SMALL BUSINESS ADVISOR MAIN SCREEN:
Author and Publisher, Michael D. Jenkins, Esq.
Product Information for
"The SMALL BUSINESS ADVISOR" Software
Up-To-Date, Authoritative Federal & State Tax and Legal Guidance for Your Small Business
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INFORMATION AND HELP FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS
Small Business Advisor is a unique software program that does
not fit into any conventional software category. Small Business
Advisor is not, in the strict sense of the word, an "AI" program.
However, we call it "smart" software or "primitive AI," because it
analyzes facts that you provide about your small business that it
uses while it creates a highly detailed small business guidebook
file on your computer. The software customizes the text throughout
the book to focus on the specific fact situation of your business
and provide you with the comprehensive tax, legal, and accounting
advice that is most relevant for your small business.
Small Business Advisor has a long history, first being published
in 1989 by the author's book publisher as an MS-DOS program. The
MS-DOS editions of the Small Business Advisor were licensed to and
used by every U.S. Small Business Administration office and SCORE
chapter in the United States for several years in the late 1990s
and early 2000s, until MS-DOS programs became obsolete and publication
ceased in 2001. However, in 2005, Jenkins re-released Small Business
Advisor as a Windows program and has self-published it since then.
(Small Business Advisor is a Windows program, but if
you don't have a Windows computer, you can also order our
KINDLE e-books for
any of 33 states, or D.C.)
WHAT, EXACTLY, DOES THIS SOFTWARE DO THAT MAKES IT SO
USEFUL FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS?
When you install Small Business Advisor, this is what you can expect:
- The program initially interviews you, asking you to answer
15 to 20 relatively simple questions about your business and asks
you to select the state whose law will apply (assuming that is
where you will do business).
- The software then creates a complete book (in HTML format, for
viewing with your browser), consisting of 14 chapters and 3 appendices,
in all, 17 HTML files, which the software will load and display. These
text files will contain comprehensive tax, legal, accounting, and
practical advice on a huge range of subjects relative to your small
business, with much of the legal and tax information customized to
take into account the information you have entered about your
organization (number of employees, type of legal entity, estimated
gross sales, type of business, etc.).
See this sample
Table of Contents created by the program for a fictional California
manufacturer, Acme Dynamite Company (not in any way affiliated with a
certain Wiley E. Coyote). It will give you an idea of the wide range of
subjects we cover in the 425 to 500 page book (if printed out) that the
program will assemble for you.
- The program also creates, as Appendix A, an extensive and detailed
"smart" Small Business Checklist of tax and legal requirements that
will apply to your specific business (or that you may be exempted
from, depending on the facts you have entered about your business).
You can change your interview answers at any time, to do "what-if"
scenarios. For example, if you are planning to increase your work
force from 7 employees to 12 in the near future, inputting 12
employees in the interview will generate a longer checklist, since
a number of state and federal laws will apply to you once you have
10 or more employees. (Nice to know, before you hire too
many people!)
See this sample Small Business Checklist,
created by the software for a fictional Idaho retail business. (But NOTE, we no
longer support an Idaho laws edition since 2013, so the Idaho information shown
in this example is badly out of date and not to be relied upon.)
- An interactive feature, "The
Consultant,"
will help you to
analyze various technical tax issues for your business. To use
this feature, you simply select one issue from a list and you
then respond to a series of questions to arrive at a conclusion.
If you are a professional advisor, this can be a real time saver,
when trying to determine if certain tax rules apply to a client,
without spending hours doing the research. For example, determining
whether a client's corporation will be classified as a "personal
service corporation," a "personal holding company," or a "closely held
C corporation" under the tax law definitions, for certain tax purposes.
Contextual help is provided to help you answer each question
correctly, in order to arrive at a correct answer.
- An "Entrepreneur Self-Test" is also included, based on a written
test developed by the U.S. Small Business Administration. In this
computerized version, you answer a number of questions about your
abilities and proclivities (as honestly as possible), to help you
decide if you have what it takes to successfully operate a small
business. (The software will then "grade" you.)
- Various tax and other government forms, most of them fillable
.PDF files, are included with the Appendix C file of the book that
is created. These are not annual or quarterly tax returns, but are
forms that you might only ever have to file once, such as to obtain
an Employer I.D. number, elect S corporation status, or report
details to the IRS when buying or selling an existing business.
WHO IS THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER OF THIS SOFTWARE?
Michael D. Jenkins, J.D., CPA (Retired status), doing business
as Ronin Software, has written the software and also does all of
the research and writes all of the content. He is a graduate of
Harvard Law School, and has practiced as senior tax counsel with a
major San Francisco law firm (the Cooley firm, with nearly 1,000
lawyers worldwide), as a CPA in the Los Angeles offices of the
"Big 4" accounting firm of Peat, Marwick & Mitchell (now "KPMG"),
and worked as an economics and financial consultant for several
years with a national economics consulting firm, Economics Research
Associates, in their Los Angeles and D.C. area offices.
He was also the principal author of the widely acclaimed book
series, "Starting and Operating a Business in __(state)" (Texas,
New York, etc.), for each of the 50 states and D.C., which sold
over a million copies in Costco, bookstores, and otherwise in
print editions until his publisher inexplicably ceased publication
in 1999, just when sales had reached a new peak. For more details
about the author and owner of Ronin Software, click
HERE.
While most of the state editions in the print series were co-authored
by offices of the CPA firm of Ernst & Young, which provided the
state information in about 40 states where they had offices,
Jenkins later revived the entire series, in more comprehensive
(longer!) Kindle e-book versions, in 2011. However, he ceased
publishing 17 of the state e-book editions in 2013, and thus no
longer updates those states or supports them in the Small Business
Advisor. The states whose laws and taxes are no longer being
updated are: ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, MD, MS, MT, OH, OK,
OR, RI, TN, VA, and WI (and those 17 e-book editions are no
longer being sold on Amazon).
IMPORTANT NOTE: You probably should not order the Small
Business Advisor if you live in one of the 17 states listed above,
as the state information for those states has not been updated
since 2013 and will not be updated in the software in the forseeable
future.
WHERE CAN I ORDER MY COPY OF SMALL BUSINESS ADVISOR?
For prices and ordering information, go to our
ORDERING PAGE.
IS THERE A FREE VERSION I CAN TRY, BEFORE ORDERING?
Yes. The free ("shareware") version can be downloaded
HERE.
If you are a professional adviser to small businesses, see
the next section below for an example of how you can use the
Small Business Advisor software to effectively advise (and
impress!) your clients, particularly new or prospective clients.
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HOW TO USE SMALL BUSINESS ADVISOR TO HAVE FUN & IMPRESS YOUR CLIENTS:
Here is how it should go....
A new client comes into your office for a face-to-face
interview. After the initial introductions and formalities,
you tell the client that you want to conduct a short Q & A
as a starting point, to get some basic information about his
or her business and you turn to your computer. You start
up the Small Business Advisor and, assuming the program
is already configured for the state where the client
does business, you will just click on File/New Data File,
to begin the interview, with the first question being the
name of the customer's business.
From there, probably in less than 5 minutes, you go through
the series of 15 to 20 interview questions the software will
pose, obtaining and entering the responses from the client
(such as how many employees, what kind of legal entity is the
client's company, etc.).
Once you have completed the brief interview with the
client, you simply print out two copies of the Small Business
Checklist that the software has just created, which will look
like THIS, and hand
one copy of the printout to your client. Think they will be
impressed? That's what we hear....
If there are some technical tax issues for your client
that you may need to resolve quickly, you can also click on
the CONSULT
button and select one of the listed topics (if applicable
to your client), and go through a "consulting session"
interview, as well.
As an added bonus, before or after the client leaves
your office, click on the File menu and select the "Print
FL Book" menu item (if configured for Florida), and the
program will instantly combine the 14 chapters and Small
Business Checklist into one large book (HTML file), which
you can either print out (if you don't mind using almost an
entire ream of paper) or you can simply email the large HTML
book file, fully customized for your client, to the client.
BOTTOM LINE:
Practicing as an attorney, CPA, or other business adviser
is very competitive, but you can be sure of one thing:
None of your competitors will be able to effortlessly
create an entire, comprehensive e-book and business tax
and legal checklist, fully customized for a client's business,
and send it to the client without running up more than a
couple of minutes of billable time! (Whether you bill the
client for more than a couple of minutes is up to you, of
course....)
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FROM THE PUBLISHER:
With regard to each of our software programs and e-books, please note the following:
"This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information
in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that
the publisher and author are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other
professional services. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the
services of a competent professional person should be sought."
-- from a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a committee of the
American Bar Association and a committee of publishers.
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KINDLE E-BOOK SERIES (STATE EDITIONS)
We also offer Kindle e-books through Amazon.com, with editions for 33 states
and the District of Columbia, for $9.99 each. To order or to see when the
edition for your state was last published, go to our
KINDLE
ordering page, or click on one of the cover images below to order a 2024
edition for Arizona, Florida, Georgia, or Massachusetts.
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