QB Winery Solutions

2020 California AB5 and Independent Contractors

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Update 10/21/20

On September 8th, California AB2257 was  passed that expanded the list of workers that are excluded from some aspect of the bill. The “weekend warriors” still do not qualify as Independent Contractors, however these folks will have an easier time qualifying under the new rules. These rules are retroactive to January 1st.

  • Photographers no longer  have a submission limit
  • Content writers no longer have a submission limit
  • Musicians

A summary of AB2257

The bill from the California legislature website

Original Post 1/20/20

On January 1st, 2020 California AB5 or the “gig worker bill” went into effect. This means that your weekend warriors can no longer qualify as independent contractors because IC’s must be a bona fide business. You should have a contract with these folks — and they should have a business license and other clients. Before AB5, it was easier to give a 1099 to these folks, but with the new rules it will be easier to pay them with a paycheck.

For wineries and businesses in California: As you prepare your 2019 1099s, have a close look at the list to see if anyone should be paid as an employee beginning in 2020. And for any new workers, decide up front if they will be an employee or an independent contractor.

For more details, download our guidelines:

CA AB5 Guidelines

 

Office Hours 7-28-20

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Here is the recording for Office Hours from July 28, 2020. You can find the following wine accounting & QuickBooks topics in this month’s recording:

1:00 – Sales receipt procedure and Journal Entries for the movement of the “Bottling Costs Transferred In.”
10:00 – The importance of doing monthly Journal Entries.
16:00 – Finished Goods Inventory.
21:00 – FTE calculation and your PPP forgiveness application.
27:00 – Virtual tastings and wine clubs.
40:00 – 2-Step customer jobs.

Silver Club members, please log in to view the recording

Office Hours 6-30-20

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Here is the recording for Office Hours from June 30, 2020. You can find the following wine accounting & QuickBooks topics in this month’s recording:

1:00 – Processing transactions and payments divided between Square and Venmo in QuickBooks.
16:00 – Searching credits by customer in QuickBooks.
23:00 – Reporting via Weebly, Sqaure and QuickBooks, manual vs. automated reports and mapping via Transaction Pro.

Silver Club members, please log in to view the recording

PPP Loan with Jeanette and Tyler, Part 4

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If you have received your PPP Loan funds and are now freaking out because you are faced with even more questions than you had during the application phase, then check out the latest conversation that Tyler Willis, CPA and I recorded on Monday, April 18th, the same day that the SBA began accepting applications for the second round of the PPP Program.

  • How do I maximize the forgivable portion?
  • The tasting room is still closed, should I pay my crew anyway?
  • What documents do I need to provide to my bank?

 

 

 USCC PPP Program for Independent Contractors

 

 USCC PPP Program for Independent Contractors

 

PPP & EIDL Updates from the News

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If you have submitted an application and haven’t heard from your bank, congratulations you are now in the Black Box Phase. I have collected and curated articles about the Payroll Protection Program to keep you updated. Read on to find out why you are not alone.

4/23/20 The bill to re-fund the PPP program passed Congress today, and is expected to be official at noon on Friday. Hopefully you have more than one application already submitted, because this round of funding will go very quickly.

4/15/20 Here are the long awaited guidelines for the non-employee businesses (still no updates about the LLCs, however)

4/14/20 Are you looking for a bank to submit your application? Here are some places to look

4/13/20 Treasury.gov

  • PPP FAQ 4/13/20 Update with #22 to #25
  • Nothing useful for the small businesses
  • Nothing yet to clarify the Sole Proprietors, LLCs, and Independent Contractors

4/11/20 Treasury.gov

  • PPP FAQ 4/10/20 Update with #19 to #21
  • The 8-week forgiveness period begins with the disbursement of the loan
  • The loan must be disbursed within 10 days of SBA approval
  •   Treasury.gov 4/7/20 FAQs

4/11/20 US Chamber of Commerce Town Hall on 4/10

  • Town Hall meeting moderator from Inc.com said they are trying to provide help “through this ridiculously difficult time”
  • Listen to the 18 min mark
  • No new information about sole proprietors and independent contractors at this time
  • Submit your applications anyway and get in the queue

4/10/20 8:00 AM PDT North Bay Business Journal

  • A banker (with a smallish bank) describes their frustrations

4/10/20 5:30 AM ET Wall St Journal

  • “Very few business owners have successfully gotten the money”
  • The SBA loan portal is inadequate: “some banks [are] inputting borrower information manually” into the SBA loan portal which takes 25 to 75 minutes per application. The system crashes, and there was along outage last Tuesday.
  • As of Thursday, 550,000 loans worth $141 billion have been approved, but only a small portion has been disbursed to businesses
  • The EIDL program has had 4 million businesses apply, totaling $383 billion, but only $17 billion was allocated by Congress
  • Banks are reluctant to disburse funds because of the confusion over the format of the promissory note. This applies to “all but a handful of banks”

4/10/20 9:59 AM ET Forbes

  • 70% of the 30 million small businesses in the US have applied to the PPP
  • A little over 50% of the small businesses have applied for the EIDL but just 4% have been approved

4/10/20 7:52 am CBS News

  • Interview with owners of a micro-brewery in Maine with production and tasting room who got funded with PPP funds
  • Cautionary tale: Their loan was approved April 6th (the Monday after the rollout) but the bank was forced by the SBA to close all approved loans within 5 days. Unfortunately most of their staff works in the tasting room, which is still closed.
  • The owners had hoped to pick the 8 weeks after the tasting room opened. So most of the funds will not be forgiven.

  • Then we were required to close immediately. If things stay the way they are, we anticipate we will be eligible for very little forgiveness — if any. And that’s pretty upsetting….Before this crisis, we had about 25 people working at Rising Tide. We have laid off all but four of our employees. They are on furlough and we hope to hire them back, but it wouldn’t make sense for us to bring them back at this point because our operations are so dramatically curtailed

 

Office Hours 4-16-20

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Here is the recording for Office Hours today. You can find the following wine accounting & QuickBooks topics in this month’s recording:

  1. One-step, Two-step Bottling (3 minute mark)
  2. Online bill pay – QuickBooks Online Vs QuickBooks Desktop (9 minute mark)
  3. QBox Plus – securing a file to specific people & sharing files (10 minute mark)
  4. Bill.com for bill pay (12 minute mark)
  5. Will the PPP be increased? (15 minute mark)
  6. Grapes bills – How do they come out of your checking account (21 minute mark)

 

Silver Club members, please log in to view the recording

Office Hours 4-14-20

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Here is the recording for Office Hours today. You can find the following wine accounting & QuickBooks topics in this month’s recording:

  1. Virtual tastings – How to turn your events to an online environment (3 minute mark)
  2. PPP & the black box (12 minute mark)
  3. Websites that allow you to submit your PPP application (16 minute mark)
  4. Verification phase of the PPP & medical payments (23 minute mark)
  5. Paypal as a payment processor in addition to Square (30 minute mark)
  6. Costing book & Bottle Runs (32 minute mark)
  7. Cash Flow projections, discounted wines & club runs (38 minute mark)

 

Silver Club members, please log in to view the recording

SIP Week 4 – What next for Your Winery Business?

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The shock of closing the tasting rooms, sheltering in place, and learning how to home-school your children should have subsided a bit. You have settled into a routine of baking, playing board games, and coordinating your mask with your outfit.

But you have a winery business to run. If you still don’t have the heart to tackle updating that cash flow projection ( which is still a top priority task), here are 2 suggestions for what to do while waiting for news about your PPP and EIDL applications.

Preparing your business for a post-pandemic world by Harvard Business Review

This has a nice, one page grid to help you organize your thoughts.

HBR planning grid

 

Where to start when you don’t know where to start by Predictable Success

8 minute video by Les McKeown, founder of Predicable Success (gotta love his Irish brogue … is he really filming in his bathroom?). Don’t panic when he first shows you his chart, because he whittles it down to one task for you to focus on. This is an area that the small wineries have an advantage and a strength compared to larger wineries … if they don’t get bogged down in whitewater.

The Crush

Your first step to running a profitable winery and crushing your business goals.