Meet Raven. She’s my new office mate. Until this winter Raven had always been an outdoor dog, living the high life in her oversized dog house and sharing a large enclosed run with her Rhodesian Ridgeback pal, Kodi. Unfortunately Kodi passed away this summer so Raven has been a little lonely. As the weather started getting cooler and the snow started piling up by the foot, Raven has casually made her way into the house and deemed herself my sidekick. Her two favorite places to sleep all day are by my feet under my desk or right in the middle of my office (as shown above).

Raven has been a great influence – she really does help me stay on task more. I’m less hesitant to get up in the middle of something for fear of disturbing her nap!

So, what have I been working on? Let me warn you – it’s all over the board.

I recently upgraded my system to Windows 7. So far so good – nothing really earth shattering new, but it did give me the opportunity to clean off my desktop, reorganize all my bookmarks and start the year fresh. Before I did the Windows 7 upgrade I backed up all my files to Carbonite (I initially tried the free Carbonite Online Backup – no credit card required – and almost immediately upgraded to the paid version – much cheaper than a second hard drive), synced my bookmarks to Xmarks (just in case I wanted them back) and wiped the screen down with the very cute little duck (Aroma Home Screen Wipe – too cute) that is perched on top of my monitor.

Project wise I have a few web design projects in the works – hopefully I will be sharing a few of them here in the next week or so.  I’ve been playing with the new Genesis series of themes from Brian Gardner and the latest Headway release from Grant Griffiths. I am also getting ready to do some social media consulting for a client with a really important iPhone app (more on that later).

I am having fun field testing the Palm Pre Plus phone (which I used to take these photos – nice quality coming from a phone!) for Verizon. You can read my initial thoughts on the “Mom Palm” and stay tuned because I have another write up and a giveaway coming up as part of the campaign.

While I don’t really like the term “Mom Blogger,” I have been doing some writing in that department. You can find me at Snackpicks.com as part of their team of Mom Experts and recently the youth sports social networking site, WePlay, featured one of my articles from SportsGirlsPlay.com titled “Getting Past I Quit.”

And finally I have been keeping up with all of my own sites, from all the new guests on the Essential Tools series to tons of new printable activities and party ideas, girls sports insight and what’s for dinner!

Whew! I think I might just need a nap.

End of Year Bookkeeping Checklist:

1.Record Transactions: Make sure you’ve recorded all the transactions from your credit cards, bank accounts and receipts. And don’t forget to check your online accounts, like PayPal, eBay and Freshbooks. Record every expense and dollar received for your business, no matter how insignificant or questionable.  It’s better to have everything written down and recorded so you’ll be able to make the most from deductions—because if you don’t record it, it doesn’t exist.

2.Double Check: Make sure you aren’t missing any income or expense transactions—it’s worth it to take the time to double check. Make sure you have a digital copy of receipts from any online transactions, whether they’re sales or outsourcing work to contractors or websites, so you have a record of all your transactions.

3.Proper Categorization: Here’s where it gets a bit tricky, but well worth the time in the end. Make sure all of your income and expenses have been properly categorized. Categorizing your income (for the most part all “Sales”) is not nearly as critical as those deductible expenses.  The Schedule C categories can be confusing but they make the difference; mileage under “Car and Truck Expenses” is deductible while “Other Expenses” are not.  Web services such as Outright.com can do most of the categorization for you; but when in doubt, ask a professional or hire a bookkeeper.

4.Don’t Forget Mileage: Any work-related travel can count towards deductions. Make sure you’ve recorded all the time you’ve spent in the car going to and from work-related sites—you can deduct $0.55 per mile for these trips! Your daily commute doesn’t qualify but regardless, for many, the deduction adds up to thousands.

5.Complete Your W-9’s: To properly file a 1099 for any contract or freelance work you hired, you must have accurate taxpayer identification, in the form of an IRS form W-9. Now is the time to request the W-9 form from your contractors as 1099’s are due January 31.

6. Pay Your Estimated Taxes: To avoid penalties when taxes are due on April 15^th, be sure you’ve paid enough in estimated taxes for the year. Final federal tax payments are due by January 15^th. The fourth installment of your 2009 estimated taxes should bring you up to at least 90% of what your final total taxes are for the year. If that’s still too confusing, pay the same amount as you actually owed from last year. Here’s how: Work with the IRS.

7. Triple Check Profit and Loss: Finally you should look at your profit and loss statement for the entire year.  If you can’t easily get one from your bookkeeping software, find another.  Do the numbers seem reasonable compared to how your income and expense totaled in prior years?   Yes, we’re effectively triple checking your income and those expenses.  Search your pockets for receipts, don’t neglect that credit card that was canceled because creditors are so stingy, and keep in mind that payment from your brother for some consulting.

Outright.com is the free online platform that manages all business finances, tracks income and expenses, and automates tax preparation. The company tracks over $1B in income from self-employed and micro-business transactions. They’re kicking off tax-time with their new W-9 automation to help get businesses organized for the months ahead. Visit them at www.outright.com to make sure you’re ahead of the game and not scrambling with important deadlines, looming as soon as January 31!

If you’re reading this, then you’re likely already among the most fortunate group of people who work from home. It’s a great life, isn’t it? You can work when you want, take breaks when you want, rearrange your schedule so you can enjoy the things that matter in life when they happen. When you telecommute, you can plan work around your life, rather than the other way around.

Even with all the advantages, there are still limits to a telecommuter’s freedom. It’s just as tough to take a day off as it is in an office — and if you update a daily blog with timely material it might be even tougher (says the guy who hasn’t taken a full vacation in almost four years). There are yet other instances where you can’t go somewhere — possibly your child’s baseball game — because you have work which needs doing. There are many other scenarios, but it all comes down to one factor: your home office is immobile.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. There are ways to take your home office on the road: a day trip to the city, to a youth sporting event, heck, even to the coffee shop on the corner for a change of scenery. The issue with this kind of mobility, for the most part, is finding an Internet connection. In this post I’ll go over three ways you can pack up your office and bring it anywhere you want.

Mobile broadband with laptop modem

If you’re one of the many telecommuters who uses a laptop as your primary machine, you’re in luck. Over the past few years cellular carriers have introduced mobile broadband modems. These plug right into your laptop, usually through a USB port, and pick up signal anywhere you can get 3G cellular service. This gives you the freedom to travel and still do work.

The biggest advantage of mobile broadband, as stated above, is the freedom to go anywhere you can get 3G cellular coverage. Traveling by train? Just plug in your modem and you’re free to surf and work. At your kid’s soccer game? Even though you surely don’t want to have your head in a laptop, it’s better than not being there at all. Best of all, mobile broadband service is available from all four major cellular providers — Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile — and you can just add it to your existing service.

There are downsides, of course. The price is foremost: $60 per month. That’s a lot to add to a bill, especially at a time when many are looking to cut costs. The best way to determine if the cost is worth it to you is to determine how much your time is worth. How much do you earn per hour? How much more could you earn per hour if you could work while on the road? If it works out, you might want to consider adding this plan to your cellular bill.

The other major disadvantage is usage level. The major carriers impose a 5GB limit each month. This typically is not nearly enough for the typical Web worker, what with downloading images, streaming video, and uploading data of all kinds. It should suffice for the times you are working on the road, but by no means is it a substitute for your current home broadband plan.

Speaking of home broadband, understand that mobile broadband is not faster than most home connections. It ranges from 800 Kbps to 1,500 Kbps, with most services hovering around 1,000. This is a bit slower than DSL, and considerably slower than cable. It’s not about speed, per se. It’s about convenience.

Turn your BlackBerry into a workstation

More and more Web workers are turning to BlackBerry devices. This helps them keep up with email even when they’re not at the computer. Personally, I like it for the peace of mind it brings. Beyond the best email system in the biz, the BlackBerry is a powerful device which can perform a number of functions. Among them: allowing you to leave your home office while continuing to work.

While your BlackBerry alone can perform basic functions like Web surfing (and with new mobile Web browsers, that’s becoming even easier), but it also has word processing capabilities. In fact, with the swath of software available for BlackBerry, you can do most anything with the device. All you need is a little ingenuity.

For instance, check out this post on how to turn your BlackBerry into a virtual workstation. It goes over all the hardware and software that will allow you to do so — including a Bluetooth keyboard which will save your thumbs some agony.

The advantage here for current BlackBerry users is that beyond the one-time cost of the software and hardware, this won’t be any more expensive than your normal monthly plan. You might not get all the functionality you get on your laptop, but it’s more than enough to get by.

Get a netbook

Netbooks are all the craze these days. For those unfamiliar, they’re the tiny laptops you might see in your local coffee shop or on the train. They’re geared mostly towards Internet usage, but can also handle low-level tasks like word processing. Perfect for the work at home type.

Netbooks work the same as mobile broadband, so there’s no need to go over service again. The major advantage they have over laptops is size. While laptops, even the smallest ones like my Macbook, require a carrying case of some sort, Netbooks will fit in tiny bags and backpacks. They’re lightweight, too, which makes them easier to tote around.

The upside to netbooks: they’re becoming incredibly cheap. This isn’t because of the decreasing cost of technology, though. Instead, they’re subsidized by cellular carriers, just like cell phones. In exchange for signing a two-year agreement you can get a netbook for under $100 — and sometimes even virtually free. That’s the trade-off. You get a cheap machine, but two years is a long commitment, especially for a service that costs $60 per month.

While telecommuters already enjoy an incredible level of freedom, there’s still more for the taking. So what will it be? Will you continue to tie yourself down to your desk? Or will you decide to take advantage of modern technology and get out there?

Joe Pawlikowski is the editor of Wireless Internet Reviews, a site which provides information and news on wireless Internet services.

When I look at the past year, I can see why. I have designed over 30 new websites (99% WordPress), nutured 4-6 blogs at any given time and 4 of them have expereienced more than 50% growth over the past year, done some consulting, and managed my very busy family life. I am being to feel slightly overwhelmed and out of balance. Over the next few months I am going to be working on streamlining processes, rearranging priorities, and preparing for the the summer months when my three kids are home on summer break.

As a freelancer do you ever feel overwhelmed, burned out or discouraged? Inspired by an article from Freelance Switch which I followed via Twitter this morning, I have collected a list of additional articles dealing with burnout and freelancing.

• 25 Stress Relief Tips for the Overworked Freelancer
• 27 Secrets to Avoid Internet Burnout
• Avoiding Freelance Burnout
• How to Deal with Freelance Burnout
• How to Avoid Freelance Burnout
• How do you Deal with Burnout?

I was amazed. I was paying someone a lot of money to do exactly what I had done myself the previous years. He asked all the same questions the tax software did and I gave him all the same answers. He even complimented me on how organized I was! Right there is the secret! Get organized, know what you can deduct, and you may not really need that accountant.

The next tax season I fired him and went back to doing things my way. After almost 13 years of working for myself, from home as a freelancer, I have learned a few things.

1. GET ORGANIZED!

It doesn’t matter what system you use – find what works for you and stick with it! I am a big believer in the one basket method of filing. I store all my receipts and statements for the year in one big basket and then I designate a weekend in February and go through the entire thing – tossing what I don’t need, filing what I do need and entering tax related info into my almighty spreadsheet.

I now do all my invoicing to clients through FreshBooks. I can print out all the reports I need for the year very quickly and I know I am not missing anything. Additionally, FreshBooks now lets you track your time and expenses, making it even easier to grab the numbers you need at the end of the year.

I pay as many expenses as I can for my business using PayPal or one single business credit card for easy reference and documentation.

Once I have gathered all my numbers, I drop them into a spreadsheet with income, deductions by category and save it for easy reference as I go through the data entry process in the tax software. It was a pain to set up the first year, but easy after that.

2. KNOW WHAT YOU CAN DEDUCT

When you first start doing freelance, blogging or web work in general, it can be tricky to decide what you can deduct and what you can’t. The best rule of thumb to follow is this – if you bought in order to help you do your job, then you should be able to deduct it.

Some things you may have overlooked include:

• Internet access fees (ISP, cable, etc)
• Web hosting fees (if you have a web site you can deduct the cost of your domain name, hosting and any related fees)
• Fees for productivity tools such as FreshBooks, BaseCamp or HighRise, premium services you use (such as pMetrics for your web statistics)
• Software costs – any software you purchase for your business, including your tax preparation software, can be deducted
• Subscriptions to professional journals, premium user/niche forums, or similar services
• Books or e-books you purchased to help you learn new skills or gain new insight on your niche
• Fees for art (from iStockPhoto or similar) you may need for your website
• Fees for premium WordPress themes, templates or custom design work
• Advertising – purchase of business cards, banner ads, PPC, Facebook ads, etc
• Any business related bank or PayPal fees
• Credit card interest on business purchases
• You CAN NOT deduct the cost of your primary phone line to your home, however you may deduct the cost of your cell phone and its monthly fees and any VOIP or Skype fees you may have
• Office supplies – from pens, notebooks, paper and everything in between – if you use it in your office for your business, you can deduct the cost of it
• Repair fees – if your business laptop, computer, printer etc need to be repaired or replaced, you can deduct it
• Legal and professional fees – if you pay a bookkeeper, accountant, seek legal counsel for your business or anything along those lines, you should be able to deduct it
• Childcare – if you have kids and pay for childcare, private preschool, or similar while you are working, it is a deductible expense.
• If you have a dedicated space that you call your office (i.e. it has doors and no Legos or crayons in it), you can do the home office deduction. Be careful with this one – especially if you can not prove that it is used ONLY for your office.
• Meals & travel – again, use common sense. If you meet a friend for coffee or dinner and discuss business, document and deduct. Same goes for travel to work related conferences, meetings, and such.

3. DON’T PROCRASTINATE

Don’t wait for the last minute to get your taxes done! Get them started in plenty of time so that if you need additional guidance you can get it. If you do wait until the last minute (or even if you don’t), you might want to know that Amazon sells Turbo Tax as a software download which will save time and money.

Additionally, Intuit, the makers of TurboTax are giving away $300K in small business grants and some more cool stuff. You can get all the details at Sparkplugging.com.

Remember, I am not an accountant or tax professional, so be sure to do your research and use common sense when filing your taxes, but hopefully this article has helped you identify ways to make tax time less stressful and deductions you may have overlooked.

Photos: StockXchng

Social media is hot and its here to stay! One of the biggest trends in web design right now is adding icons or buttons for all the various social media sites you use to your web site to make it one step easier for friends, customers and potential customers to connect with YOU. So where do the designers find all these cool icons? They are all over the web and many are free, but you have to go looking for them.

Fellow designer Randa Clay and I got tired of looking high and low for the best social media icons and decided to create a single hub where you can find the best, free social media icons, buttons and graphics to use at your site. We would like to introduce you to our new website, mysocialbuttons.com, a one-stop resource for all the coolest social networking buttons you can use to let the world know where and how to connect with you or your company online.

All of the buttons on the site at the moment are free. Yep, free. You can help yourself. We just ask that you save the buttons you want to your computer first before you add them to your site or your clients’ sites.

And, if you really want to show of your social prowess, check out some of the t-shirts, mugs, mousepads and other goodies we have created to go with the social movement. They make great gifts, awesome conference schwag, and they are perfect for use as doorprizes or ice breakers at corporate training sessions.

Anyhow, the site is still in beta, but we just can’t keep it to ourselves any longer! Please check it out, let us know what you think, bookmark it, share a link with your friends on Facebook, give it a Tweet, or love it anyway you see fit!!

In addition to wrapping up another year of business tasks, I will be taking time to look back at this year and see what worked, what didn’t, what I enjoyed working on, and what I didn’t, and using that insight, I will start to map out my goals and priorities for 2009.

I do know that I will be bringing my business site and this site together as one site with a whole new look and feel. The new site will contain my portfolio, details on the types of projects I can be hired for, more tips and insights into web working, design, and marketing, and I am working on some free tools to add to it as well.

Enjoy your holidays! Spend lots of time with loved ones and friends – eat, drink and be merry. And if you have to work on wrapping up your year in business, too, tie a big red bow on it – it’s more fun that way.

I live about 20 minutes from civilization in any direction so its not like there is a wi-fi hot spot on every corner. The local library was my first choice but they are on the same pipeline as our house and are also without connectivity today. Starbucks and Panera are always safe second choices. I prefer Panera’s food, work space and location so it won out today.

If you work from home, do you have a back up office location? You should! Whether it is the local library or a local cafe, you should identify a handful of back up office locations so you can keep your workflow going when you can not work from your home office.

Another option is to get a wireless air card through your wireless provider. While we do have one, it doesn’t do me much good when my husband has it with him while he travels. I could pick up a second one, but am have a hard time justifying the expense if I am not using it all the time.

Not sure if there is a wi-fi hotspot near by? Try looking one up at JiWire where they have listings for over 200,000 wi-fi locations in more than 135 countries.

Do you have a home office plan B?  

I have been working as a freelancer for 11 years and while I would not trade it for the world, there are plenty of challenges you face when you are both the boss and the worker bee. How to be a Rockstar Freelancer outlines the steps to take, things to keep in mind, and pitfalls to avoid as you build your brand and your business.

Here are five of my favorite sites to visit when I am looking for advice, forms, and facts:

Freelance Switch

Apart from the fact that Freelance Switch is one of the best-looking sites out there, it is also jam-packed with essential information that freelancers need. There is a job board, freelance rate calculator, and a forum for working through ideas, getting advice and sharing information. The Freelance Switch blog also features some of the most useful tips for freelancers, such as:

• 101 Ideas to Get More Freelance Work and Generate New Client Leads
• Top 10 Signs That You May Be Charging Too Little
• 10 Biggest Mistakes That Freelancers Make and How to Avoid Them

AllBusiness

AllBusiness is a magazine style site with a combination of industry specific advice, journals, business blogs, forms, business directory, and loads of information. The site can be a little overwhelming because there is so much there, but if you have an idea of what you are looking for, a quick search will most likely get you going in the right direction.

StartupNation

StartupNation is another magazine style site that is primarily for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs. In addition to resources, articles, blogs and plenty of how-tos, StartupNation has a forum for discussing issues that entrepreneurs deal with daily. I particularly like the list of 10 Steps to Open for Business.

Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneur magazine did a really nice job combining the strength of their traditional print magazine with the new media of blogs, video, and two way conversation in their online site. If you are looking for business ideas Entrepreneur 0ffers small business guides such as 25 Businesses You Can Start and Run From Home and 10 Free Starting a Business Books.

Inside Small Business

Inside Small Business is the blog and resource site for Logoworks. Between the blog and the newsletter there are some really helpful articles, but the most useful part of the site is by far the 20+ free business forms that you can download.