inDinero's Staff Blog

We've decided to partner up with our good friends at Zirtual to give their members a discount to all inDinero services.

Zirtual members will enjoy an extra free month of service (valued at up to $500).  To learn more, shoot us an email at zirtualdeal@inDinero.com.

We've just started testing our integration with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).  If you're interested in connecting up your SVB account, shoot us a quick email at svb@inDinero.com.

Cheers,
Jessica 

So Timmy has decided that it's time to start the business of his dreams. Naturally, he uses his personal savings to fund early brainstorm sessions, computer equipment, and whatever necessary to fuel the budding flame of his entrepreneurial vision. When he finds time, he stuffs all of this personal and business receipts into several shoeboxes. 

Months later, Timmy decides it's now time to open a business bank account. He scrambles to write checks to his vendors and employees based on what checkbook he has with him, often paying late fees after forgetting when his bills are due. As tax time rolls around, he calls a friend who majored in accounting in college to help him sort through his endless piles of receipts and the mess that he's created in just a few months. Timmy has long forgotten which receipts are personal or business-related, so his financial history and P&L reports are unreliable and inaccurate. He prays he won't get audited. 

Too many entrepreneurs fall into bad habits the second they embark on a new business venture, leaving behind a wake of muddled and commingled finances. The result is often a huge waste of time, resources, and high accounting cost, not to mention vulnerability during an audit. Here are some tips to avoid sharing the fate of poor Timmy:

1.  Know the costs. Once you conceive of your business idea, spend some time brainstorming all of your business costs. Don't forget the costs that are related to preparing a business plan or establishing an office space - even if your business isn't officially established. (Before this step, you should consult with a professional about how to establish your business (S Corp, LLC, etc.) This will help you identify your business expenses and prevent you from mistaking personal expenses for business expenses in the future. 

2. Open Business Accounts ASAP. We advise all entrepreneurs to open a separate business checking and savings account immediately after opening a new business or startup company. This crucial step enables you to keep your business finances simple, separate, and straightforward. It is not illegal to conduct business from your personal accounts. However, if you choose to conduct all business with your personal account, the IRS may feel inclined to view your business as a "hobby" instead of an actual business. 

3. Use the right card. No excuses. Accidental usage of your business credit or debit card for personal expenses creates more work for you and your accountant, so just discipline yourself to use the correct card every time. If you have trouble remembering which card to use, mark the correct card or even open a card at a different bank to ensure you won't have to untangle the mess later. Err on the side of caution if you are unsure, or consult with a professional (see below). 

4. The business card is not your income. As a business owner who may or may not be taking regular withdrawals to earn a monthly income, it's easy to think of personal purchases on the business card as your income. This is bad. Do not make this a habit, and do not cut corners. When you need to take an "owner's draw," as it's often called, always make the transfer for the amount you need from your business account to your personal account. Here's an example of an iffy situation: you have some checks payable to your business, but you are planning on making an owner's draw transfer shortly. So, you deposit the business checks directly to your personal account. This may save a few minutes now, but later will require extra documentation and cause confusion during tax time.

5. Go paperless. The age of receipt hoarding in shoeboxes is coming to an end, and new entrepreneurs should consider the benefits of running a paperless office. More paper means file management and organization, and who has time for that? To track your receipts, try mobile applications (inDinero will be releasing our iPhone application next year!) or even just snapping receipts with your mobile phone after a business lunch, etc. For legal documents and receipt management, consider using programs like Dropbox, Shoeboxed, and Echosign. 

6. Embrace electronic payments and online invoicing. Bill payment nowadays is made easy with automatic debit, and it saves business owners time and relieves them of having to remember to pay bills. However, more business owners are still sending their clients paper invoices and waiting months to get paid, which is why new entrepreneurs should seriously consider online invoicing and offering electronic payment. At inDinero, we've met business owners who have even managed to completely eradicate paper check writing, and it's made their books that much simpler. Goodbye scavenging through check register! To find out more about going paperless and online invoicing/bill payment services, check out my previous post about new small business cloud applications.

7. Recruit great advisors. New entrepreneurs, naturally, have questions about their business finances, but due to fear of cost or lack of foresight, many only seek help once it's too late. Quick access to a legal advisor or a trusted CPA can make all the difference when you're starting a business. Don't wait until tax time or a legal debaucle to start making connections with legal and finance professionals; build relationships early, and you'll benefit not only with their advice but also their networks in the long run. 

For the seasoned comminglers:

- Why Shouldn't I Mix Personal and Business Finances? 

- How do I untangle my finances? 

For sole proprietors: 

- Thinking of deducting your home office or your car? Learn how to do it right. 

- Best Practices: Sole proprietors and one-man operations

 

We think every startup and small business should be aware of key applications that could save them time and money. At inDinero, we use almost every one of these programs, and we couldn't imagine running our company without them.

Here's a short list to help you choose which ones to try out. Keep in mind that these are all online solutions, so there's no software to install or hardware to buy; all you need is an internet connection to access these great services. 

If you've ever rushed to a meeting only to realize that you've forgotten to email yourself that important file on your home computer, you should check out Dropbox - an affordable, sleek solution to accessing, storing, and sharing any file from any computer, anywhere - even from your mobile phone. There are plenty of other cloud file storage applications, but we prefer Dropbox due to its awesome pricing, ease of use, and simplicity. 

Small businesses have bills, bills, and more bills. With many vendors and customers, managing your bills and invoices can be a huge timesink. We want you to check out Bill.com, since they help business owners streamline and automate vendor bill payment and customer invoice management. If you find yourself spending a lot of time worrying about day-to-day finances - whether it's remembering to pay your PG&E bill on time or collecting payments from your 20+ clients - then you should spend some time learning about how Bill.com could help you. 

Many businesses feel they spend too much money on their telephone solution, but we want entrepreneurs to know that there is a much cheaper alternative called Grasshopper. With this virtual phone system, you don't even need a business phone at your office. At inDinero, we have a main corporate number with extensions that connect directly to our individual mobile phones. We can easily control the settings to manage call times, forwarding, and even custom greetings and away messages - all for a low cost. 

Signing and sending documents can be time-consuming and expensive. Even if you have a fax machine in your office, signing documents by hand and sending scanned pages wastes time and prevents you from keeping a paperless office. Ever since we started using Echosign at our office, we have been happily paperless. Any documents that need your signatures can be signed with a single click of a button, as well as any form fields. Electronic versions of the signed documents are instantly emailed to both parties, so you can get back to running your business. 

It's been a long overdue request, but inDinero now allows users to add their receipts to inDinero.  We've known for a while that at inDinero, our own financial organization has been incomplete.  We have inDinero, but we also have that ugly shoebox of receipts.  For business expenses with email receipts, we manually make sure they match up to the right amount when it gets pulled into inDinero.

We're solving this problem in three ways: allowing users to upload receipts to inDinero, allowing users to email upload@indinero.com with their virtual receipt, and throughout the month of October, we're even allowing you to mail in your shoebox of receipts.  All of this is free. 

To encourage people to upload, email, and to mail in their receipts, we're giving away a $300 AMEX gift card to the company that sends in the most receipts.  We'll announce the winner sometime in November.  

For those who'd like to mail in their receipts, our address is:

inDinero Inc.
788 Harrison Street
Suite #710
San Francisco, CA 94107

 

Not yet on inDinero?  Sign up for an account here.

Update: We have received many inquiries for inDinero-friendly accountants, and we have connected our users with a select number of accountants in our network. We have learned a lot about how we can best help our users and new features we want to add in the future. However, due to the high number of inquiries, we are no longer accepting inquiries for full accounting packages. 

Are you looking for an accountant to answer your questions? We are still happy to refer our users to accountants to get affordable and quality accounting or tax consulting. 

Email andrea@indinero.com or call 1-855-INDINERO (1-855-463-4637, ext. 704) to request more information or get a free consultation. 

Interested in an accounting package to complement your inDinero account? We have teamed up with reputable accountants in major U.S. cities to offer affordable packages of accounting, financial report generation, bank reconciliations, and other advisory and tax planning services.

You'll still be able to use inDinero to get your daily pulse, but you can leave the accounting and complicated softwares to our experts - for less. Many of our accountants are experienced working remotely from the cloud, and they are offering our customers a discounted rate. 

Already have an accountant? Let us beat what you're currently paying for accounting services. inDinero has already done hours of bookkeeping work for you, so you may be able to reduce your accounting costs by switching to an inDinero-friendly accountant. 

Email andrea@indinero.com or call 1-855-INDINERO (1-855-463-4637, ext. 704) to request more information or get a free consultation. Take advantage of our network of inDinero-friendly accountants, and start saving today! 

We at inDinero would like to extend our sincerest apologies to the users who received an overwhelming number of notification emails yesterday. We pushed a new feature called Events, which erroneously included back-logged events from the last year. We have corrected this to make sure it never happens again, and this experience has helped us establish improved safe guards.

Many users have inquired about the safety of their information, and we assure you that the integrity of our data protection has not suffered in any way. The email blast was nothing more than a huge mistake in our communication process.

We hope that your trust for our company has not declined, and if it has, we hope you will contact our Customer Loyalty Team to discuss it further with us. Aside from security, our number one priority is the satisfaction of our users, and we will do anything we can to restore any shaken confidence or disappointment.

We can be reached anytime by email at support@indinero.com, or by phone at 1-855-463-4637.

We are very happy to release our newest integration: Harvest!  If you don't already know, Harvest is a time tracking, invoicing, and project management service.  When you link your account to inDinero, we will automatically download your invoices and expenses to your account and update it every time you login. 

The process is easy.  Go to the Accounts page and add a new financial account.  Click on the "Web Apps" box.

Select "Harvest" and you just need to add in your Harvest login information.

You can then see all of your Harvest expenses on the Transactions page and your invoices on the invoices tab.

It's that easy!  Look for more great features coming out very soon.  If you have any questions or feedback, please call us at 1-855-INDINERO , visit our feedback site at feedback.indinero.com, or email us at support@indinero.com

We hope you can join us at our 1 year birthday celebration on July 23rd at Verdi Club in San Francisco. There will be lots of drinks, music and awesome entrepreneurs. Check out the Facebook event at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=203837589666561.

See you there!