The most effective way for small business owners to be sure that they are aware of their company’s financial status is to have an accurate balance sheet that reflects the most current information available. By keeping this information up to date every quarter, you can help yourself avoid a lot of problems and surprises down [...]
Budgeting and forecasting are two of the most important financial exercises performed by businesses, regardless of their size. Unfortunately, they are also two exercises that many businesses fail to perform accurately or efficiently. The biggest common problem is that most budgets and forecasts are created without any room for flexibility. Managers are told at [...]
If your tax deductions normally fall short of itemizing your deductions or even if you are able to itemize, but only marginally, you may benefit from using the “bunching” strategy. The tax code allows most taxpayers to utilize the standard deduction or itemize their deductions if that provides a greater benefit. As a rule, [...]
When you hire your first employee, you create an entire new task of complying with employment and labor laws and issuing a payroll. Payroll taxes create more administrative burden for small businesses than any other tax, according to the 2015 Small Business Taxation Survey from the National Business Association. Plus, compliance with payroll [...]
Over the July 4th weekend my pool turned green. We never owned a home with a pool and so we were bummed to find out that our pool was full of algae. We were diligent home owners and had a pool man take care of it since it’s beginning. I knew the care for a [...]
If you are the owner of a small business, you are endlessly busy. Between keeping track of the day-to-day requirements and monitoring growth and profit, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and that means you might neglect important recordkeeping that will help you in the long term. Here are five helpful hints that will make [...]
Five-Year Anniversary of Healthcare Reform: It has been five years since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the ACA) was signed into law. Healthcare reform has certainly been controversial, but this controversy does not absolve some businesses of certain responsibilities when it comes to offering minimum essential healthcare coverage to their employees. [...]
“A sale isn’t a sale until you’ve collected payment — it’s just a loan,” a wise businessman once said. If you’ve been in business for any length of time, you know how true this is. Many small businesses that were profitable on paper have gone bankrupt waiting for payment from their customers to arrive. [...]
When you hire outsourcers to complete tasks for you, it's not enough to simply tell them what you'd like them to do and let them get to it. You need to give them detailed specifications to ensure a high standard of quality. If you don't and the work comes back wrong, you only have yourself [...]
When you're hiring outsourcers to help your business grow, it's common to hire people from other parts of the world. You can often find highly skilled help in other countries for a much lower price than in your own. But hiring workers from another country involves a few unique challenges, and one of them is [...]