What exactly happened?

My business is an online business and accordingly I frequently use my US Bank credit card online … a lot. I pay for marketing fees, I pay contractors, I pay for web hosting and so on. All this is done with my credit card. I like simple and so the US Bank credit card is the only business credit card that I actually own. Yesterday I purchased a product online and the credit card was declined without reason. I figured their payment gateway had issues and paid via PayPal instead. Last night I suddenly receive an email from odesk.com. Odesk.com is a website where businesses like mine get hooked up with contractors. I can outsource design work, program development, content writing, and many more things. I had just closed a contract and initiated the payment to my contractor and this payment failed. My credit card was declined.

I checked my bank account and of course all looked good. I had no outstanding balance and enough cash in the account anyway to pay for everything. So, I called US Bank and was told that the first (failed) purchase yesterday was actually initiated from a vendor in Cyprus (Europe) and that they (US Bank) get a lot of fraudulent charges from that county. That attempted transaction had triggered a fraud alert and the entire card was (still is) under fraud alert. The odesk.com charge was suddenly flagged as fraudulent as well (I use oDesk for years already). The rep walked with me through all my recent transactions and I verified every single transaction. However, I was still told that I cannot remove the alert?! Odesk.com actually would have to call in and get a manual transaction confirmation code to remove the fraud alert. WTF !$@^%$@

I opened a ticket with oDesk, but of course the expected answer was that they cannot do that. It’s an online business (duh) and they just don’t do this. I am actually not surprised about it and I do not really blame odesk.com. I blame US Bank. I can confirm every single charge including the attempted charge from Cyprus, but they are still unable to remove the alert and clear the card. This is stupid. Yes, I like security and fraud alerts to protect me, but I would expect that they are able to open the card again if the customer calls in and all charges are verified. So, I had to use my personal credit card to pay my contractor.

I had to realize that this issue can actually damage my entire business. Being dependant on a single credit card for all my payments is an issue. I am using American Express for my personal credit card and so I decided to make the jump and to apply for an American Express Plum Card. This is a business credit card with a great rewards program. As a result of US Bank acting not in my favor (yes, I am wording this nice) I will shift my entire business transactions to American Express and only keep the US Bank Credit Card as a backup credit card. I might not be the biggest spender (afterall, I am trying to make money and not to spend it all), but I could imagine that no bank likes to see a customer switching his business over to a competitor for no reason. There you have it, US Bank. Bad customer service gets you less business. I do understand that you are trying to protect customers and I like fraud protection, but I also need a bank on my side that is able to respond when I call in and verify/confirm all charges (including the one that was flagged a potentially fraudulent) on my account. Afterall, the transaction that started all this was not fraudulent!

No related posts.

Know How To Bill and What to Charge

Without knowing how to bill and what to charge, you’re going to lose a lot of money that’s really yours. If you get your billing and pricing wrong as a computer consultant, you’ll send a bad message to people that you’re trying to quote for business.

You’ll be screaming that you’re a rank amateur rather than a skilled computer consultant. It could take you years to recover from this. A lot of times you would need to scrap existing clients and completely start over because certain clients you brought in at the wrong level.

Perform IT Audits

If you know how to do them right it’s an incredibly powerful technique. You get paid to write proposals and do needs assessment work. If you don’t know how to do this you’re going to wind up doing a lot of exploratory work for free. You can actually get paid for your initial consultation time for doing the technology assessments and the IT audits.

Build Local Partnerships

You’ll need partnerships as your computer consultant business evolves. These will get you some of your best clients along the way. If you don’t have good local partnerships, you can almost guarantee that you’ll lose clients along the way with this as well. You need to learn how to find these key players and how to negotiate with them.

Exceed Client Expectations

If you want to get paid the big bucks as a small business computer consultant, your clients will expect a lot from you. Your clients’ idea of perfection may be different from yours. You need to learn the magic words you need to know to avoid a lot of the stress and intense pressure. You want to come out smelling like a rose to exceed their expectations.

Maximize your Utilization Rate and Profitability

Making as much of your work-week billable as possible and eliminate a lot of the non billable, time-draining non revenue draining computer consultant activities. It’s all about delivering small business virtual IT services and how to build a stable business; how to get clients for life.

Joshua Feinberg helps small business computer consulting firms get more steady, high-paying clients. Learn how you can too. Sign-up now for your free access to a one-hour audio training program on Small Business Computer Consulting Tips.

No related posts.

When starting a business, you have to determine the method you are going to use for accounting and paying taxes. The two choices are the cash method and the accrual method.

Cash Method

If you are looking for simplicity, the cash method is probably your best accounting choice. Generally, income and deductions can be claimed when payment is actually received or made. This is best shown with an example.

I open a small business and have to order business cards and stationary. I receive the products and pay the invoice on November 18, 2005. Under the cash method, I can deduct the cost on my 2005 tax return.

Some businesses are restricted from using the cash method. C corporations may only use the cash method if they have less than $5 million in gross revenues for a particular year. Professional Service Corporations can use the cash method without limit, while farming corporations can due so if gross revenues are less than $25 million. Tax shelters are prohibited from using the cash method.

Accrual Method

The Accrual Method of accounting is a bit more complex. Under this method, the focus in on the date the expense is incurred, not paid. Although this may seem a small difference, it can play havoc with your books and piece of mind.

Using our previous example, assume I order business cards and stationary on the December 18, 2005. I receive the products on December 30th, but don’t pay the invoice until January 20, 2006. When can the expense be claimed? It depends on when economic performance occurred.

Generally, economic performance occurs when goods or services are provided to you. In the above example, economic performance would arguably occur when the business cards and stationary were delivered with the invoice on December 30th. Thus, I would be able to deduct the expense for the 2005 tax year.

In Closing

As you can see, the cash method is the easier of the two accounting methods. To determine the best method for your business, speak with a tax professional.

About the Author

Richard Chapo is with http://www.businesstaxrecovery.com – recovering overpaid taxes for small businesses. Visit our article page – www.businesstaxrecovery.com – to read more tax articles.

No related posts.