What's an asset? Assets are what a business owns, or if you're paying for it, then you would have a liability to go along with it, but that's for another discussion. So assets, we're talking about assets and loan balances. If you own something that you can sell, it's an asset. Every business has them, we have them as people, too, in our personal lives.
Examples: I have a spray tanning business. So, I have tanning types of equipment, I have a POS system, I have a lobby with chairs for my guests, etc. We also have an HVAC business. So, assets there would look like office equipment, computers, copiers, office supplies, and any inventory we may have on hand for doing repairs, service, selling, installing, or anything like that. Our property is now owned by our Realty LLC, and it is also an asset. So you get the picture. Your accountant needs a list of these items annually. What will happen is it'll be a list and it'll just continue to grow. It's not like you're gonna give them a new list each year that you're going to add to that list or maybe you will just tell them the items – it just kind of depends on your relationship with your account and how they ask you for it.
As your business grows, you're gonna acquire more assets, and you'll sell some, and some are even thrown out because they broke or exceeded their useful life. Of course, those items would need to be removed from your asset list.
The next step is loan balances. This one is pretty simple information, but sometimes it is difficult to get or at least it was for me. A lot of the time, if you have a loan, for example, we purchased our building and property four years into our business. Every year, I had to contact the mortgage holder and ask them what was the balance of my loan as of December 31, and how much interest I had paid for that year. When we purchased our building, we were still a sole proprietor under my name. My husband and I had to purchase our property in our personal names. As time went by, and then we incorporated our business, then years later, we established the LLC, and transferred the business into the LLC. Now, that's a lot more detail than probably what you want to know or what you need to know at this time, but just kind of giving you a little bit of information about how it progresses as you grow. Like I said, I had asked that every year, so I put it on my calendar to contact them every January, with their telephone number to customer service, and the options I needed to choose in order to be able to get to where I needed to go. And then I could give that information to my accountant, and then they love me. So just like last week, they were like, “You're amazing, Candice!” I'm like, “I know, I know. I'm just so freaking amazing!” It's insane.
