Category Archives: Tips

NSAC Offers Employee Retention Credit (ERC) Webinar Aug 23

Employee Retention Credits (ERC) (nsacoop.org)

My colleagues at the National Society of Accountants for Cooperatives are offering a 75-minute webinar on Tuesday, August 23 to discuss the requirements and pitfalls in claiming Employee Retention Credits (ERC). The cost is free to members and $56 to non-members.

The ERC has been in the news quite a bit lately due to aggressive tactics by non-CPA firms claiming to be able to apply for these credits on behalf of business owners. (We’ll have an upcoming blog covering that topic.) However, the rules regarding whether or not a business qualifies are complex, and best performed by a knowledgeable professional.

During this webinar, the panelists will provide an overview of the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) and how to qualify for ERC including:

• Partial and full shutdowns as they apply to the ERC
• What constitutes “gross receipts”
• Safe Harbors
• Rules for Large Employers
• Unsettled matters and how the IRS is examining ERC claims

Participants are encouraged to submit questions in advance at info@nsacoop.org and during the session.

If you are an accountant or bookkeeper calculating these credits for your clients, or a business owner considering a DIY approach, please make sure you are thorough about obtaining education and resources before submitting anything to the IRS. You can expect their enforcement division to ramp up audits in the next few years.

Employee Retention Credits (ERC) (nsacoop.org)


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

How To Raise Capital For Your Small Business Start-Up — FREE Webinar 8/10/22

This excellent series of free webinars designed to help small business owners succeed in a challenging world — offered by the Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) — is back with a can’t-miss Business Education Workshop Webinar on Wednesday, August 10th at 3 pm Central. All their webinars are free and open to the public, and many are offered online, which means that anyone can attend — they’re not restricted to Chicago small business owners.

I wanted to highlight this upcoming session in particular; it’s part of the SCORE Chicago Funding Webinar Series. In case you’re unfamiliar with SCORE (the Service Corps Of Retired Executives), it’s an amazing resource funded in part by the U.S. Small Business Administration, offering education, mentorship, and tools to help people start, develop, and grow businesses. The Chicago Chapter is particularly robust and offers many opportunities for training, as well as a free suite of templates — such as business planning and financial projections.

Both SCORE and BACP offer many sessions on raising capital, which you can watch on the Chicago BACP YouTube Channel, or SCORE’s Online Webinar Library.

This webinar should be of special interest to our readers, as it’s an interview with two small business owners who will walk through the experience that they had working with SCORE to access capital through different methods of financing, in different rounds throughout the stages of their business growth. For me, hearing “how we did it” from other small business owners is not only educational, but inspiring, and I hope this upcoming webinar will offer you both angles.

Wednesday, 8/10 Webinar at 3:00 PM
How We Did It: Raising Capital for Your Business
Presented by Score Chicago
(Part of a Score Chicago Funding Webinar Series)

In this webinar, you will learn how two Chicago entrepreneurs, former SCORE Chicago clients, and founders of Tiesta Tea Dan Klein and Patrick Tannous raised 4 rounds of financing totaling over $8 million. Tiesta Tea has also used many different methods of funding including friends/family, factoring, purchase order (PO) financing, SBA loans, Angel Investors, and VC funding. Dan and Patrick will share their experiences raising capital during the different growth stages of their business.

Tiesta Tea is a company that used SCORE Chicago to get started in 2010. Dan and Patrick know first-hand how important mentorship is for aspiring entrepreneurs and established businesses seeking mentoring from SCORE to accelerate the growth and success of their businesses. The founders, Dan Klein and Patrick Tannous, started with nothing but an idea to sell tea, and fast-forward 10 years, they have sold over $54MM of their product. They sell their teas in thousands of retail stores, including Walmart, Jewel, Mariano’s, Amazon, Costco and many more.

Register for the 8/10 Webinar

Please email BACPoutreach@cityofchicago.org with any webinar questions.

Visit BACP’s YouTube for all webinars.

BACP Entrepreneur Certificate Program

The Chicago Department of Business Affairs & Consumer Protection (BACP) Entrepreneur Certificate Program is a free and optional program available to attendees of the free BACP business education workshop and webinar series.

For program details (enrollment, requirements, contact information, etc.) and to enroll go to Entrepreneur Certificate Program.


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Illinois Small Businesses: Upcoming Aug 5-14 Sales Tax “Holiday” Is Anything But One

My inbox on June 27th.

On June 27th I woke to find dozens of notifications from MyTax Illinois in my email inbox — one for each and every client of ours who files sales taxes.

Just in case you got one or more of these yourself and haven’t logged in to check it out yet, here’s what it looks like —

It doesn’t give you much to go on — just a sort of “hey we saw you’re registered to file sales taxes, so you should read these four bulletins which may or may not apply and you’re unlikely to understand anyway” note.

But, if you dig through the bulletins you’ll find two in particular that could be important to a small business owner. One of them I covered in a recent blog post — Illinois Grocery Sales Tax Reduced by 1% For The Next 12 Months — it’s only likely to apply if you sell groceries that qualify for the low-tax food rate.

The other — FY 2022-24 State Sales Tax Holiday August 5, 2022, through August 14, 2022 (illinois.gov) — which I’ll discuss here, is a notice basically saying that all retailers have to reduce their sales tax rate on certain clothing and supplies by 5 percentage points for a 10-day (Aug 5-14) period, to give consumers a break during back-to-school time.

If you want to skip my rant and go to the section on what a small business owner should do next, scroll down to the next line in bold.

While I’m super-supportive about giving working families a break on prices — this is a terrible way to do it! It costs small businesses more in accounting and bookkeeping work than it could possibly save anyone.

It requires a small business owner — already overworked and without sufficient staff, and having in most cases barely survived the pandemic and still scraping to get by — to paw through every item in their Point of Sale system and change sales tax on an item-by-item basis. It’s hard enough to change sales tax amounts on a department-by-department basis… but item-by-item? Honestly, it will cost them so much more to figure this out than anyone will ever save on this “holiday”. And worse are the folks who don’t keep inventory in an automated system. They are stabbing in the dark and have no way to implement it at all. I just have to hope they don’t get audited by IDOR.

To make matters worse, the guidance says that the retail selling price per clothing item must be less than $125, and that supplies must be used by students in the course of study, in order to qualify. It’s simply impossible to program any Point of Sale system to create a sales tax discount on certain dollar-amounts of products and not others, or to change the sales tax rate on an individual item for some sales but not others (i.e., only after finding out that it will be used in the course of study at school). If small business owners are going to be able to comply with any of these rules, it will have to apply to all sales of a certain product — not just some sales.

This type of well-intentioned law — like the bag tax, carbonated beverage tax, and ill-fated sweetened beverage tax — has my full support from a social perspective. But they are so poorly-worded, difficult-to-enact, and misguided, that no small business could ever properly implement any of them cost-effectively.

This is just like that. Well-intentioned but completely out of touch and indicative that our representatives don’t have a clue what’s going on “on the ground”.

I received a hilarious text from a client when she read the IDOR notice:

Texts from a client when she read the IDOR notice.

As an aside, I wrote my state rep and begged him not to support this kind of thing in the future, and to work with other elected officials to find more reasonable, sustainable ways to provide relief to hard-working families, without crushing small business owners along the way. His response was truly wonderful, and he apologized profusely for not involving stakeholders in the last-minute rush to get it passed.

“Looks like we really did a terrible job here.  You’re absolutely right that this was an example of government decision making at its worst. I think in the abstract these are largely good ideas, but looking at that guidance, it’s clear that implementation is going to be a nightmare. You have my word that I’ll try to do a better job of asking questions like “yes but is this feasible?” or “how much of an administrative burden is it placing on our small business owners?” when we’re contemplating things like this in the future.”

What does this mean for you, the small business owner? What are your next steps?

Follow these steps, in order, to determine what actions to take:

Step 1 – Check this list to see if you sell any products on it:

The great news is, that if you don’t sell any of these products, then you do not need to make any changes or do any extra work. However, I’d recommend rehearsing the phrase, “the sales tax holiday is only for back-to-school clothing and supplies, and as we don’t sell any items that would qualify, we aren’t able to offer you the 5% sales tax discount.” Because for sure there are going to be people who think that anything they buy during the 10-day period will be at a lower sales tax rate.

If you do sell products on the list above, then move on to the next step.

Step 2 – Identify all the products you sell that are on the list above. If any of the clothing items are priced at $125 or more, cross them off. Then make sure none of the remaining products you just identified are on this list of non-qualifying items:

Step 3 – Look at the items that made it onto your “qualified” list, and ask yourself who your clients generally are that buy these items — are they likely to be used for school? If the answer is definitely no, then again — no worries. You do not need to make any changes or do any additional work. (Except rehearsing that phrase from above and teaching it to your staff.)

However, if the answer is maybe or likely, then we’ve got some work to do.

Step 4 – If the answer is maybe, then you have to decide whether it’s worth your effort to go through your Point of Sale system and change the tax rate on each product that qualifies (and then change it back 10 days later) — or if you don’t have a POS system, if it’s worth it to figure out how to manually change the tax rate on each sale of one of these items, and to track how many were sold during the period of Aug 5-14. Because an alternative might be to just leave everything at the higher sales tax rate unless a customer specifically states that they are buying it for school use (you could even ask each customer who buys one of these items during that period if it’s for school use or not) — and then just give them a discount and write down the sale somewhere so that later on when you file your ST-1, you know how much to enter onto the Schedule GT so you get your money credited back to you — yes, I know that this means your cash drawer and your Sales Tax Payable accounts will be off. You can just have your accountant book an adjustment after the correct amount of tax is paid to the state. Or, in all honesty, you could even give them the discount out of the business’ own pocket and it would still be cheaper than reassigning tax rates in your POS system.

Step 5 – On the other hand, if the answer is likely, then you need to:

  1. Create a new tax rate in your POS system called “holiday rate” that is 5 points lower than the current sales tax rate (in Chicago, 10.25% — so the new rate will be 5.25%). Hopefully your system allows enough rate slots to accommodate this. If not, maybe consider the approach outlined in Step 4.
  2. After close of business on August 4th, assign that new rate to all the items that qualify.
  3. Make a note to reassign the old rate to all those items after the close of business on August 14th.
  4. Be sure you can run a report of all the items that sold at this rate, since you’ll need to declare that total on a separate tax form (Schedule GT) when you prepare your monthly sales tax return (ST-1).

If you do not have inventory or non-inventory sales-taxable items stored in your POS system — or if you have a cash register instead of a POS — then you’ll need to look at how you charge sales taxes to each item and come up with a plan that mimics the approach I just outlined. For example, if your system allows you to manually edit the sales tax rate on a sale-by-sale basis, you could keep a list of all the qualifying items by the register, and simply adjust for each qualifying sale. The problem is that only some of the items get the discounted rate, so if this is how your system works, you’d have to run a separate sale for all the qualifying items and then one for the non-qualifying items. You also will need to keep a list of all the sales made at the lower rate, since as mentioned above, you’ll have to note those on a separate schedule when you prepare your sales tax return. And if your system doesn’t allow you to manually edit the sales tax rate, you’ll have to take the approach I mentioned earlier, whereby you just give the customer a discount and adjust the inaccurate books later, hoping it all comes out in the wash.

Step 6 – Once the time comes to file your monthly (or quarterly) ST-1 sales tax return, you’ll notice there is an additional form– Schedule GT, Sales and Use Tax Holiday and Grocery Tax Suspension Schedule. This was created for retailers to report sales of qualifying items sold during the sales tax holiday. Per IDOR:

Form ST-1 has not changed. Retailers should continue to report their normal taxable sales, including sales of qualifying items, on Lines 4a and 4b, Lines 6a and 6b, or Lines 12a and 12b, of Form ST-1 and will then use Lines 2a and 2b, Lines 3a and 3b, or Lines 4a and 4b on Schedule GT to calculate a credit against the tax reported on those lines for the tax they are not collecting during the state sales tax holiday.

So you’ll report the sales of these items, on which you charged the lower tax amount, on Schedule GT and it will flow onto your ST-1 as a credit so that you’re not remitting more to the IDOR than you collected.

Whichever approach you take, make sure to rehearse the phrase, “the sales tax holiday is only for back-to-school clothing and supplies, and as we don’t sell any items that would qualify, we aren’t able to offer you the 5% sales tax discount.” Lots of folks read the headlines, but not the small print.

Hopefully this was all clearer to read than it felt to write it! And please make sure your state representative knows how you feel about having had to think about it in the first place. Small businesses have enough to deal with these days!


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Happy 21st Birthday To The Dancing Accountant!

It’s true — our little CPA firm is officially old enough to drink, so let’s raise a glass to the wild ride it’s been. 🥂

To celebrate, we are planning an outdoor community event with the Logan Square Chamber of Commerce in early September — more on that in an upcoming post — but to mark the official date of first hanging out our shingle, we thought it would be fun to share a delightful interview with Mark Goldman, CPA on his podcast, “Where Accountants Go”. This episode was released just three days before our 20th anniversary.

Speaking with Mark was a truly gratifying experience — he was kind, organized, interested, and sincere, and asked great questions. As a sneak preview of a few good ones:

  • How did you end up being interested in Music from an education standpoint, and how did you end up moving towards accounting? 
  • At what point did you decide to further your education with the Masters in Financial Analysis and why that particular major?  Was it difficult to return to school?  
  • How has your practice evolved over the years?  I see you use the DBA The Dancing Accountant.  Was that always the case, or did that come later?  Is it related to a niche, or more about branding?
  • You’ve been listed on the 50 Top Women in Accounting list. Congratulations!  How does that make you feel?  Is it acknowledgement of hard work, even more responsibility, honor…?
  • What does the future look like for you if it goes exactly how you would like it to go?  When you look back on your career & life, what will you want to be able to say you accomplished?
  •  If you could go back in time and give your younger self just one piece of critical advice, what would that be?

We spoke for over half-an-hour and I felt like we could have gone on for days… his conversational style was comfortable and disarming. I enjoyed sharing personal stories, talking about the great folks I’ve studied and worked with, about how hard it was to go back to school while working, how much I love helping small businesses in my neighborhood, how much I hate saying “no”, how a client came up with my business name… and so on. Give it a listen — and raise a glass to our amazing team while you’re at it!

I would love to be remembered as someone who helped keep our communities vibrant by helping small businesses succeed. That’s the whole point of any of this, and my staff is a group of women who feel the same way. Our work really has meaning. ~Nancy McClelland, CPA


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Illinois Grocery Sales Tax Reduced by 1% For The Next 12 Months

Illinois’ 1% sales tax on groceries will be suspended for the state’s fiscal year, from June 1, 2022 through June 30, 2023. This sales tax reprieve is predicted to net approximately $400 million in consumer savings.

State and county taxes are still in place, meaning that in the City of Chicago, the tax on groceries went from 2.25% down to 1.25%.

Interestingly, medical products and devices — which are usually taxed at the same low rate as groceries — will remain taxable at their usual rate instead of getting the additional 1% suspension.

For retailers, this means that all “grocery low-tax” departments will need to have the tax reduced in Point of Sale systems, but not in medical/drug departments or grocery high-tax (alcoholic beverages, food consisting of or infused with adult use cannabis, soft drinks, candy, and food that has been prepared for immediate consumption).

There are also signage requirements for retailers. Per the IDOR’s May bulletin:

Retailers, to the extent feasible, shall include the following statement on any cash register tape, receipt, invoice, or sales ticket issued to Retailers, to the extent feasible, shall include the following statement on any cash register tape, receipt, invoice, or sales ticket issued to customers: “From July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023, the State of Illinois sales tax on groceries is 0%.” If it is not feasible for the retailer to include the statement on any cash register tape, receipt, invoice, or sales ticket issued to customers, then the retailer shall post the statement on a sign that is clearly visible to customers. The sign shall be no smaller than 4 inches by 8 inches. A printable sign will be available on our website at tax.illinois.gov.

In related tax news, the same state budget also provides automatic $50 income tax rebates for individuals who made less than $200,000 in 2021, $100 for couples filing jointly who made less than $400,000, and $100 per dependent claimed in 2021, up to three. Additionally, the Illinois state earned income credit will increase from 18% to 20% of the federal credit, and eligible homeowners will receive property tax rebates equal to their 2021 property tax credit, up to $300.


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

IRS Mileage Rate Increase For Second-Half Of 2022

Slide from AICPA Town Hall | (c) AICPA

Effective July 1, the IRS standard mileage rate — the amount that can be deducted per-mile in lieu of reporting actual costs — is increasing by 4-cents, to $0.65/mile, per Annoucement 2022-13.

The adjustment is being made in recognition of recent increases in the cost of gasoline. Normally, the adjustment is made annually, but in special cases such as this, the IRS Commissioner will make an exception.

Not only is this amount the official deductible amount when the optional standard method is used, but many businesses, and the federal government, also use it as the reimbursement rate for employee travel and transportation.

If you use a mileage-tracking template, make sure to update the per-mile multiplier. Most programs like Mile IQ do not track actual costs — they simply report the number based on a report’s date range, and the taxpayer or their CPA will do the math on the tax return. In 2011, the last time this happened, the IRS had a field for the number of miles driven Jan 1-June 30 and a separate field for those from July 1-Dec 31 — which is likely to be the case this year as well.

The 14 cents per mile rate for charitable organizations remains unchanged as it is set by statute.

IRS increases mileage rate for remainder of 2022 | Internal Revenue Service

If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

Important Changes for Chicago Businesses As Of July 1, 2022

Chicago’s Minimum Wage Increase, Fair Workweek Changes, and Sexual Harassment Laws Enhancements — and a Chicago Sick Pay Reminder

The City of Chicago’s fiscal year runs from July 1-June 30, so most changes tend to take effect at the beginning of the “new year”. This year is no exception — and there’s a lot that has changed. The Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) released this information recently, much of which affects small business owners in the city.

Minimum Wage Increase

The annual scheduled increase in Chicago’s minimum wage goes into effect on Friday, July 1, 2022. The Chicago minimum wage is tiered for large businesses with 21 or more employees, and small businesses with 4-20 employees. Since reaching $15 per hour in 2021, the minimum wage for larger employees increases annually according to the Consumer Price Index or 2.5%, whichever is lower. The minimum wage for small businesses continues to increase towards $15 per hour by 2023.

As of July 1, 2022, the Chicago minimum wage will be:

  •  $15.40 for employers with 21 or more employees (including all domestic workers, regardless of the number employed)
  • $14.50 for employers with 4-20 employees
  • The minimum wage for tipped employees will be $9.24 for employers with 21 or more employees, and $8.70 for employers with 4-20 employees (employers must make up the difference between any tips received and the applicable minimum wage for non-tipped workers.)
  • Anyone age 24 or younger employed by, or engaged in employment coordinated by, a nonprofit organization or government agency will see a minimum wage increase to $12.00.

Employers that maintain a business facility within the City of Chicago or are required to obtain a business license to operate in the City are required to pay their employees at least the Chicago minimum wage. Additionally, any employee that works two hours or more in the City within a two-week period must also receive at least the Chicago minimum wage.

Chicago BACP recently presented a free hour-long webinar called “Employer Responsibilities Under Chicago’s Minimum Wage Ordinance”, available here.

Fair Workweek Ordinance Changes

 As of July 1, 2022, scheduled enhancements to the Fair Workweek Ordinance will require:

  • Employers in “covered industries ” (see below) to post work schedules with at least 14 days’ notice, an increase from the previous 10 days’ notice.
  • Employees will need to earn less than $29.35 per hour or $56,381.85 per year to gain protection under the Fair Workweek Ordinance.
  • Covered industries include building services, healthcare, hotel, manufacturing, restaurant, retail, or warehouse services.

Chicago businesses are required to post the Minimum Wage Notice and Fair Workweek Notice at their business. The notices will be available to workers and business owners in English, Spanish, Polish, Simplified Chinese, Tagalog, and Korean by July 1, 2022. Employers that violate the minimum wage ordinance can be fined $500 to $1,000 per day for each offense. 

Chicago BACP recently presented a free hour-long webinar called “Employer Responsibilities Under Chicago’s Fair Workweek Ordinance”, available here.

Sexual Harassment Law Updates

As of July 1, 2022, all employers in the city of Chicago must have a written policy on sexual harassment. Additionally, employers are required to display a public notice advising of the prohibition on sexual harassment where employees can see it, and there are increased training requirements. A model policy, written notice, and training templates are available by visiting Chicago.gov/SexualHarassment.

Recent updates to the law include:

  • Adding sexual misconduct to the definition. Sexual misconduct is defined as any behavior of a sexual nature which also involves coercion, abuse of authority, or misuse of an individual’s employment position.
  • Requiring all employers to have a written policy on sexual harassment. The written policy must be available in the employee’s primary language within the first calendar week of starting employment.
  • Requiring all employers to post a written notice on sexual harassment.
  • Increasing the statute of limitations from 300 to 365 days.
  • Create flexibility to notify a respondent up to 30 days from the time of complaint (compared to 10 days currently), to mitigate any retaliation such as denial of a reasonable accommodation request.
  • Requiring additional annual training for all employees including the one hour of prevention training aligned with State requirements and one hour of bystander intervention. Supervisors and managers are required to have an additional one hour of training.
  • Increasing the penalty for individuals or businesses that participate in discriminatory practices in the workplace including sexual harassment. The penalty is increasing from $500 – $1,000 per violation to $5,000 – $10,000.

The Chicago Commission on Human Relations (CCHR) recently presented a 20-minute video update in collaboration with BACP, available here.

Reminder: Sick Pay Responsibilities

It seems not all small business owners are aware of the responsibility to provide Chicago workers paid sick leave. It applies to any business or individual that employs at least one “employee” and has a facility within Chicago’s city limits (though Cook County now has a similar requirement). The term “employee” covers anyone who works at least 80 hours within a 120-day period (20 hours a month).
– For hourly employees, paid sick leave accrues at one-hour for every 40 hours worked. Salaried-exempt employees are presumed to have worked 40 hours/week.
– Employees are capped at accruing a total of 40 hours of sick leave each year, unless the employer opts to set a higher limit.
– Employers must permit employees to carry over half of their accrued leave, to a maximum of 20 hours of unused sick leave each year (40 for employers with 50 or more employees).
– Employers are not required to pay out any accrued but unused sick leave upon employment termination.

In an attempt to drive this point home, I recently revisited my previous blog posts on the topic, and these were the three resources that seemed most helpful, which I encourage all employers to watch/read:
1) BACP Webinar: Paid Sick Leave Overview – YouTube
2) Think Your PTO Policy Complies With the Chicago or Cook County Paid Sick Leave Ordinances? Think Again. | Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner – JDSupra
3) Paid Sick Leave Enhancements: Chicago workers are guaranteed one hour of paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked. Starting August 1, 2021, the possible uses for that paid sick leave will be expanded to include caring for a family member with a closed school or place of care, compliance with public health orders, and mental and behavioral health.

In case it’s helpful, those resources were highlighted in these blog posts:
Year-End Reminders For Chicago Businesses | The Dancing Accountant
April 2021 FREE Small Business Webinars – City of Chicago | The Dancing Accountant
– BACP Updates | Chi Biz Strong Initiative | The Dancing Accountant

Even the least expensive version of Gusto Payroll allows for a sick pay plan, and it’s not hard to set up and track (see instructions here).

Reminder that if you sign up and run Gusto using my link, you’ll get a free trial period… and after running your first payroll you’ll receive a $100 Visa gift card! My clients instead will receive a 15% discount for the life of the plan.

And a final point: all Chicago worker protections are enforced by the BACP Office of Labor Standards (OLS). The OLS is dedicated to promoting and enforcing Chicago’s labor laws, including Minimum Wage, Paid Sick Leave, Fair Workweek, and Wage Theft Ordinance. The BACP OLS webpage offers informational materials on Chicago’s Labor Standards Laws.


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

The Dancing Accountant Shares Tips for Building A Remote Team

“Really great interview. I appreciated how the highlights were amplified. Nancy is smart and real. Blake does a great job allowing the interviewee talk and share her knowledge. Well done!”
-YouTube viewer comment

I was honored to be interviewed recently by the one-and-only Blake Oliver for Relay‘s “Gearing Up” series, where every two weeks, he talks to a real accountant or bookkeeper about ONE challenge in their firm — and how to solve it.

In this episode, we discuss how to build a team with whom you love to work (kudos to Bookkeeping Buds for helping me make that happen).

As our firm grew, I realized that building The Dancing Accountant in a traditional way was re-creating working conditions that our team and I didn’t love — it was immensely important to me that above all, we enjoy working with each other.

But first I had to convince myself I had something to offer — and decided to focus on what I knew employees wanted: meaningful work.

In the latest episode of Gearing Up with our host Blake Oliver, I open up about the a-ha moment that led to our building an entirely different kind of remote firm. In the episode, you’ll learn:
💃 Why Nancy is known as The Dancing Accountant
🔨 Nancy’s favorite tool in her tech stack
🧑‍💻 Three things employees want from work
🧩 The non-traditional structure of Nancy’s team

Full 15-min episode here — 📺 https://youtu.be/IigWdOH5G6M

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.

EIDL Rapid Portal Closes May 16 – Download Your Loan Docs NOW

We learned this week that the EIDL is permanently closing their Rapid Portal on May 16th. What does this mean for you?

If you haven’t already, download a copy of your EIDL loan agreement documents, and snap a screenshot of your loan number and save it to PDF for easy reference.

Your bookkeeper and accountant will thank you for this — and you’ll thank them for insisting you do it!


If this or any other posts on the website were useful to you, and your financial situation permits it, please consider contributing to my tip jar. Ths allows me to continue to provide free accounting resources to small businesses who do not have the funds available to hire a CPA.