We’ve all done it. We’ve made promises to our banker, real estate agent, or boss. We’ve told them that the paperwork is ready and we’ll send it right away by email, fax, or carrier pigeon. But we don’t.
There are lots of reasons that paperwork gets delayed or lost in the shuffle. It’s called life. We’re on the way to our file cabinet to pull the required pages and the phone rings. Somebody calls to chat and the task flies completely out of our head. Or we’re on our way out the door to an appointment and vow to send it off as soon as we get home, but the replay of the meeting with that potential client that we just had is still rolling around in our brain when we get home…just in time for dinner. We remember it as we crawl into bed and remind ourselves to take care of it first thing in the morning, but the alarm goes off and our morning routine doesn’t include going through papers to find the desired forms. Life happens.
I know…we can write ourselves sticky notes, set alarms, or tie strings around our fingers. Sometimes things just get forgotten, or set aside as we take care of something more important. There are people, though, that we probably shouldn’t put off. I don’t put off my doctor, as my health is pretty important to me, and he needs my details to be able to help me keep it. I don’t put off my bank because they have my money.
I am a bookkeeper and tax preparer for small businesses, and I’ve been at it for over 25 years. I enjoy working with people to get their finances organized. To me, company finances are like a big puzzle to be solved and I love puzzles. Some puzzles are harder to figure out than others. One person may have several different income streams that need to be processed. Another may split expenses between two or more companies. Still another may need special forms for certain reports. The hardest puzzles to solve, though, are the ones without all the pieces.
Try as I might, if I don’t have the information necessary to complete a job, I can’t complete a job. If an owner wants me to run payroll, but they don’t give me employee hours on time each week, paychecks can be late. If a manager wants their profit and loss statement on the 3rd of the month, but they don’t give me the previous month’s expenses until the 1st, chances are that report will be skewed. If I don’t receive a company’s 1099 information until a week before they’re due to be sent out, I assume that they think I’m Wonder Woman (hate to disappoint, but I’m not).
Bookkeepers and/or tax specialists are vital to every company’s overall financial well-being, but they can’t do the work you hired them to do without the data you want them to organize. Give them a break. Get your paperwork to them as they ask for it, so they can give you the reports that you want, on time.