Blumer & Associates, CPAs, PC - Certified Public Accountants

Hot dang, they are seriously working on a fix for our 1099 issue.

The Senate just passed a provision to repeal the onerous 1099 rule that all small businesses are scared of.  If it passes the House, the Prez will probably sign it in to law.  But lawmakers will have to make up the lost revenue that this 1099 nightmare would have brought in.  What will they tax next?  I’ve heard they’ll take oil companies, but still unsure.

Hear Alex Forrest of AC Forrest Insurance talk about the possibility of innovative health care.  Is that possible?

If you missed our webinar on the Tax Changes from 2010, you can watch the video above.  Doesn’t that sound fun?

And as an update (this happened after the webinar was finished), the House passed approval of this bill, so the President will be signing it soon.

Read another update on the passage from my homey Joey Brannon, CPA.

We want our clients to go green with us!  No paper, no more wasted gas, and no more wasted time.  You can be virtual (whatever that means)!  Play the video above and you’ll see what we mean.

Actually, being “virtual” is explained in the above video.  We also explain how our firm is becoming virtual and what that actually means for our clients.

If you want to volunteer for the “Virtually+Green” program with Blumer CPAs, watch the video above and you will discover the magic (and endless joy for eternity)!  Or, just go ahead and sign up now!!

Remember who determines your company’s value in the marketplace…

I had an interesting experience with my merchant company recently.  And it highlights how the “marketing voice” of large corporations has moved from the company itself to the users of the services and products.

Intuit’s Innovative Merchant Solutions is my merchant company, mainly because they tie directly into their QuickBooks product.  They recently held up some of my merchant deposits for almost a month and caused some problems for our company internally, our employees and our clients.  They couldn’t say why and said they would research it.  Not good.

But everyone makes mistakes, right?

So I called to remedy the situation.  I got an employee who was unable to help me because he had obviously never been trained on how to deliver the brand of Intuit on the phone, and did not even have the power to resolve my issues in the first place.  They blamed me for not checking my clients to see if they first had enough money to sufficiently allow me to draft their accounts.  Well, that was the first thing I did.  And when I told the representative this, he proceeded to tell me to “make sure you always check first that your clients have enough funds before you draft their accounts.”  So he told me it was my fault again.  Not good.

So I tweeted abut it and put it on Facebook to see if they would respond (because I’ve incurred over $200 in fees now because of their mistakes).  The did not respond after thousands of people heard what they did.  My voice dominated this conversation, and their voice was no where to be found.  Not good. (and now I’m blogging about it - please RT!).

So at this point, I’ve decided to leave this “innovative” merchant for a more innovative solution (“innovation” in this scenario is not a very high bar to surmount, so anything will do).  But then they sent me an automated survey.  Oh goody - I rolled up my sleeves and got started.  I filled it out and gave them good feedback, but was not mean-spirited.  The last comments section was an open-ended question so I took my time to fill out that section to really help them in the future.  I spent too long on the question and the browser timed out.  Not good.

I was thinking of using Authorize.net because they sync with many cloud products, and someone also suggested Chargify.  And now Daniel Hauer with North American Bancard contacted me over Facebook noting that I was having trouble with my merchant company.  He is monitoring social media and he would love to help me out. (Daniel’s number is 248-876-4502 and his email is .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).

Not sure who I’ll use yet.

Take aways:
1.  Remember who determines your company’s value in the marketplace.  It’s not you!  It’s your clients and customers.  They determine what your value is, and they determine if you are worthy to be used.  Please don’t forget this.
2.  Institute ways where “real” people can engage and communicate with users of your services and products.  Don’t leave your voice out of what is being said concerning your company and brand.  Big mistake.
3.  Remember that our marketplace is getting younger and younger.  And these new users of your products use social media, and they have real influence with their colleagues. I’ve tweeted about my experience, put it on Facebook and now I’m blogging about it.  Will I hear from Innovative Merchant Solutions?  Probably not.

Am I being too harsh?  What do you think?