The Tilda Virtual office will close for the Christmas break from Friday 23rd December and will reopen Monday 9th January 2012. For any enquiries during this time, please use the contact form.

The team and I would like to thank our clients, suppliers and familes for all their support this year and to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday!!

I’d just like to ask you a quick question… what happens to your business when you get sick? Do you have a team of rockstars that look after everything for you or are you still doing everything yourself? If you have a team, can you rely on them to get their work done and keep your business running?

At the end of August I was knocked down with a cold but with a home-based business, a family and a sick little girl I persevered and kept going. Surprisingly the next week I was better and back to full steam. The following week the cold came back for a week but left the week after. This coming and going of a seemingly mild cold happened for 4 weeks and finished up being a rockin’ chest infection that kept me down for 3.5 weeks. I woke to drink some water, visit the bathroom, take my medication and then go back to sleep. I was useless to my family and to my business. My poor long suffering husband had to pick up the slack and take time off work just to look after me. It was a horrid time for us as a family but as a business owner I coped. Why? Because I have rockstars on my team.

Now I’m not saying everything was perfect and that everyone (clients and team members) were completely happy, but the business kept going and it still brought in money. I’ve spent the time on my systems and I have great team members who know exactly what they need to do for me. This is what made it easier for me to recover from a chest infection that ordinarily would have sent me to the hospital.

Getting sick should be part of your contingency plan and if you work by yourself consider what being really sick would do to your business. How would this down time effect client satisfaction? Who would look after your role for you while you take that much needed time off? How would using a Virtual Assistant on your team help alleviate your stress while you’re off sick and how can they help you generally within your business any other time?

Start thinking about your contingency plan and assess the risk of your business failing simply due to you being sick. Take the time now to figure out how everything will work without you BEFORE you get sick or need the time off. I promise, you’ll thank me for it!

It’s that time again, out with the old and in with the new. I have to admit that June is my favourite time of the year work wise because I get to do so much archiving, filing and purging of documents for myself and my clients. It’s the perfect time to set up new systems, new software packages and to reinvigorate your business with new ideas, budgets and forecasts. The potential of your business is only limited by YOU!

If you have employees, now is also the time to ensure your payroll is up to date so you can issue payment summaries to everyone by 14th July. You’ll need to report to the ATO your PAYG withholding annual report which can be lodged via paper or electronically by 14th August. For more information about payment summaries, please visit the ATO website.

The phone’s ringing, emails are flooding in, repair-man at the front door, full workload for today and the kids are going stir crazy. Sounds like just another day in the Short household but what makes today different is that we are on the second last day of a two week vacation break for Easter and we have survived… just!

In Australia we have four school terms of 11 weeks each which gives the kids a total of 12 weeks’ of holiday/vacation breaks. There are two in between each term and six over Christmas. I have three kids aged 11, 8 and nearly 5 so keeping them entertained these days is a lot different to when they were smaller.

In the past I was able to split my day into ‘during nap time’ and ‘awake time’. I would work really hard during the nap time (and at night) and be with the kids while they were awake. Now that they are older this strategy no longer works much to my dismay. Since going to school my kids have lost the ability to keep themselves entertained and the school holidays require more planning on my part to ensure we all survive it. So here are some tips I’ve found have helped me:

• Organise working play-dates with other mums who work from home. It’s my theory that the more kids you have in the house the easier it is for them to keep themselves entertained for more than 5 seconds. Yes there will be fights but if you give them some basic rules, you should find that they will sort themselves out. While they’re playing, you and your friend can get some work done.
• Email your clients to let them know the dates of the school/vacation holidays. Not all clients will remember that its school holidays and they’re usually very understanding once you explain what is going on, you just need to give them advance notice.
• Bribe your kids. Who would have thought bribery would work!! “Kids, I have a really important call to make, if you’re really quiet you can have 30 minutes on the Xbox” – works every time.
• Find a subcontractor to help. Having a backup person means you can take some of the pressure off yourself and still meet client deadlines.
• Enrol your kid’s in a free vacation care program. Look around in your area for some free kids programs. Some will give you the option of part time attendance while others will require your child to attend the full program.
• Work out a schedule with your kids and then stick to it. I usually try to only work during the morning (8am to 12pm) stop for lunch before deciding on an activity to take the kids along to during the afternoon. Some things we’ve done together include; going to the movies, going to the park, going for a bike ride or a walk, visiting friends/relatives or doing an activity together at home. I let the kids know what kind of behaviour is required of them while I work and what their reward/bribe will be for the day. Works beautifully!

The key here is to employ some planning before the vacation break hits you hard. Both your clients and your kids will thank you for it.

Originally published in the April 2011 IVAACast – The newsletter of the International Virtual Assistant Association. To subscribe click here

Tonight I have my ranty pants on. I don’t lose my temper often but when it comes to money, don’t mess with me!

I have a (now ex) client who owes me money in the thousands. This ex-client used to be a friend so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and every opportunity to pay what she owed me before decided to send it to the debt collector. In cleaning out the office we found a pile of receipts belonging to the ex-client so we posted it to her. The ex-client did a ‘return to sender’ without even looking inside the envelope. This screams to me of irresponsible behaviour and it makes me so glad that she isn’t a client or a friend anymore. I don’t condone her methods of business management or how she would run up huge bills around Melbourne then stick her head in the sand to ignore paying them. She ignores all calls, all emails and now it looks like the post too, just to get out of admitting she made a mistake and owes someone (ME!) money.

What I have learnt from all this is to not mix clients and friends and to send debts to the debt collector sooner. It’s hard chasing your own money but it has to be done. I didn’t start my business to fund someone else’s laptop!!

And to all my lovely clients who pay their invoices on time – we truly love you and without fabulous clients such as yourself, Tilda Virtual wouldn’t be where it is today!!

One of my favourite features of QuickBooks is the ability to do Sales Receipts. Sales Receipts allows you to record the invoice and the payment at the same time!

As promised, here are the steps to record PayPal fees in QuickBooks.

1. Create a new item: Click on Lists > Items > Add new item > Give it an item name that makes sense (I used PP Fee) and allocate it to an expense account called PayPal fees.

2. Create your Sales Receipt: Click on Create Sales Receipt > enter the sale information as you would normally > On the next line insert the item for PayPal fees and enter the fee as a minus figure as per below > Check the deposit to account, if you have PayPal set up as a bank account then this sales receipt will need to be deposited to the PayPal bank account. > Click Save & Close.

So there you have it! Nice and simple, not only are you able to enter the sale for the full amount, but entering the PayPal fee is simple too. Entering your PayPal sales via this method certainly makes reconciling the bank account much easier for your bookkeeper.

So there are a few different ways you can record PayPal fees on money received into your PayPal account but here is my preferred method of recording the transaction.

1.  Create your invoice: Click on Sales > Enter Sales > and enter the sale as you would normally, then click record.

2.  Receive Payment: Enter the payment details for the full amount BEFORE the fee was taken by PayPal but make sure you allocate it “Group with Undeposited Funds”

3.  Record Deposit – Part One: This is where the fun stuff starts. Go Banking > Prepare Bank Deposit > select your deposit and tick it > Click on Deposit Adjustment > enter the amount of the PayPal fee, the date and allocate it to a relevant expense account. In this example we have created a new expense account and have called it ‘PayPal Fees’. Side note: in tracking your PayPal fees you can see if it’s worthwhile or not setting up a merchant account. There is also no GST on PayPal fees either (Australia only). > (If you have PayPal set up as another bank account make sure you deposit to the PayPal account and not the cheque account like I have in the example below.) > Click record.

4.  Record Deposit – Part Two: Now that you have the adjustment entered you’ll be able to see that the total deposit amount has been adjusted too. In recording your PayPal fees this way you’ll clear out the total amount of the client invoice and record the PayPal fees at the same time.

So there you go! Nice and simple. My next post will be for the QuickBooks users out there who also need to know how to record their PayPal fees.

As most of you know, it was announced at AVAC this year that IVAA is opening a division for Australian based VAs.  Kathie Thomas will be heading up the Australian division and is looking for helpers – they must be IVAA members to assist.  Things have been happening behind to scenes to get this all happening, as you can appreciate, it does take some time to organise the legalities and make sure everything is as it should be.

In the meantime, we want to share with you that IVAA has extended its membership registrations for a little while longer so that Australian VAs can join to help grow our Australian membership and discuss how we will be developing Expert of the Month sessions, Peer Discussion groups and Summits geared towards the specific needs of Australian VAs, as it relates to topics and speakers that align with your businesses.

Also, programs will be timed more favorably to Australia and that they will be eligible for ALL IVAA benefits (many of which are here: http://www.ivaa.org/?page=MemberServices) and that Australian volunteers will be working on getting discounts and programs of benefit outside the US – for example – we have some discounts on long-term care insurance and through an attorney – this would be for US members only – we would be looking to establish similar discounts that would be available to our Australian VAs.

To join, please click here!

Everyone who joins as a ‘regular’ member, through June 30, 2011, will receive $10 off their 2011 Online Summit registration as well as a copy of the audio from the 2010 Online Summit panel discussion, “Pricing Your Services in a Down Economy!” We are so excited to offer this opportunity to new regular members – spread the word.

Kathie M. Thomas, Australian Rep – kathie@ivaa.org

Five years ago I was extremely pregnant, living in Bathurst with my husband and two boys in our newly built dream home and feeling a little bit lost. I had been studying to re-train as a primary school teacher for the previous 6 years (part time around looking after and making the kids) but I still wasn’t convinced that it was what I wanted to do. I enjoyed my studies but I wasn’t inspired and I wanted to be at home with my kids as much as possible. I ended up finding a job advertised in the local paper “bookkeeper/secretary – must have own laptop” and I instantly thought ‘I could do that easy!’. So I waddled up with my rather large belly (due to pregnancy complications, I was extremely huge at 34 weeks – had looked like I was full term since 24 weeks) and they offered it to me as a contracting position from home.

I like to think of that first client as the catalyst for the start of Tilda Virtual.

Over the last five years I’ve learnt some very important lessons, have achieved what felt like achievable goals and have crashed and burned big time. Being a business owner is hard work and it’s not just about providing a service or product, it’s all the behind the scenes stuff that goes with it. I knew early on that I didn’t just want to have enough work for myself (and effectively create a job), I wanted a team of subcontractors and/or employees and I wanted to do it all from home. I’m extremely proud to say that I have an awesome team and without them I’d still be struggling. So thanks everyone and a big BIG thank you to my awesome husband who said to me five years ago “go for it babe!”.

Just a reminder that all BAS lodged quarterly are due Thursday 28th April 2011 if lodging via paper. Remember, this means your BAS must arrive at the Australian Taxation Office before Thursday 28th.

If you have any questions or would like to find out using Tilda Virtual to lodge your BAS return, please contact us on 1300 991 306.