1. Paperwork
Most service firms lean on subcontractors, and most of them handle the paperwork in January. Do it in July instead.
Set each subcontractor up as a vendor in QBO, check the box to track payments for 1099s, and get the W-9 before the first payment goes out. Then make sure those payments hit a contract labor account rather than getting lumped into a catch-all “professional services” bucket. When filing season comes, the report builds itself and you’re not chasing people for tax IDs.
2. Plumbing
Artificial intelligence is all anyone talks about and I’m tired of it.
We’ve actually deployed an accounting-centric product built on Claude, called Aqqrue, that saves us a ton of time in QuickBooks. The tool works, but that’s the point: it’s one narrow thing, not a whole stack.
From our experience, albeit relatively brief, we’ve come to find most businesses don’t need new dashboards, fancy automations, or an expensive marketing agent. They need Google Drive, an efficient payment processor, and online bill pay.
Obviously the needs vary operator to operator, but everyone wants to put the cart before the horse. Oftentimes, the horse is enough.
3. Power
Last week, there was a disastrous flood in Nepal.
This part of the world is often not written about or covered in mainstream media. However, China’s impact on this neglected region cannot be overstated. The flood also got me thinking about water infrastructure across the region, and one project in particular.
China is constructing a $167 billion mega-dam project in Tibet. On the surface, this may read like any other government mega-project announcement. But the river being dammed is the Yarlung Tsangpo, which turns into the Brahmaputra River — a major water source for India and Bangladesh.
China is already taking steps in the Asian continent to assert hegemony, which some would argue it has already established. Nations on the way to hegemony may achieve such a status at the expense of other nations and their security — both geographically and geopolitically.
Until next week
