Register for our new series of educational and networking events: http://www.eventbrite.com/o/simply-starting-9110097390

We serve hundreds of new startups. They are all awesome at what they do, they are innovative, and we love them all. A lot of them are just starting, so they’re small, and they generally do everything themselves at first.

This includes their own accounting. We tend to like our clients, and if they do their own accounting, and they do an okay job, then more power to them. Here’s the problem: none of our clients are accountants. So when they give us their financials to prepare their tax return, we are often given spreadsheets that are missing expenses—money that our clients spent, but they didn’t write it down, so they won’t get a deduction. The worst part is that we know they spent a lot of time manually entering data.

We will always find deductions that are beyond simple cash expenses—that’s one reason our clients love us—but unless we’re looking at the bank account or bank statements, and we know what all the transactions are, it’s not possible for us to know if our clients forget to write something down. We could analyze everything, but that would take our time and cost our clients money. We don’t want to take their money if they would prefer to do it themselves.

In order to help small business owners, startups, and entrepreneurs who decide to do their own financials, we are giving them the tools they need.

One of those tools is a basic set of methods for doing bookkeeping or accounting efficiently, accurately, and completely— instructions that can be followed, using programs and tools they already have. That means that little time is invested, all information is correct, and all transactions are recorded. The first step to having awesome tax returns is to have quality financial records.

Teaching small business owners, startups, and entrepreneurs is the sole purpose of our new initiative, Simply Starting (www.simplystarting.com). At our events, we will feature presentations from a variety of professionals: accountants, attorneys, financial advisors, sales trainers, social media consultants, and more, all in order to provide the market with the skills it needs.

These are not going to be sales presentations.
The mission of these events is to teach what needs to be known to do business in an efficient, effective manner so small business owners, startups, and entrepreneurs can add to their arsenal of knowledge and go from running a business well to navigating a business awesomely.
With Simply Starting, we’re hosting events that are a combination of networking and an educational presentation. We’ll also follow up with any registered attendees with an email to give them many of the tools discussed. When we can, we will give attendees access to the video of the presentation, too.

We began our Simply Starting events as a way to enhance the entrepreneurial and small business ecosystem of the Twin Cities and surrounding area.

To register for an event, go to the Simply Starting Eventbrite page.