Building Better Business Finances: The New Crowdfunding Twist on the Old Bank Loan

According to Wikipedia, the definition of crowdfunding can be either:

• The collective effort of individuals who network and pool their money, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations.
• The funding of a company by selling small amounts of equity to many investors.

According to many small businesses, crowdfunding is the new alternative in business financing, leaving the concept of a traditional bank loan in the dust.

ONE IDEA, MANY INVESTORS

Instead of getting a traditional bank loan where the bank is the only "investor" in the business, the world of crowdfunding brings many potential investors into the business. Each of those investors has a much smaller share of the investment.

Here is an article that describes some crowdfunding success stories so you can better understand how the concept works with some real life examples.

Granted, this concept isn't for all businesses - there are simply some that don't have the products or services to attract these types of investments. However, as the article describes, crowdfunding can be a game changer for others.

Like many other things relating to business, this concept is not without its' risks, so be sure to understand them carefully before taking on your own funding project.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES ON CROWDFUNDING:

• Crowdfund Capital Advisors
• Comparison of crowdfunding web sites (this list is not all inclusive by any stretch)
• StartingTrends crowdfunding resources page

COULD THIS BE YOU?

What's your take on this new approach to financing small businesses? Have you done a crowdfunding project yourself or know of a business that has?

Feel free to share your thoughts and comments in the box below!

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Today is an Awesome Day to...

• Make sure your QuickBooks data verfies properly (read insider tip #2 here).
  
• Make certain you are doing the proper type of backup to help prevent your QuickBooks from getting slow (read insider tip #3 here).


• Double-check and make sure that your backup system is actually backing up your QuickBooks and other critical business data properly. If you have an IT group responsible for your data backups, make sure they demonstrate to you that the backup system is working properly.

Having trouble with your QuickBooks data file? Be sure to get in touch with Shannon Tucker and his team at QuickBooksUsers.com for help and repairs. They have helped countless numbers of my clients that have experienced the pain of corrupted data in their QuickBooks.

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Bill.com and QuickBooks - Why It is Better than Online Banking

In my continuing educational series on the Bill.com automated bill payment service for QuickBooks, we've taken a look at:

• How the cash flow forecasting tool works
• How to easily set up vendors
• A quick overview of how Bill.com works

This article will focus on some of the key differences between traditional online banking/bill payment and the Bill.com automated bill payment setup.

Here are some key areas where Bill.com is different (and I believe better) than online bill payment your bank may offer...

• Bill.com offers a complete audit trail of bill and payment approvals and activities.
• Bill.com synchronizes vendors, customers, chart of accounts, items, departments, payables, payments, receivables, payments received and funds transfers with QuickBooks, including support for complex account splits.
  
  Your bank will only sync cleared transactions and require you to manually update your accounting system with all other accounting information, but with Bill.com, you eliminate the error and hassle associated with double entry of your transactions.


• Business bill payment involves a lot of paper. Bill.com allows users to look at contracts, past invoices (to see if there are duplicates), and to review when the last payment cleared, all online. Bill.com provides a central repository to digitally store all of this paper. Related documents are linked together, making it easy for you to quickly get the information you need.

A FEW MORE REASONS TO CONSIDER BILL.COM:

• You can set up large and small vendors, as well as employees and other individuals, to receive ePayments rather than paper checks from Bill.com. Select from a directory of over 4000 vendors in our database or securely add bank account and routing information to any vendor profile.
• Bill.com understands your financial needs require you to be able to diversify your cash.We allow you to add bank accounts from any banks with whom you do business, and don't lock you in to only one account at one financial instituion. 

READY TO TAKE A FREE TEST DRIVE?

See for yourself just how easy it is to get away from the drudgery check-signing and also how to spend less time on bill paying and more time on value-added activities for your business.

Click the graphic below for a fully functional free trial of the Bill.com service.

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Deleting User Accounts in QuickBooks - This is a No No

No matter how tempting it may be to delete a user account in QuickBooks, my suggestion is not to do it.

Let's say that you have an employee (Jane in our example below) that moves on, and you want to ensure there is no way for her to get back into QuickBooks (an excellent idea to be thinking this!). The natural temptation is to click the "Delete User" button when working with your user accounts as shown below:

Several of the experts I follow that work down in the depths of the QuickBooks database indicate that deleting a user account increases the chances of corrupting transactions and/or other data within your QuickBooks file. And we don't want that to happen!

Naturally, if you have already deleted user accounts in the past, there is no going back.

ALTERNATIVE TO DELETING A USER

Rather than hit the delete button, simply set up a new password for this user account, but leave the account in place.

If you are using the Enterprise edition of QuickBooks, you can also change the account role to view only as an extra precaution.

In the event that you have a user that desires a name change for some reason, simply edit their user account with the new user name rather than deleting their old account and creating a new one.

ADDITIONAL INSIGHT ON QUICKBOOKS

• 4 blunders that drive your CPA nuts
• Help - my QuickBooks data file is getting too big!
• Understanding user permissions and roles in QuickBooks

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Adding a Memo Column to Your QuickBooks Bank Reconciliation

Did you know that you can customize the columns (to a limited extent) that appear on your QuickBooks bank reconciliation screen?

Here's how:

Open your reconciliation window as normal (i.e. Banking > Reconcile) or the Reconcile button on the home screen. Once there, click the "Columns to Display" button on the lower right hand side of the screen.

From there, you will see this window appear:

You can easily add the memo and/or type columns that are not turned on by default in the reconciliation window.

Just a few clicks on this screen could really help you streamline your bank reconciliation process!

RELATED TOPICS:

• Stop driving to the bank to make deposits - use remote deposit capture
• QuickBooks trick - how to move money between businesses

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