Godwin & Associates, CPA: Small Business Accounting

If you are a new client, we would like for you to please provide us with a copy of your most recent tax return. We would also encourage you to compile a list of questions so that we can cover all of your concerns during our meeting. During that meeting, we will complete a questionnaire that will allow us to make recommendations to you and also ensure that we have a clear understanding of your current situation.

SMALL BUSINESS ACCOUNTING SERVICES

Godwin & Associates, CPA provides many small businesses in the state of SC as well as other states with accounting and tax advisory/preparation services. The businesses cover the spectrum of entity structure – corporations, partnerships, sole proprietorships and LLC. We feel very confident in our ability to understand the perils and pluses of operating a small business since we are one of you! These services are offered to for-profit as well as not-for-profit clients. Our broad base of expertise allows us to assist small businesses in the following areas:

Financial Statement Preparation

Without accurate financial statements, it’s impossible to evaluate the financial status of the company. We feel that this knowledge is of paramount importance when performing tax advisory services for our small business clients. Some of our clients prefer that we perform data entry procedures in our office and provide them with compiled financial statements. Some clients prefer to maintain their own accounting system, usually in the form of QuickBooks Pro data files, which opens up another level of service. Our staff possesses extensive knowledge of QuickBooks Pro software, which allows clients to either e-mail files to us or deliver them to us via diskette or CD-ROM for our review. We recommend changes and adjustments in order to facilitate accurate financial statement presentation. We recommend that financial statements be prepared on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Consulting

With accurate financial statements in hand, we can then provide the small business client with consulting services to encompass many areas, some of which are:

Educating the owners of the company about the financial statements and what they indicate about the company’s performance;
Analysis of the financial status of the company;
Advisory regarding the hiring of new staff or the expansion of the business into other meaningful and profitable areas;
Analysis of the current debt structure and recommendations of alternatives, including the referral of banking contacts when a new relationship is warranted;
Comparison of your company with current industry standards for a benchmark;
Preparation of company budgets to which shareholders hold themselves accountable;
Analysis of the current structure of the business, review of its applicability each year (a sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, corporation), and the recommendation of changes where necessary.

Tax Advisory and Preparation

We encourage our small business clients to meet with us at least once each quarter to review tax planning strategies and find out about upcoming events in the company’s life that may change our advisory position. In some cases, when we don’t see the client until the beginning of the new year we miss out on planning opportunities that may have existed before the close of the previous year. Businesses experience so many cycles and changes, so it is almost impossible to prescribe a course of action that remains adequate for an entire year. We analyze your business’ position and make recommendations that coincide with your business’ changes.

As the small business’ advisor, we also complete the business tax returns for the applicable federal and state agencies as they are required each year.

ANCILLARY SERVICES

Payroll Processing and Payroll Tax Return Preparation

We provide payroll services to many of our small business clients who want all their accounting and tax needs met under one roof. We can provide the following services to a business client located in any state in the area of payroll:

Actual processing of hard checks for any number of employees, including the availability of direct deposit for those employees who request it
Simple calculation of paychecks for clients who prefer to write their own paychecks
Completion of third party checks for garnishments or retirement plan contributions
Completion of all quarterly and annual payroll tax filings, including industry-required workers compensation reports.

Sales and Use Tax Return Preparation

For those clients who are liable for remitting sales and/or use tax to the state of SC, we can also prepare those forms for your business as they are required.

Accounting Services for Not-For-Profit Agencies

Our firm has been called upon to offer accounting services to not-for-profit agencies. We are certainly very proud of our involvement with some of the largest agencies in Greenville. Our services to them include but are not limited to the following:

Data entry of accounting data for the production of financial statements
Preparation of payroll and completion of quarterly and annual payroll tax filings
Presentation of the financial statements to various committees and boards within the agency in conjunction with the agency’s finance department and executive director
Preparation of annual budgets, including departmental and program budgets where applicable
Preparation of United Way budget presentations where applicable
Assistance with the independent audit required each year (we assist the firm conducting the audit, as we are precluded from performing it ourselves).