Snowstorms, extreme cold weather alerts, school closures, kids sick… those are just a few things that we, Canadians, have battled with this past week.
Kids ain’t afraid of the cold. Had so much fun making snow angel and sleeping in the snow!
These are the moments that I am grateful for technologies, such as online meeting apps and video recordings. I use them to communicate with my clients face to face, I use them to explain to my clients complicated tax issues that they can watch at their own pace.
Believe it or not, I used the same technology to “meet” with my new tenants, walk them through the lease page by page, and sign all of them virtually.
I am doing all these, didn’t need to battle with the slow traffic, while kids are playing downstairs during school closures caused by the snow storm.
It wasn’t always easy. I battled with the idea of having a physical location whereby all my staff, from Aurora, North York, Oakville and as far as Calgary, could all work from, but this would mean commute time of 2 – 3 hours on average per person. This is the time my team can spend with their family, instead of going bumper to bumper on the road.
We build systems so that we can communicate easily internally. We spend time talking to each other face to face via online meeting platforms. We share screens so we talk to each other on the same page.
Working on reconciling one of our client’s tax balance with Iris, our accountant
There are still days we battle with people’s perception on a cloud-based business.
Then there’re many more clients that appreciate the use of technologies, that allow them to save time on the commute and still have a productive meeting with us “face-to-face”.
I’m grateful for our clients, our systems, our staff and our mostly commute free office. 😊
For the fun of using these video recording apps, I recorded a few short clips to answer some of the most common questions I get. I post all of them on my Facebook business page.
The first one was related to Airbnb taxation, a blog post I did a few weeks ago. Here’s the link to the video.
The second one was related to the risk of buying new residential rental property and claiming that you’re moving in – many people find it useful.
The last one was about whether you should pay your contractor cash, another blog post. I did a while back. In this video, I walk through the math on when it would make sense to pay your contractor cash!
If you want to continue to receive these video tax tips, like my Facebook page here and like your videos.
Until next time, stay warm and happy Canadian Real Estate Investing.
Cherry Chan, CPA, CA
Your Real Estate Accountant
P.S. In case you wonder, we do meet our clients face to face in two different locations (Markham and Oakville). Even though I consider myself an introvert for the most part, I still love the one-on-one in person interaction. 😉
