Proper documentation keeps facts together and makes money discussions with your employees easier.

Isn't it nice to review all of your profits as you prepare for your year-end income tax reports? Unfortunately, you must also manipulate all of your costs, overhead, expenses, deductibles and depreciation to determine how much of that profit you can keep. Fortunately, Uncle Sam requires keeping all of those records to justify what you made or lost, as well as where and how it happened. It's too bad no one ever made us keep track of why!

Everything you made or lost in 2004 happened because of what you or someone on your payroll did or did not do: