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Author: Daniel S. Gordon

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Daniel S. Gordon

Gordon is a New Jersey-based CPA and owner of Turfbooks, an accounting firm that caters to land care professionals throughout the U.S. Reach him at dan@turfbooks.com.

Guest Post: Never mind new OT regs, are you classifying employees correctly?

The Department of Labor’s (DOL) new overtime rule, scheduled to go into effect Dec. 1, will hurt, but I don’t think it profoundly changes the way landscape companies do business, unless you’re out of compliance with the current DOL regulations. In working with hundreds of small business owners in the landscape and pest control industries, […]

Business Basics: Create a company box score

With information coming at us from every direction, it’s difficult to digest it all and use it to grow our businesses. As the facilitator of several industry peer groups, I’ve noticed the same topic comes up repeatedly at our meetings: how to develop the most useful dashboard to run our companies. A dashboard organizes key […]

Photo: istock.com/Stephan Zabel

Business Basics: Principles of tax depreciation

Many tax deductions were made permanent and several were extended for two or more years as part of the 2016 omnibus budget bill signed into law late last year. For landscape professionals, the most critical parts of the tax extender law are the Section 179 expensing and the bonus depreciation provision. The big change this time […]

Web Extra: Taxes and retirement planning

In addition to other tax-minimizing strategies, don’t forget about your 401(k). The tax savings associated with maxing out your retirement plan for 2015 is $18,000. For a taxpayer in the 25 percent tax bracket, that equals a tax savings of $4,500. The catch-up contribution limitation for individuals age 50 and older is $6,000. That translates […]

Business Basics: Minimizing your taxes now

While tax prep season doesn’t begin for many people until late January, now is the time to reduce your 2015 tax; waiting until 2016 is really just reacting. There’s no significant increase in marginal rates on the horizon, which makes planning easier. But hold on. The section 179 accelerated write-off for certain assets has again […]

Adhere to a budget

How do you keep score in your business? How do you know if you’re winning or losing? Is it money in the bank? Profits? Growth? It’s all of that. Budgeting is key to your operational and financial plan, but how do you formulate a common-sense budget that’s useful and simple to understand and prepare? Start […]

Charts. Photo illustration: iStock.com/Tuomas Kujansuu

6 tips for organizing your finances

As a busy owner or manager of a landscape or lawn care firm, you have to juggle many functions. Unless you have someone on staff who has the skills to manage the finance and accounting piece, this function may be a source of frustration. The key is to stay organized. The following are six important […]

A/R: The keys to the kingdom

Cash is king, and healthy accounts receivable (A/R) makes for a sustainable kingdom that promotes an environment of profitability and growth. A business that doesn’t have control of its A/R usually will have poor cash flow and trouble meeting its expenses in a timely fashion. It’s often also a sign there are other financial issues […]

Featured Photo Illustration: iStock.com/Barcin

Finances for the ‘small’ operator

A reader recently asked us to cover the topic of finances for the “smaller” operator with just a few employees and less than $250,000 in annual revenue. I thought about it and recognized successful finances have nothing to do with size but with organization and discipline. Sound financial management knows no size. Here are the […]

Peer groups: Hang with the right crowd

Editor’s note: This article is excerpted from “Three Cheers for Peer Groups,” which ran in Pest Management Professional’s 2015 Business Planner. As the saying goes, it’s lonely at the top. As a lawn care or pest management professional, employees, customers, bankers and other interested parties expect you to know all the answers. Ever feel like […]

Be a tax master

Jan. 1 marked the end of a popular tax reduction tool, the Section 179 deduction, which expired under the American Tax Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA). The Section 179 deduction allowed small businesses to expense some assets in the year of purchase, rather than having to depreciate the purchase over its useful life. Those assets […]

Web Extra: Student becomes the teacher

On March 7, 2013, our son Matt — then a freshman in college with aspirations of following in my footsteps and becoming an accountant — was diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma. As parents, we try to teach our children to do the right thing, solve problems and succeed in life. In this case, our […]

Why gross margins matter

In retail, gross margin is an easily calculated number. It’s the difference between how much you purchase a product for and how much you sell the product for, stated as a percentage. Example: You sell a widget you purchased for $60 for $100. Your gross profit is $40 ($100-$60), and your gross margin is 40 […]

What if I get audited?

All land care professionals need to maintain accurate financial records. The most obvious reasons for doing so is to assess the results of operations against past periods, analyze current budgets or to formulate future projections. Moreover, for ownership and management, this is an internal need to monitor and improve the business. Yet there’s an external […]

Deduct T&E expenses right

Avoid exposing your company to an audit. Is the cost of today’s activities tax deductible?” That’s the question one of my land care clients recently asked me at a fancy dinner after a Green Industry golf outing. Having just been through a tax audit for another client where the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) auditor disallowed […]

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