July 10

Employees Who Work for Tips – If you received $20 or more in tips during June, report them to your employer. You can use Form 4070.

July 15

Employers – Nonpayroll withholding. If the monthly deposit rule applies, deposit the tax for payments in June.

Employers – Social Security, Medicare, and withheld income tax. If the monthly deposit rule applies, deposit the tax for payments in June.

July 31

Employers – Social Security, Medicare, and withheld income tax. File Form 941 for the second quarter of 2019. Deposit any undeposited tax. (If your tax liability is less than $2,500, you can pay it in full with a timely filed return.) If you deposited the tax for the quarter in full and on time, you have until August 12 to file the return.

Employers – Federal unemployment tax. Deposit the tax owed through June if more than $500.

Employers – If you maintain an employee benefit plan, such as a pension, profit-sharing, or stock bonus plan, file Form 5500 or 5500-EZ for calendar-year 2018. If you use a fiscal year as your plan year, file the form by the last day of the seventh month after the plan year ends.

Certain Small Employers – Deposit any undeposited tax if your tax liability is $2,500 or more for 2019 but less than $2,500 for the second quarter.

• By Leon Clinton
• July 1, 2019

Your customer list is gold. That’s why it is so important to protect those Social Security and bank card numbers in your payroll, client, and vendor records from intruders and make sure they are only viewed by authorized employees.

It’s not just large corporations and financial institutions that get hacked. That’s what the bad guys want you to think. In reality, small businesses are often the victims of data breaches because their owners think they’re immune from data theft and destruction.

Even if you’re password-protecting your PCs and running antivirus and anti-malware software, there’s more you need to do when it comes to your accounting records. Let’s take a closer look.

Restrict access by setting up user permissions.

If you have multiple staff members using QuickBooks, don’t share the same user name and password. That obviously gives everyone access to all data and activity. If something goes awry, you have no way of knowing when or how it happened, and who was responsible. To protect yourself and everyone else who logs in, it’s critical that all users have their own unique logins. They should only be allowed to access information and functions that relate to their job duties.

Figure 1: You can restrict QuickBooks users to certain screens and activities.

To assign these permission levels, open the Company menu and click on Set Up Users and Passwords, then Set Up Users. This opens the User List window, where you should be identified as the Admin. Click Add User. Enter a user name and password for an employee who needs access (this can be changed later). Check the box in front of Add this user to my QuickBooks license.

Tip: Not sure how many users are allowed under your current license? Click F2 and look in the upper left corner. If you need to add licenses, please call.

Click Next. The next screen lists three options. You can grant access to all areas or to selected areas. You can also create a login for us as your external accountant, which lets us see everything except sensitive customer data. Select the second option and click Next. You can see in the image above that you can give the employee different levels of responsibility. When you’ve made your choice, click Next. The subsequent nine screens deal with different areas of QuickBooks and their related activities.

Tip: When you need to change your password, which you should do at a minimum every three months, go to Company | Set Up Users and Passwords | Change Your Password.

Save your company file elsewhere.

You should always be backing up your company file to an external storage device (like a CD or thumb drive). To set this up, open the Filemenu and select Back Up Company, then Create Local Backup. This window will open:

Figure 2: The Create Backup window

Make sure Local backup is selected, then click the Options button below (not pictured here). Click Browse to see a directory of your PC and select the correct destination. Leave the two boxes below it checked; this will add the backup date/time to the filename and limit the number of backup copies to three.

By default, QuickBooks will remind you to back up your file every fourth time you close your company file; you can change this number if you prefer. Leave the Complete verification option checked and click OK, then Next. Specify when you want to save your backup copy and click Next again. You can schedule regular backups of your company file on the next screen if you’d like. When you’ve completed this screen, click Finish.

You should also consider saving a copy of your company file to the cloud. Intuit offers its own service for this; it costs $9.95/month or $99.95 annually, but it gives you 100 GB of storage space, so you can back up other critical business files, too. If you can’t swing this financially, at least store your backups to a portable device that you can carry offsite.

Warning: If you already pay for cloud storage from another vendor, don’t assume you can just copy your QuickBooks file to it. Please call if you have questions about this.

Other Steps

There are other things you can do to protect your QuickBooks data, including:Insist on strong passwords. Yes, it’s a pain to create and remember them, but it’s critical here.Keep everything updated. That includes your operating system and anything else that requires updates.Minimize web browsing on work computers and remind employees about smart email behaviors.

While the software’s instructions are straightforward with regard to setting up any kind of backup system for QuickBooks, please don’t hesitate to call if you are worried about jeopardizing the integrity of your company files.

• By Leon Clinton
• June 30, 2019

Are you a student with a summer job or the parent of a student with a summer job? Here are seven things you should know about the income earned by students during the summer months.

1. All new employees fill out a W-4 when starting a new job. This form is used by employers to determine the amount of tax that will be withheld from your paycheck. Taxpayers with multiple summer jobs will want to make sure all their employers are withholding an adequate amount of taxes to cover their total income tax liability. To make sure the withholding is correct, don’t hesitate to call.
2. Whether you are working as a waiter, valet, or a camp counselor, you may receive tips as part of your summer income. You should be aware that tips are considered taxable income and subject to federal income tax. Employees should keep a daily log to accurately report tips and they must report cash tips to their employer for any month that totals $20 or more.
3. From pet sitting to mowing lawns and pulling weeds, many students do odd jobs over the summer to make extra cash. If this is your situation, keep in mind that the earnings you receive from self-employment are subject to income tax.
4. While some students may earn too little from their summer job to owe income tax, employers usually must still withhold Social Security and Medicare taxes from their pay. This tax pays for your future benefits under the Social Security system.
5. Net earnings of $400 or more from self-employment is taxable, as is church employee income of $108.28 and is reported on Form 1040, Schedule SE. Social Security and Medicare benefits are available to individuals who are self-employed just as they are to wage earners who have Social Security tax and Medicare tax withheld from their wages.
6. Subsistence allowances paid to ROTC students participating in advanced training are not taxable. However, active duty pay such as pay received during summer advanced camp is taxable.
7. Special rules apply to services you perform as a newspaper carrier or distributor. You are a direct seller and treated as self-employed for federal tax purposes if you meet the following conditions:

Summer work for students can be a patchwork of odd jobs, which makes for confusion at tax time. Don’t hesitate to call if you have any questions at all about income earned from a summer job.

• By Leon Clinton
• June 26, 2019