business and be a mom.”

The business has changed dramatically post-COVID. While some companies used to offer the ability to work from home as a perk, it has now become the norm for many businesses. By 2025, an estimated 70 percent of the workforce will be working remotely at least five days a month, according to Forbes.

Richardson has a head start in the remote workforce world. She and her team of seven, deliver a support system for more than 25 clients. Their services include everything from website design and management to employee scheduling and paying bills.

“Still, there is a stigma about working remotely but we are a legitimate business offering our team members health insurance, maternity leave, and a 401k,” Richardson said.

Richardson has a great support system in her professional and personal life. Her husband, Ben, who works remotely for a bank in Ohio, does double duty by providing IT support for Richardson Professional Solution clients and, of course, as husband and dad.

“Since I work from home, my lunch hour is spent with my toddler and if I see my work calendar is getting too fat, I put on the brakes,” she said.

The challenge of owning and running a business is real, especially for a woman.

“Women are the default caregivers,” Richardson said. “We automatically have to make sure everyone is covered.”

Even when she’s away from her home office engaging with the community, Richardson seems to be making the delicate balance of being a business owner, wife, and mom work.

Her clients describe her as smart, honest, energetic, thorough, and creative. Richardson attributes that to her core values, including integrity, being accountable, thinking outside the box, and being a lifelong learner.

At the heart of it all is compassion for her clients and her family.

“I was laying here after putting my toddler back to sleep, staring at his sweet, peaceful face, and I am reminded of a quote I heard some time ago about raising children: ‘The days are long, but the years are short,’” Richardson said. “I think of it often and it grounds me to realize how fast time is passing and that I won’t get these years back. I want to spend as much time as possible with him, and the rest of my family, while still being able to provide us with a beautiful life. My business gives me that freedom.”

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