Pinnacle has the good fortune of having a new team member join us this month (welcome Melissa).  Something we have learned over the years as we’ve grown and shrunk and grown again, is how important a robust orientation for new team members is.  We know that the best people can choose to take their brain…

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I have a client who for years has held the Annual General Meeting for her corporation on Maui. She and her husband are the sole directors of the corporation (although I’m not sure her husband even knows where the office is, but that’s another matter). Every year she asks me the same question……”Can I write…

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We are often asked by clients whether they should own rental properties personally or own them through a corporation. Our advice is usually to own properties personally when rental income is nominal and when there are only a small number of properties. The advice usually changes as more properties are added to the rental pool…

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I thought we were going paperless. So why were we still using so much paper? Almost 10 years ago our office implemented “paperless” files. The decision arose partly out of a concern for the environment but mostly from the realization that we were spending a lot of money on: Storage – physical filing cabinets, office…

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If you are anything like me, you need a reminder if you are going to get anything done on time.  Fortunately for me, there aren’t any consequences to missing my hair cut appointment – save for looking like a bit of a hippy. Dealing with CRA is a different ball game.  If you owe CRA…

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Many small businesses face a common dilemma regarding financial reporting. They want to minimize tax, which means reporting low income. But they also want to keep their banker happy, which means reporting high income. I often need to counsel clients that they can’t have it both ways. Or can they? Construction contractors can have it…

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As an accountant and personal finance geek there are some things that people do and say about money that drive me crazy. That’s because often times people’s actions and thoughts on money issues make absolutely no sense mathematically. Examples include being happy about getting an income tax refund, carrying a balance on their credit card,…

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In the last few years, there has been an explosion of new technology in the business application environment. I recently attended a conference where some of these software applications were on display. One speaker at this conference likened the recent “app explosion” to the Cambrian explosion of roughly a half-billion years ago when life on…

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Quick Books Online Conversion We recently did our first conversion of a client from Quick Books Desktop (QBD) to Quick Books Online (QBO).  With only a couple of hitches, it went off pretty well. Our client is a building contractor with 8 employees.  The in house bookkeeper has a low to moderate skill level.  The…

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People sometimes think that we accountants are aloof or difficult to talk to. You might even say we have our heads in the cloud. Here at Pinnacle, we have to confess that we have had our heads in the cloud lately. It’s not what you may think though. We are talking about cloud computing, or…

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