Lessons
Day 1
1Class Introduction
15:16 2Small Business Failures
23:04 3The Business Plan
35:12 4Four Types of Business Structures
14:36 5Creating an LLC
18:40 6Domain Name and Operating Agreement
16:35 7Obtaining a Federal EIN
18:29Sales Tax
13:16 9Employees and Contractors
21:23 10Contracts and Electronic Signatures
32:29 11Releases and Permits
10:15 12Relevance of Copyright
28:05 13Copyright Registration
29:42 14Copyright and Infringement
25:38Day 2
15Licensing and Transferring
20:36 16Licensed and Copyrighted Music
34:54 17Accounting and Goal Setting
22:28 18Financing Your Business
23:57 19Quickbooks Overview
30:31 20Tracking Profit and Loss with Quickbooks
17:22 21Quickbooks Accounting System
28:06 22Estimates and Invoices
36:06 23Customizing Invoices
21:48 24Bookkeeper vs Accountant
10:23 25Unhappy Clients and Potential Liability
23:22 26Protecting Personal Assets
22:15 27Health Insurance and Retirement
22:26Lesson Info
Bookkeeper vs Accountant
Before we dive back in here I promised to tell you how to make your money goes straight into your bank account and just jot this down it's edit preferences payments company preferences and then there's a little box. If mike do you want to bring that up real quick? I'll just show him how to do that because it's kind of pretty it's kind of it's kind of super easy just go at it preferences payments and remember there's two tabs up here those are the ones that were hiding from me to bob pointed out company preferences and then just turn off this use un deposited funds as a deposit to account and just say okay, general, close all the windows on do all of its little things and then when we go back to our home in you and we go to receive payments and we go back to the last payment that we got from zoe see, it gives me the choice to put it into the creative life checking account and then when I say okay and click the blue steel okay, but it's going to put that money in the checking account so ...
if we go then back to banking and then we click um use register it will show zoey's payment in there, so that is the way to do that and it's super simple so wanted to make sure everybody got that. All right, homestretch, here we go. So we've done all of this. Do we want to hire a bookkeeper or an accountant to kind of help us with our year in work? I kind of talked about this earlier, and I use a second shooter analogy you can pay now or you can cry later. Bookkeepers were great, and if they're kind of helping you do this day today, entry? Ah, bookkeepers fantastic, but I would not rely on the bookkeeper to make sure that you're following the generally accepted accounting principles and that your legal etcetera so it's kind of like using a second shooter. We want to make sure that we get the best that we can afford to get somebody that knows what they're doing when it comes to tax time. At the end of the year, you're going to want to make sure that you've satisfied all of these. If you live in a state that has personal property tax businesses have to pay personal property text, too. Make sure that you have paid personal property tax on your business equipment, because if you don't and you get audited again, not something that you want to mess with and the same with real property tax. Um, we talked a little bit earlier about self employment tax and how to get around paying it on the full amount again, don't forget that that fifteen point three percent is going to run us up to the full one hundred thirteen, seven hundred thirteen thousand seven hundred it is what it is about seven point six per seven percent is paid by the employer seven point seven percent one hundred thirteen thousand seven hundred changes every year it used to be eighty five thousand dollars five years ago, they raise it every year, so they're charging they're charging the federal government is charging mohr every single year that's set by the federal government. Zoe, not me or creative life, so you've got to meet your tax deadlines. This is just a quick we've now got all of our stuff for blue steel in quickbooks we've generated our profit and loss statements every quarter. We know what we've made. We've got to meet the tax deadlines. What are they? Look at all these questions that'll blow your mind if you buy the course. I've taken all of the tax deadlines that might apply to you, and I've included them in the bonus material, so you'll get a handy sheet uh, that looks kind of like I will show you, oh my gosh, I can't take all of that information, and I have pared it down to a mere two and a half double spaced pages in the bonus materials, I've taken all of the tax deadlines for the different types of businesses and included them here for you so that you can calendar them quickbooks or wherever else you keep track of where you need to be in wind, but if you don't know what they are, you've got to hire a professional that already knows so I can you can get them through investing in this creative live course and get those bonus materials which I think is probably worth the cost of the course just to get that, uh took me to put that together for you probably about three hours to go find all of those specific deadlines double check him and write them down so what's three hours worth of attorney time thousand bucks right by the course it's included in the bonus material uh ten ninety nine a quick note so we use vendors we used second shooters, we use graphic artists we used people to do our albums for us we pay them and at the end of the year okay, uh we've got issue a ten, ninety nine now quick books when we set up our vendors remember we could do the quick ad or weaken set up when I set up lee is my vendor it will say this leah ten, ninety nine employees I checked the yes box and then at the end of the year if when I've paid my bills I've paid leave more than six hundred dollars it prints out a ten, ninety nine for lee it can't be any simpler than that I mean you don't even need to pay an accountant to do it you can anybody can do that. Um the ten, ninety nine strategy for success is if you use a vendor like lee, go to the irs website and print out the debbie and nine form that's what you give to somebody where they have to give you their social security number because if I don't know what least social security number is, I can't issue her a ten, ninety nine so she'll fill that out I'll say that her vendor file and then I can make sure that she gets a ten ninety nine at the end of the year again my advice is to use an accounting software program that will generate him automatically calendar the deadlines and meet them the ten ninety nine is the form that goes to the employees the ten ninety six is the form that you used to send the ten, ninety nines to the government and they're not kidding about these ten, ninety nine folks there's there's penalties for not doing this and there's a ton of creatives that use one another back and forth all year long to do different things and they never sent each other to ninety nines and when you get caught for doing that it is going to cost you money so it's super simple almost mindless to use the software program to generate the's er definitely make sure that you take care of your ten, ninety nine responsibilities. So what are the seven common tax mistakes? The seven common tax mistakes that we get at the end of the year are not collecting the sales tax. We've talked about that already. We're all going to collect the sales tax right now if you want some specific state advice go talk to your accountant do not talk to the state taxing authority one of my good friends brandon good want a fantastic videographer with goodwin films. He actually took his camera in er and got some, uh, sales tax advice of the missouri department of revenue office in springfield and the lady was giving him advice that was wrong and he was videotaping her, giving her him the advice that was wrong. Now he really was doing that to try and figure out what to do but he wanted to make sure he had a record of it so he actually was videotaping it. He did what she said they audited him and said he was wrong and he owed a bunch of money. Now he was wrong but because he had a videotape of the lady telling him that they said, well, we're gonna let you slide this time. We don't have to we're doing you a big favor, but the thing is don't count on getting correct legal advice from your state taxing authorities that's just the person that's working at the window that day, talk to an accountant or a c p a save your receipts because you now know by the end of the attack of the small business survival course, that if you don't have a receipt again, you're out of luck. And what did we learn from quickbooks? Weaken scan it is a pdf take it and drop it in a vendor folder and now we've got that receipt for that everything that we need we can keep inside quickbooks into two thousand fourteen. You can't deduct the full cost of meals again, it's only fifty percent lots of people deduct them all. Lots of people don't pay their self employment tax. Lots of people don't know how to take the home office deduction. Lots of people don't organize and finally, in order to deduct a deductible expense, you have to have a tax form that you can deduct it on, and the ten forty easy is very easy, but it's not good for you. Because you can't deduct any of your expenses so if you were in l, l c and everything's getting reported on our ten forty and that's where we have to put all of our expenses down so we could get our income level downs, we pay very little taxes but we're using a form that doesn't let us put our deductions on their kind of see how that's problem lots of people do that every year so it's one of the big tax mistakes now we talked about the home office deduction uh in the home office deduction allows us to take the square footage of our home and figure out what square footage we're using exclusively for business use you want to set aside a portion of your home and on lee use it for business use and then you you can deduct the proportion of your expenses that are associated with that square footage of your home. So if you have ah, if you're using thirty percent of your home is a home office, then you can deduct thirty percent of your mortgage interest you can deduct thirty percent of your utilities thirty percent of uh landscape maintenance, etcetera you can deduct a phone line for your home office if you have a separate one for your home s so there's some interesting rules about the home office deduction, I won't go into it today there's a very extensive irs publication on the home office deduction, and if you just goto irs dot gov, you'll locate that ifyou're audited. Stay calm, find your receipts, call your accountant, but never go to an audit meeting alone. Okay, you need to help. If you go it, you're in it. You're gonna be all emotional because your creative, you're gonna be in your right brain when you really need to be in your left brain, you need a little help, so take your accountant with you. Um, if you use at the end of the year of attack program, like tax cut, they'll actually pay to send somebody to the autumn meeting with you. So there's advantages to teo having somebody to back you up. But don't freak out.
Class Materials
bonus material with purchase
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
Excellent course and subject topic. Mr. Heidermann is a great teacher! Wonderful explanation, clear and concise details, humorous delivery, he kept me engaged the entire time. I truly had fun watching and learning during this course.
a Creativelive Student
I'm literally fresh off the boat, as the saying goes, having moved back to the US after decades of living abroad. I have the photography down (in some measure due to the instructors and courses here at CL), but being new to the business of photography in this environment I was rudderless. This course helped answer all my initial questions and put me on the way to getting established in my region... and beyond! Craig makes legal issues almost fun with his jocular, engaging style. Thanks so much to Chase and the people at CL for knowing what courses real working photographers need.
Rafy
This is a great course and Craig is an excellent teacher. Step-by-Step and easy to follow.
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