IRS Tax Advice for Small Businesses

Tax day is quickly approaching once again, meaning you are probably in the middle of tax return calculations, deductions, exemptions, employee forms, and more. You are also probably wondering how to make this process easier for next year. Here are a few tax tips every small business should be aware of:

Small Business Tax Tips:

• Everyone wants to save as much as possible in tax deductions so they owe the government less. If you report too many deductions, however, you will likely trigger an IRS audit. Also, small businesses are chosen for audits almost twice as often as individuals, since there are more likely to be errors made in the complicated returns, and there is more money to be made. Some helpful small business tax advice is to make sure you are extra careful when it comes to deductions, as these will be the first things checked when an IRS agent goes over your return.

• Your on-premises software and software solutions for business should have information services such as accounting software built in. Make sure you use these functions throughout the year so that your accounts are in order come tax day. These services help reduce human error and ensure all your numbers are crunched correctly. You also may want to hire a CPA or other tax attorney to go over your return and deductions before you submit it on April 15th, to make sure everything is in line. You have enough on your plate without having to worry about being the only one catching errors and keeping an audit at bay.

Click here for more helpful tax tips for business.

ShopWorks offers a multitude of tools for those wishing either to become familiar with OnSite before purchasing, or for those who are looking to learn how to better use their OnSite Suite. If you already own the software, look at the more than 60 hours of training videos that are available or the in-person classes. If you are currently evaluating whether the software is right for your company, though, the Webinars are what you are looking for.

Most Webinars are live, but many recorded webinars are also available to better fit your schedule, and they cover a wide range of topics. For example, one is titled Business Software for Digital Printers and demonstrates the OnSite 7 features that have been specially designed for companies that sell or produce digitally printed products. Another is Production Touch Screen Interfaces, which helps demonstrate how your production staff can work with the OnSite system with touch monitors and more.

Browse the upcoming and recorded corporate software training Webinars here.

Many software solutions for businesses, like Apparel ERP and Sign business software, allow you to decide whether you want to store your system onsite, or offsite in the cloud. There are benefits to both, but research suggests that cloud storage is ultimately safer, as all of your business details, contracts and records are not stored in one place where they can all be corrupted or stolen in one fell swoop. Although it may seem harder to trust something you can’t physically see, the cloud is just as real as your own server, and provides greater security, due to theft prevention and redundant back-ups.

The cloud uses reliable servers and an extensive backup system that allows a secondary server and further backup servers to take over, should the primary server fail. The redundancy means your data is safe and constantly available.

You also need to consider the interval at which you back up your data. Many companies do this once every 24 hours, but others do it less often, or more often, depending on the amount of data that is regularly generated. You can speak to a storage expert at ShopWorx for help deciding what would be most beneficial for your company.

You should receive a service level agreement, including a list of promises, from your cloud provider that includes performance and back up procedure. These terms should also include who will be able to access your data and the notification procedure that is in place if your data should be lost or become unsecured.

The holidays are a particularly busy time for businesses, meaning your employees may be slightly more likely to make errors when interacting with your onsite software. One way to avoid this extra trouble is by giving your staff a little extra training. With the help of pre-recorded or live webinars, on-premises training and other training opportunities, we can keep your software solutions for business running smoothly this winter season. Here are a few of the pre-recorded webinars that are currently available on our ShopWorks website this holiday season. Choose one or multiple depending on your needs.

• Managing Your Art Department: This webinar is meant for businesses with Apparel ERP and similar decorated, custom apparel needs. It helps you and your staff learn how to better manage your art department and how to use your OnSite 7 system to make everything go a little bit smoother. The webinar covers design management in OnSite 7, the best physical practices for storing digital art and files, and successful customer proofing of art.

• Production Control: This webinar includes tips and guides on how to create a smoother workflow in your office. It covers production calendar and scheduling, capturing labor costs, touchscreen interfaces for your production floor, and recoding job completion and details. This webinar is perfect for businesses in all aspects of the decorated apparel and promotional project industries. For everything from physical storage of files, art and information, to how to use your system to better support your business and your archives, we recommend this webinar.

In November, 2016, ShopWorks enhanced OnSite Business Management Software, an all-in-one software solution to manage every aspect of a screen printing, awards, and custom apparel business, and ProofStuff, online art proofing and approval software.  The recommendations for these improvements came from many of the nearly 700 customers who use ShopWorks Software to make managing and growing their business easier than ever.

OnSite Business Management Software 8.3 Key Release Features:

New CRM Features

The release includes completely new CRM features making it easy to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, providing new lead scoring capabilities to help prioritize leads, and enabling sales to funnel management and reporting. These features help sales team managers and business owner better manage their sales pipeline and forecasts.

Improved Data Management Capabilities

The OnSite 8.3 release also included a new duplication checker to reduce or eliminate duplicate records, improving data quality. The improved data import wizard makes importing data easier and faster.

New Accounting Functionality

Additionally, the accounting module was updated to include a new debit & credit wizard, making it easy to balance accounting transactions. New bulk invoicing with the option for multiple invoices on a single PDF sheet makes invoicing much faster.

The release includes a host of other enhancements, such as improved PromoStores integration with OnSite, time card history, and much more.

New ProofStuff Release Features and Enhancements:

ProofStuff, the leading online proofing and approval system for screen printers, decorated apparel and promotional products companies got even better. The ProofStuff release includes a streamlined user interface, new features allowing for bulk art proofs and document approval, and digital signatures. Never has sending, signing, and approving art and other documents been easier for you or your customers.

Interested in Learning More?

Learn how ShopWorks Software can make your entire shop run better. It’s all-in-one software to run every aspect of your business from sales & marketing to production to finance & accounting.

Contact us or call us at 800-526-6702.

ShopWorks Customers

To view videos and other educational material on the OnSite 8.3 and ProofStuff Release, login ShopWorks Central.

In the world of software solutions for business, there is a key divide between online and desktop software systems. Here are a few key factors of each type of system to help you make your decision between the two:

Desktop

• These systems are often accessed by a single person who inputs all of the entries, alone. These are good for companies that are very small and intend to remain small in the future.

• These systems are a slightly older model, and many companies find them to be more cumbersome and limiting than online systems.

• These systems can crash more easily, since they are all stored in one place onsite, and if they do, all of your information will be lost or corrupted.

Online

• These systems allow multiple managers and employees throughout your company to access the apparel software or sign business software at the same time. This allows them to update or check on projects themselves, instead of having to wait for you to get the information they need for them.

• Online systems store all of your information in a separate Internet server, meaning it is safe should your onsite system crash. If you store all of your information onsite, it could either be lost or stolen much more easily.

• These systems tend to be better organized and are able to streamline your information and data collection. They allow multiple people and programs to enter information and to interface with each other, which means your records are concise and organized.

If you don’t feel like you need such intense training as on premises training to learn how to better use your commercial screen printing software system, you can opt to attend one of many live training events as part of ShopWorks University. Through this program, live training events are hosted periodically in different cities throughout the country.

These seminars usually last between two and three days, and cost between $450 and $500 for each attendee from your company. Many ShopWorks users opt to attend themselves and bring several managers so they can help share what they learn with employees beneath them.

These events have been hosted in Las Vegas, Orlando, San Antonio, New Orleans and other large cities around the country, meaning there is likely to be one that you can reach with relative ease. Topics in the past have been wide ranging and covered many different important topics having to do with the ShopWorks system. Contact one of our software experts for more information.

Commercial Screen Printing ERP Software Training

ShopWorks offers many different training options to help you and your employees learn all of the ins and outs of your commercial screen printing software system. One of the most hands-on options is the on premises training.

With the on premises training option, ShopWorks experts devise a training program based on topics you have selected. Once the program is finalized and perfected, the trainer travels to your company to work personally with you and your employees and help you fine-tune your skills with your system. While with you, they will go over the topics you have requested additional training on, help you with topics where they see a need for help and discuss options and opinions on the best practices with you to help you make educated decisions when it comes to running your business and making decisions with your ShopWorks system.

Screen printing training course costs $700 per day per trainer plus additional travel and living expenses, and training usually lasts between two and five days.

OnSite ERP Software Demo

If you are considering purchasing and implementing ShopWorks software for your embellished product company, whether you will use it as Apparel ERP, sign business software, or to serve a function as another software solution for businesses, you can request a demo first and see how the software works.

The system can be hosted onsite or on the cloud, and serves many functions, including an electronic filing cabinet for your company’s information and records, a tax and payroll assistant and records keeper, a credit card processor, an online shop host, and more.

A typical demo from ShopWorks lasts between 30 minutes and an hour, and can be as short or as long as you would like. If you need to see more material than can be covered in an hour, then you can request a longer demo and receive one. If you feel like you only need to see 15 minutes worth of material, then that is also an option.

During the demo, a technician performs an online demonstration of how to use ShopWorks software, going over many of the basic and most useful functions of our software. You can see exactly what our technician sees through a screenshare the entire time.

Once this demonstration has concluded, you have access to watch over 40 hours of training videos and can download a full working demo of the software to play with it yourself. When you purchase ShopWorks software, we want you to be absolutely sure that it is the right choice for your company, and we do everything in our power to ensure that this is the case.

Call us at 800-526-6702 with any questions you have about our business software demo.