Earth Day was April 22nd, prompting many small businesses to identify ways to reduce environmental impact. No matter the month, there’s never been a better time to explore some fresh, creative ways to go green around the office. Check out a few of our favorite ways to  reduce your company’s environmental impact with these seriously simple solutions.

1. Get a smart power strip

We all know that unplugging appliances when we’re not using them is a great way to conserve energy, but running around your office plugging and unplugging every lamp, computer and coffeemaker can be a pain.

Thankfully, you can install smart power strips around the workplace to save energy– and save money on the electric bill. Go green with power strips that intuitively senses when energy is not being used, and essentially shuts the current off until power is needed again.

 2. Go paperless

Going paperless is more than a trend – it’s a lifestyle. Adopting the paperless way of life in your business means not only digitizing the piles of paper you’ve accumulated over the years, but also finding tools that prevent more paper clutter piling up on your desk.

To start, you may want to invest in a scanner to digitize your important documents, or if you don’t have time to do the scanning, you can send the documents to Shoeboxed and they’ll do all the work for you. Simply fill one of their Magic Envelopes with your documents, drop them in the mail, and they’ll be scanned and organized online for you to access anytime. After scanning, you can opt to have the documents securely shredded and recycled so they’re out of the filing cabinet and ready to be reused.

Opt for an eReceipt to prevent printing whenever possible, or use the Shoeboxed app to digitize paper receipts then recycle them right away!

3. Set up a carpool

Carpooling is a great way to save on gas and mileage, and it also encourages friendships between employees!

Send an email to the team to see if anyone in your office would be interested in sharing rides– you might be surprised at the amount of interest you receive! Make sure to cover the basics like pick up and drop off times, who drives and when, and how often you’ll carpool. Even if your schedule only permits you to share a ride twice a week, you’ll still save money on gas and make a positive impact on the environment.

 4. Forget the bottled water

Bottled water is one of the most harmful environmental products out there. Americans toss nearly 40 million plastic bottles per year, stuffing our landfills with waste that won’t even begin to decompose for at least seven years.

Even worse? It takes millions of gallons of oil to produce the number of plastic bottles bought by Americans each year, making bottled water a serious contributor to our carbon footprint.

So instead of stocking the break room fridge with plastic, give personalized water bottles as gifts to employees, encouraging them to ditch their plastic bottle habit.

 5. Buy in bulk

 It may be more expensive up front, but buying food and office supplies in bulk cuts down on packaging waste and reduces pollution caused by shipping and production. Bulk purchases also save you tons of cash in the long run.

With a minimum of conscious effort on your part, you’ll be able to reduce your small business’s environmental impact and go green in a way that sustains the health of the planet.

 What steps has your small business taken to go green?

The tax crunch is finally over and now’s a great time to develop new habits that will make it less of a crunch next year. Let’s talk about those habits, but if you still haven’t filed, checkout our post about filing for an extension.

Make next year’s taxes less of a speed bump in your day-to-day operations with better tracking and automation.

Vintage income tax by Chris Potter via Flickr

1. Know what costs to track and track them consistently

Hunting for numbers and records is a large time sink at tax time. It’s not uncommon to have that moment of shock where you realize the total you need for a field on your return is buried in a file drawer’s worth of receipts and invoices. Hindsight can’t fix the problem of the moment, but it can help you track the right numbers next year.

Some numbers come right from your year-end inventory count, others you need to keep track of.

Save a lot of time during tax season and even have better day to day insight into your business if you track these numbers consistently throughout the year.

Costs you should track include:

• Cost of finished goods

  This cost will include items you make yourself and items you purchase from others.

• Cost of works in progress 

  This is the cost of unfinished products that haven’t been sold or a customer hasn’t agreed to purchase.

• Cost of raw materials and supplies

  This cost is self-explanatory, but can also include costs incurred to get the raw materials from your supplier into your inventory.

• Cost of labor

  This will include costs for assembly and overhead to get a finished product into your inventory.

Keep track of all these costs throughout the year, and you’ll only need to subtract the price of your inventory at year end to find your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).

2. Make life easier: Automate

Whenever you encounter a repetitive task in your business, look at ways software could automate that task to both save you time and prevent human error.

Make your inventory management tool your daily HQ

Keeping your inventory and sales records in one ledger is easy when you sell in just one location. As you add online sales channels and expand to wholesale, pulling together all your inventory and sales records requires more time.

Because of this problem, one of Stitch’s core features is integrating all your sales channels to make comprehensive sales records automatic. Using an inventory management program, like Stitch, means that all your various sales records are in one place, plus costs and inventory totals are tallied automatically.

Having cost and inventory records in one place means far less counting during year-end inventory. You can export your inventory totals to a Google spreadsheet to use during your physical inventory count, and you can save everything to a file format your accountant can use.

Automate your accounting

Consistent accounting practices and periodic check-ins with your accountant will save you from scrambling and filing extensions at tax time. Like mentioned above, Stitch provides record export features that make it easy to send your accountant regular updates. However, Stitch also offers software add-on options that can make this even easier.

The biggest of these options is Xero, a web-based accounting application that makes it much easier for businesses to manage their books and work with their accountants. This makes an inventory management tool like Stitch even more powerful since it manages all your inventory in your storefronts, but also automatically sends all the financial information from your sales to your accounting records.

If you still use QuickBooks, Stitch offers another add-on that makes it easy to send your inventory and sales records to QuickBooks instead.

Repeat after me, “Next year will be easier.”

Taxes are never fun, but consistent practices and automation can spread out the labor involved and make tax season less of a crunch and more of business as usual.

eBay software: What does it do?

Stitch is a customizable inventory management software suite.

• Manage all of your orders, inventory, customers, and sales channels in real-time with powerful, actionable reports and key insights.

• Manage the entire backend of your business when you connect add-ons, like ShipStation for smooth shipping, Xero to simplify accounting, and PayPal for e-Invoicing.

Stitch also integrates with several popular marketplaces and shopping carts, like Amazon, Shopify, and BigCommerce, so you can manage everything in one place.

Cut down on the time it takes to get new listings and auctions live. As soon as you accept new stock from a purchase order in Stitch, your eBay listing will be relisted automatically to reflect your increased inventory quantity.

What eBay software features are most popular?

Everyone loves something different about Stitch’s eBay integration. Here are some of the features our customers rave about:

• Automatically relist auctions when an auction ends. Stop wasting time relisting products and let Stitch make sure you always have a live auction for your products.

• Sell more by encouraging buyers to act quickly. You can set the quantity in your eBay store to 1 or another maximum quantity.

• Preventing lost sales when awaiting inventory. Set inventory quantities to a maximum of what you are awaiting, so you don’t lose potential sales while you are temporarily out of stock.

• Real-time inventory syncing. Let Stitch ensure your eBay inventory quantity is in sync with all of the other places you sell, so you don’t oversell.

• Keep track of PayPal transaction information, including transaction ID and fees. The information is automatically downloaded into Stitch when a customer pays with PayPal.

• Seamlessly handle shipping. With ShipStation, mark orders shipped or add tracking information, which is automatically loaded into into eBay and can be shared with your customers so they know exactly when to expect their purchase.

• Build eBay products in Stitch with the click of a button. Eliminate the need to build products for your store more than once. Getting set up couldn’t be easier.

• Easily identify your eBay best sellers. With a historic import of up to one quarter, it’s simple to see which of your listings are doing best, so you can make smart decisions to drive more sales.

What else can I do with eBay software?

Quickly and accurately make smart business decisions. Stitch helps you sell more by equipping you with actionable insights from powerful reports. Know precisely what your best selling product variants are and identify repeat customers to give them a little extra service.

Create customizable purchase orders to keep track of inventory from the instant you order it from your supplier until it arrives and is ready for re-sale.

Which eBay sellers can use this software?

Stitch integrates directly with eBay and works with Fixed-Price listings, and Auctions – with and without SKUs.

Sell both Fixed-Priced and Auctions? Stitch can handle that, too.

Read to start using eBay inventory management Software? Get eBay software now or learn more about Stitch’s eBay integration in our support center.

Today we are extremely excited to announce our latest integrated partner, Spark Pay, by Capital One! Some of our current customers may remember this as SAIL. Capital One has taken over this technology and we’re glad to have them as a partner.

What does this mean? It means that Stitch users will have the ability again to accept payments offline (e.g. trunk shows, trade shows, and craft fairs), easily select the products they sold on the spot, and have that sale, along with customer information, immediately added to their Stitch account without any further action needed on their part. The transaction will also automatically communicate with their online selling platform if they are using one our integrated partners (e.g. Etsy, Amazon, Shopify and/or BigCommerce, etc.). There will be no more guesswork about what was sold, where it was sold, or whom it was sold to. The entire process can be automated.

Why SPARK Pay?  

This is simple. The group working on Spark Pay is a small group of entrepreneurs working within Capital One to create an application that will help small businesses succeed. Like us, they see the value in opening their network and working closely with other applications. They too want to make the Internet a place where small businesses can have access to powerful and affordable tools. They are iterating at an unbelievably rapid pace and have worked hand in hand with us to bring you this solution.

Benefits and Details

Since we began creating Stitch, we knew that in order for us to even begin to reach our potential as a company, we needed to provide a mechanism for our customers to automate the selling process for all the ways they sell. With the addition of Spark Pay, we’re taking another major step toward that goal. Our customers have the opportunity to use Stitch to sell in one or any combination of the following:

• Wholesale – Through their online wholesale shopping carts, or their offline phone and fax process, Stitch’s order and invoice management allows for wholesale businesses to prosper.
• Retail – Whether they sell online with one of our integrated partners or not, Stitch affords the ability to track sales and segment them by channel. Now with the addition of Spark Pay, online and offline retail can be automated and “Stitch”ed together.
• Consignment – Using Stitch’s order and inventory management capability, consignment sellers have a better handle on where they stand with their merchandise.

There are so many BENEFITS to share; it’s difficult to pack them in to one blog post. Here are a few major benefits that have risen to the top as we have tested this integration with select Stitchers:

• Contact management - All customer information for every sale can now be automatically added to one central location. No more manual entry of people that write their name on a piece of paper at a show.
• Inventory management - If you are selling offline (e.g. trade or trunk show), you no longer have to worry about going onto your online store and adjusting inventory during or after a show. Stitch can handle it for you.
• Analytics - Stitch users can gain a better understanding of how they’re performing through each sales channel, so they can focus their resources more effectively.

*VERY IMPORTANT DETAILS*

Because we deal with many different selling platforms, there are several challenges with regard to how products move from one application to another. No two applications manage their products in the exact same way. For example, Spark Pay is the first application we integrate with that we can push products into from Stitch. One of the main reasons we can do this is because Spark Pay, unlike our other integrated partners (e.g. Etsy, Shopify and BigCommerce) isn’t meant to be a customer facing application. People aren’t shopping from it. Only the sellers will be interacting with the Spark Pay application, therefore, there isn’t much additional information, other than the product information itself, that needs to be added to Spark Pay. Because the Spark Pay integration is different, it is imperative that those people planning to use Spark Pay in conjunction with Stitch visit our support center and read through our FAQs about this integration. Users are going to love the fact that they can integrate their Spark Pay account with Stitch and be up and running in literally seconds.

Stitch on!

According to the Internal Revenue Service, up to 25% of Americans wait until the last two weeks before the tax deadline to file their return. Avoid the stress that comes with procrastination by using these five tips to reduce hassle during tax season.

Photo via Flickr by 401(K) 2013

1. Go paperless

Today there are numerous digital tools that allow you to keep your important tax documents organized and easily accessible. Save money by foregoing a bookkeeper and organizing your own records.

Don’t have time to sort through piles of paper? Luckily the IRS has been accepting digital documents since 1997, so join the digital revolution and ditch (well, recycle!) the paper.

Use either a receipt scanner or a service like Shoeboxed to digitize your records. You’ll save time… and valuable office space!

You’ll also feel better knowing you have digital versions securely stored in the cloud that you can access anytime, anywhere. You may also want to check out online accounting tools like Xero, depending on your personal and business tax obligations.

2. Do your research

Over 90% of Americans have their taxes prepared by a professional or use tax software.

Both options save time and money, as well as help prevent mistakes. However, all penalties fall on you whether you use an accountant or not, so doing your own research is a good idea. IRS.gov is a good place to start.

Once you’ve learned the basics and determined which form(s) you need to file, start researching the option that best suits your tax needs. TurboTax, H&R Block and TaxACT all offer easy-to-use software programs for individuals, but if you own a small business, finding a reliable accountant may be your best bet.

3. Save money

One of the most important tax tasks for most people is saving as much money as possible. No one wants to pay more taxes than they have to, right?

The first step is deciding whether you should itemize your deductions, or instead claim the standard deduction. If your allowable expenses during the year exceed the standard deduction for your filing status, itemizing will likely save you more money in the end, even if it does take more time.

There are numerous online resources to help you research deductions, especially if you’re self-employed or own a small business.

Listing your deductions beforehand will not only reduce the chance that you’ll miss one, but it will also make you feel more prepared when you go to fill out the dreaded form.

4. Save time

According to the IRS, over 100 million taxpayers opted to e-file their taxes online in 2012. Don’t waste time with paper forms and mailing; simply navigate to www.irs.gov/filing and choose the option that fits your tax obligations.

5. File an extension

If you need a little extra time to complete your return, file a tax extension by April 15 and you’ll have until October 15 to submit it. Filing an extension is the best way to avoid penalties and take advantage of the extra time to double- and triple-check your return before filing.

Taxes are no fun, but being done with your taxes for the year is! What steps do you take before the tax deadline to make sure you’re prepared?

Is there a real option for folks like you? Does the IRS just kidnap you in the middle of the night and extract their (hopefully proverbial) pound of flesh or can you avoid an altercation altogether?

The Tax Extension

If you think you’re the only person out there who hasn’t filed your taxes yet, think again. Millions of Americans have waited until the very last minute to start on their forms this year, and it will likely be that way until the end of time/taxes. The IRS can’t kidnap ALL of you, so they’ve gone the other way and provided a tax extension form.

The form lets you push back filling out your tax forms for 6 months while you get everything figured out. After you file the extension, you can get all your invoices, receipts, and everything else in order. This way you don’t have to rush around and accidentally make a mistake.

Even better, the tax extension is incredibly simple to figure out. You just need a few key pieces of information and you’re set. Plus, most tax extensions are automatically granted, so you don’t have to worry that you’ll be one of those poor souls lining up at the post office on April 15^th.

The Details

So what’s the process? You’ll need to fill out IRS Form 4868. It’s a short form asking for simple stuff like your name, address, and Social Security Number; things you should already know. You’ll also need an estimate of how much you owe to the IRS and the balance you’re owed.

Wait, what? Aren’t you doing all this so you don’t have to figure all that out yet? Well, here’s the one catch about the tax extension – it doesn’t push back the money you owe, it only pushes back the time you have to file the actual forms.

This means you have to send in money to the IRS so they don’t think you’re bailing on them. Naturally you don’t know the exact amount yet, and you won’t until you finish your forms. You just need an estimate of how much you’ll owe.

When you send in the Form 4868, you also send in your payment. Later, when you file your forms, you’ll send in more money or get some back as the final amount will no doubt be a bit different than your estimated.

Start Getting Organized for Next Year

Now just because you have an extension for your taxes doesn’t mean you can slack! No matter why you had to file for the extension, now is the time to get it all done. You have 5 or 6 months to get everything organized and finalized, but go ahead and get started.

Furthermore, getting organized and staying that way can help you with taxes in 2014. This way you won’t even have to worry about filing for a tax extension because you’ll be so far ahead!

Have you ever filed a tax extension? Let’s discuss in the comments.

This post is brought to you by Outright.com, the alternative to Mint for business. Sign up today and import all of your business financial accounts for a less taxing tax time!

• How many of each product do you have?

• How much did each unit cost?

• How many units are you waiting to receive into your inventory?

• How many units have you sold?

• How many units do I need to purchase?

Purchase Orders: A key component of good inventory management

Keep track of inventory from the moment it’s ordered from the supplier to the moment it is delivered to your customer. Create purchase orders and share them with your suppliers directly from within Stitch. With purchase orders, Stitch becomes an even more robust inventory management suite.

Quickly and accurately answer these 3 important questions about your business — how many units am I waiting to receive, how many units do I need to purchase, and how much did each unit cost me.

Grow Profitably: Focus on detailed insights into your costs, not calculations

To grow your business profitably, it’s critical to know exactly how much each product costs. Stitch gives you detailed insight into how much you spend as well as information on your inventory assets and COGS.

Focus on insights into your business, not the time to calculate each metric. Let Stitch handle the calculations for you. Stitch uses a sophisticated average unit costing algorithm, to automatically calculate the cost of every product in your inventory, accurate to the second.

Avoid Lost Sales: Know what, how many and when your stock will arrive

Have you ever had a customer order an out of stock product? If you’re like most product-based businesses, you have. Inevitably, the customer asks, “When will you have more?”

Answer this question quickly and accurately with purchase orders. Know how many units of each product are awaiting arrival into your inventory and when you expect them to arrive.

Increase Sales & Revenue: Sell your products the instant you receive them

Cut down out-of-stock time and can increase your sales revenue. When inventory is received, you still have to update all of your sales channels, such as Amazon, Shopify, BigCommerce, with how much stock you have.

Stitch’s purchase order feature is tied directly to your integrated sales channels, so the moment you receive new stock, all of your sales channels are automatically updated and your products are listed for sale.

Plus, you save time since you do not need to update each sales channel separately.

Manage supplier relations: Get the stock you need, when you need it

Know the difference between what you ordered, and what you actually received from a supplier.

Take control when you receive too few units to ensure you get the stock you need, when you need it.

• Need the inventory now? Partially receive inventory and backorder inventory you are still waiting to receive.

Suppose you ordered 100 units of a product, but only received 90. Perhaps FedEx loses a box of your products for a week or a supplier delivers your order in multiple shipments.

In Stitch, you can backorder those items so you know how many units you are still waiting to receive, and when you finally receive them. This makes it easy to follow-up with suppliers to make sure you get the stock you need, when you need it.

• Need the right amount of stock delivered the first time? Quickly see which suppliers consistently deliver less than you ordered.

Know which suppliers consistently short you and make intelligent purchase order decisions in the future.

Suppose each time you order 100 units, you are shorted by 10 units. For the busy holiday season, you know you need 200 units. Now, you know to order 220 units — 10% more — so you ensure you receive the 200 units you need.

What’s Next?

Take the guesswork of how many of each product to order off your shoulders, and let Stitch do the heavy lifting for you. In the future Stitch will give you the ability to auto-generate purchase orders with predictive stock quantities, using our business intelligence and key insights.

Ready to Get Started?

Ready to put purchase orders to work for your business? Sign up for Stitch today or learn more in our support center.

We want to make sure everyone understands how to use Stitch. It can be a bit confusing to get started, and even seasoned Stitchers have questions. We also want to be sure everyone is getting the most out of Stitch, so we’ve put together an awesome webinar to do just that!

Join us this Friday, March 22nd at 10:00am PST!

This guest post is brought to you by Outright.com, the alternative to Mint for business. Sign up today and make tax time less taxing!

Want to make the most of your tax season? As an online seller and business owner you want to save the most money when it comes to tax time. Every dollar counts towards you doing what you love another day.  If you’re not taking all your tax deductions, then you may end up paying more than you really should have to Uncle Sam.

But taxes can be confusing, frustrating and downright painful. So Outright is here to help you by detailing the lucrative tax deductions many online sellers forget to take.

Need some help pinpointing which deductions to take? That’s why we’re here! Let’s get to it!

Home Office

Small business owners all over the world get antsy about taking this tax deduction. It’s clouded in mystery and rumors swirl that taking it will lead to an audit. Basically, the home office deduction just means that if you use a dedicated portion of your home as an office, you can deduct the money you pay in rent/mortgage, utilities, etc. for that space. So if your house is 2,000 square feet and your office is 200 square feet, then you can deduct 10% of your expenses related to your home office on your taxes.

They key here is that you use the area exclusively as an office (or storage area). If it’s your home office AND the kid’s playroom, it doesn’t count and the IRS could ding you.

To claim this extremely useful deduction, you simply need to have a dedicated office space in your home. This doesn’t mean you need a door with a plaque and a secretary to hold your calls, just a space that is solely used for office matters. It can even be a closet if that’s where you work, just as long as it’s a dedicated space.

Check out this article for more details on taking the home office deduction.

Mileage

Do you do any traveling for your online business? Even if you work out of the home you more than likely do some driving to do certain tasks for your company. These could include trips to the post office, a drive across town to grab craft materials, or even a weekend jaunt to attend a craft fair.

This is another deduction online sellers commonly miss, but think about it – one trip by itself may not seem like that big of a deal, but over the course of a year it really packs a punch.

There are two ways to deduct your mileage: “Standard Mileage” or “Actual Expense.” Check out this article for more on the mileage deduction and which type is right for you.

Tax time can be frustrating, but don’t let that frustration leave you poorer than it should! And if you have any more questions about taxes, be sure to check out Outright’s Tax Resource Center.

 Image:  Tyler via Compfight

This guest post was written by Mark Faggiano, Founder of TaxJar, the easiest way for online sellers to simplify tracking and managing their sales taxes.

Unless you completely block out the news these days (who could blame you), you’ve probably heard that Congress is putting the issue of sales tax directly in its crosshairs. Sales tax is now officially on the list of ways to try to reign in the budget deficit.

The proof is called The Marketplace Fairness Act. It’s a recently introduced federal piece of legislation that could be a game-changer for small businesses – especially those who make a living selling online.

Included in the bill is a requirement that online sellers collect and remit sales tax for out-of-state purchases. As you’re probably aware, no federal law is currently in place that requires online sellers to collect and pay sales tax for purchases coming from out-of-state.  So for example, if you’re an online seller located in California and sell your wares to someone in Georgia, you’re probably not collecting and remitting sales taxes to the Peach State. That very scenario is now what’s at stake for the millions that make a living selling online.

States loves this because, in theory, the new law should increase their revenues any small businesses will carry the resulting burden.

The Marketplace Fairness Act could also include a revenue threshold for small businesses before the additional tracking and reporting requirements kick in. What’s more, states may be asked to either provide a simplified sales tax code for out of state purchases, or provide software to make the process simpler for small businesses.

What’s this all mean? It means that something already super confusing like sales tax could get even more complicated in 2013. A new bill could bring more forms, more deadlines, more paperwork, and more compliance issues. That sounds to me like more confusion.

TaxJar is sales tax tool whose mission is to eliminate sales tax pain for small businesses. We’ll be keeping close tabs on any legislative updates and will provide sellers like you with both the information and tools you need to help simplify your sales tax requirements. Less time on sales tax. More time running your business.

Image:  Tracy O via Compfight