What do you do when the tax man calls? Considering previous experience I will tell you that you had better have your stuff together if you plan on making it through and audit slightly unscathed. Audits can be very intimidating and scary for most of us. If you think that the big scale guy is intimidating try dealing with the Canada Revenue Agency or the Internal Revenue Service. That is scary on a whole level above the rest. They don’t understand things like my computer crashed last month that was holding all the company records, or that you didn’t track your mileage to the safety meetings because you forgot. When we went through the audit for our business I was amazed at the information I was asked to provide. They didn’t want to know about the big things like the income and expenses from major clients, they wanted to know why the coffee shop meal was being written off. The expenses that most of us overlook as they are only a few dollars were the focus of their investigation. Now that we have successfully made it through the audit process with just a minor adjustment I wonder how many people are not ready for an audit.

Audits do two things for your business, you either begin to run a tighter ship or you decide this isn’t for you and close up shop. For those who decided against getting professional help for their business may fall into the latter because the process is very intimidating to people not in that line of work. We did have a computer crash in one of our years that has created a file that holds some serious financial data and it is only by luck that was not the period that the CRA wanted to look at. That audit made us run better which according to my accountant is the educational component that the CRA tries to do with the clients it audits. They may need to work on their delivery skills a little. They say they use it to educate companies on the proper way to account for their business, that may be true but I think there are better ways to do that.

So I ask you again, would your business pass an audit if you were selected for one? Many of us business owners especially the smaller ones don’t feel they are on the radar for being audited. That is wrong, ask any small business that was selected for audit recently. The best way to pass the audit is to get your ducks in a row now before you are selected because once selected you won’t be able to make things up. Get an accountant make sure your bookkeeping is being done properly. The biggest thing is to think like a business owner and that means getting serious about running your business. If you don’t I can tell you that you will be out of business before you know it.

About the Author

Bruce Outridge is a business and leadership consultant for the transportation industry. He helps Owner Operators operate successful businesses. For more information or to learn about the OS Program for your business visit his website at http://www.outridgeenterprises.ca

If you are like most, this time of year is slow for many of us in business except those in financial services or health and wellness. You may even see this in trucking depending on the amount of freight and quality of contracts that companies have on board. As an Owner Operator however it can be frustrating if the miles aren’t there at this time, so how do you keep yourself motivated to keep moving forward. There are a number of ways to work with your business to help make it better for the future.

1) The first thing you should do is evaluate the carrier you’re with to make sure they have enough freight. Don’t just evaluate your findings on one or two periods but look over one to two years and see if they always get slow in certain periods or if they generally have problems getting you miles. If the problem is miles and nothing has changed this year to improve that then you may want to look at another operation.

Look at your own operation are you operating as efficiently as you should be? Could you be managing your business better, increasing your cash flow, or managing expenses better. Many times even little things like improving your bookkeeping and organizing your operation can help you find overlooked items that may be costing you money.
Match your statements from the carrier with those of your business to make sure you have been paid for money and work that has been done. Too many times I have seen owner operators that don’t look or keep track of items on their statements and don’t know if they have been paid for work completed or not. Many times they are leaving money on the table that isn’t being accounted for in their operation.
Evaluate your fuel consumption, get out all your statements from your fuel payments, take out your logbooks and sit down and figure out how many miles you are getting to the gallon with your truck, hopefully you are doing this on an ongoing basis but if not you may find that it is time to upgrade your truck to increase your fuel mileage. One or two cents a mile can be a big increase in revenue for your business.
Increase your time management, look at how many times you have been late, your delivery schedule, are you sitting more than running and so on. Time management is crucial to any operation and that is the same for owner operators. If arriving at a customer late puts you at the bottom of the list for a return load then you may be costing yourself more than your making.

These aren’t all the ways to increase profits in your business but they are areas that cost you much money if not looked over on a regular basis. The smart owner operator is the one that makes money leaving the rest sitting in traffic.

About the Author
Bruce Outridge is a transportation consultant and author of the book “Running By The Mile” among others. For more information visit outridgeenterprises.ca