Resume Outline - Add Structure & Flow to Your Resume

by: Roger Clark

Building your resume, based on a resume outline will give it structure and flow... it provides an outline of all the things you should include in your resume. A resume is one of the most important documents you will ever create First you have to decide on a particular format for your resume. The two main formats in use today are chronological and functional format. Which one is best to use will depend greatly on your situation. To build your resume you can use free resume forms located on the web. This can provide you with directions if you are having trouble building your resume. A sample resume outline would include the following sections: The Heading Your resume should start with the heading. You can list your basic details so the employer can contact you. You can include your name, address, telephone number and e-mail address. NAME ADDRESS PHONE NUMBER EMAIL ADDRESS Job Objective This is an optional section of your resume outline. Here you can tell readers what the objective of your resume is and what you are looking for. Example: Entry-level accounting position with medium to large public accounting firm. The "Body" is the largest section of your resume outline This is where you can enter details about your education, work experience and additional information. The body contains: Education Here you can list your educational background. Educational Background Format: College, Degree, Major, Honors, Relevant Courses Sample Education Section: Drexel University BA Educational Leadership, May 2000 If you have a college education, do not list your high school information. You can also list any honors for academic excellence in this section of your resume outline. If you are a graduating senior or looking for an internship, you can add a relevant courses section to your resume outline. Employment History This is an important part of the resume. Here you can list your previous employment history. If you are using a chronological resume format, you should list the most recent job positions first on your resume outline. Example: Drug Emporium, Wayne, PA Cashier, June to September, 2001 Supervised customer check out Handled the cash register Managed and stocked merchandise You can also list relevant volunteer activities or work experience programs if you do not have much job experience. Achievements If you have any special achievements you would like to announce, you can use this section. Maybe you made a suggestion that saved your previous boss a ton of money. You can list it in this section of your resume outline. Special Skills The remaining sections of the resume can include additional skills such as fluency in a foreign language. References You should leave this section out altogether. References are not required at this stage and stating that 'References are available upon request' is assumed anyway... so you just end up wasting valuable space! Additional Optional Sections You can add additional sections to your resume outline such as volunteer work, community involvement or honors. You also have to decide on the layout of your resume. Choose a common font and medium range font-size, such as 12. Decide how you want to highlight the headings of the different sections. You can use bold, italics or underline to highlight section headings. Some people use bold and a larger font size to highlight their name on the resume. The last part of your resume will probably receive little focus, so if you have a marketable skill or outstanding honor you should try to incorporate them in earlier sections of your resume. You can find a lot of resources on the web that can provide you with free outlines and sample resume layouts. Usually an outline will differ if the resume is for a recent college graduate or a long time professional. Choose a resume outline that is specific to your career field and you can build your resume around that outline. About the author: Roger Clark (BSc) has over 25 years experience in career development & recruitment at a senior level through top management positions he has held with major international companies. You can visit his "Top Career Resumes" website for a wealth of top quality information relating to the employment market. http://www.top-career-resumes.com http://www.top-career-resumes.com/resume-outline

How to Start an Investment Club - Business Model

by: chris hickman

Your investment club will need to decide what type of entity you're going to adopt for business purposes. You'll have to decide whether you're going to be a corporation, a general partnership, or limited liability partnership. Each of these business models has their own advantages and disadvantages. · Corporation. Most investment clubs will avoid becoming a corporation. This is because corporations are taxable business entities that require knowledgeable accounting skills to make them run smoothly and in accord with government regulations. A corporation generally means a lot of paperwork. This paperwork can be avoided by choosing another business model for your purpose of running an investment club. · General partnership. This type of business model requires less paperwork and knowledge about taxes and other financial issues. Most investment clubs choose a general partnership as their choice of a business entity. A general partnership has nominal paperwork and costs associated with it because the taxes are passed to each partner's tax returns. This type of business model will let you accomplish what you need to do to run your investment club with the least amount of tax influence. · Limited liability corporations. This type of a business model is much like the general partnership but it gives individual members of your investment group a bit more liability protection. Keep in mind that this type of business entity can be expensive and will need more paperwork. Members of your investment group will have to decide which of the above business models works best for your club. You will have to make a decision one way or the other since establishing a business entity is a requirement for tax purposes. About the author: Chris Hickman owns a full info site about investment clubs. Check Out his site at http://www.ez-investment-clubs.com

Small Business 101: Deadly Ignorance

by: Daniel Sitter

Copyright 2005 Daniel Sitter American small business is again in transition. Many employees, now working from home, are no longer tied to a geographic office and the woes of commuting. This is a relatively new phenomenon with hints of explosive sector growth in the days ahead. As this turbulent economy has forced downsizing, offshore restructuring and closures in large companies, many new entrepreneurs have been born. These are people, who instead of tirelessly attempting to find new employment and possibly enduring the same fate as previously experienced, are now starting small businesses and enjoying the benefits and perils of self-employment. There's an old story telling of an Admiral's decision to fight a battle against overwhelming odds. It seems that he was approaching the coast of an enemy land, with a larger naval force closing in from behind and a great army approaching from the land ahead. He prayed and then addressed his men. He announced that their battle weary forces would land on the beach ahead, dig in and prepare for the upcoming battle. There was no turning back and no other alternative. He ordered their ships burned after they landed. Their only choice was to fight to win or perish. They defeated their enemy because he eliminated any other escape route. They were fixed on the goal of survival and none other. That is the same attitude we as entrepreneurs must take. We can not afford to be denied. We must grow and prosper or our business will surely perish. We must constantly be looking for ways to cost-effectively market our business and increase sales. We must control costs and have sufficient cash flow for daily operations. Each of us must be persistent, relentless and vigilant. As CEO, we are the manufacturer, the sales team, the marketing department, legal office, accounting office, human resources manager, IT manager, the webmaster and so on. We can't afford to be all these positions. Our job is to sell! We must locate cost effective resources to help us grow and protect our investment in our business. The growth of the internet has changed our marketplace as well. Years ago, a small business owner decided upon a geographic chunk of the market and set up shop. Today, that shop is typically located in an office at the entrepreneur's home. The marketplace is now the world. The costs of marketing products and communicating worldwide are so low that almost anyone can take part in this revolution. Sophisticated voice mail, cell phones, email and effective ecommerce web sites now provide the illusion of size and grandeur for even the smallest home-based business. The end customer typically has no idea whether their supplier is local or across the world. He may be dressed in a shirt and tie or in his pajamas! All that typically matters is that the exchange of product and services is successfully made for a profit. It is critically important for the small, home-based entrepreneur to be aware of resources available to her as she makes this great leap. Too many people leap prematurely into business only to fail because of poor planning and insufficient financial resources. Do not get caught in this trap. Don't quit your day job until you have enough cash on hand to pay the bills for at least a year into your new venture. Become aware of and develop the resources available to you. You want everything possible going for you as you make this leap of faith into the entrepreneurial world. Here in South Carolina, we have the outstanding Women's Business Center (http://www.scwbc.org), a division of the SCMEP, South Carolina Manufacturers Extension Partnership (http://www.scmep.org), one of the best kept secrets available to businesses at all levels in our State. Other States have similar programs modeled after ours. These are incredible resources, partially funded by the State and private resources, available at little to no cost to entrepreneurs, with the purpose of aiding the successful growth of small business. Some additional national resources are: http://www.national business.org http://www.nase.org http://www.gosmallbiz.com http://www.empoweringbiz.com http://www.nfib.org http://www.qualitybusinessdirectory.com There are also numerous magazines devoted to small business, home-based business, marketing, sales, accounting, etc… Get tuned in to these and other resources available to you. Read your industry publications to stay abreast of competition and other facets of your business interests. A single legal issue, FACTA problem, accounting error or marketing miscue can put you out of business. In the case of FACTA, insufficient security or poor record-keeping these days could find you legally responsible for a single employee's identity fraud issue, which may end up being very costly. A single lawsuit or vendor dispute can shut you down. Many entrepreneurs are ignorant, ill-prepared and under-schooled with regard to these and other issues. Do not get caught in the deadly ignorance trap. There is more opportunity available today than ever before for the wise entrepreneur. Get all you ducks in a row before you make the fateful leap into the new world marketplace. Be smart, learn all you can as quickly as possible and take action on your ideas. Like the Admiral, be determined to win in the face of what may appear to be overwhelming adversity. About the author: Daniel Sitter is the author of the breakthrough e-book, Learning For Profit, the revolutionary how-to book providing simple, step-by-step instructions to teach people exactly how to learn new skills faster than ever before. It’s currently available from c|net’s download.com, the author’s web site www.learningforprofit.comand a variety of online book merchants. Mr. Sitter is a contributing writer for several online and traditional publications. His expertise includes sales, marketing, effective learning techniques, self-improvement and general business interests.

Is Your Business Profitable?

by: Pam Newman

Copyright 2005 Pam Newman What’s your job profitability? Do you know? Many business owners are unsure of their profitability at a company or job level. They “think” they are making money because they have a few dollars in their checking account. Having money in your checking account doesn’t mean you are profitable. It might simply mean you haven’t paid all the bills yet, so you have a little cash. Cash and profit are two different concepts. If you don’t know your exact income and expenses for each job and your overall business, then how can you know whether you are making a profit? And, if you aren’t profitable, your business won’t last long. Analyze Each Job Regardless of the size of your business or your industry, profitability is something you should be monitoring on a monthly basis. To determine your profit, you must know how much you make and spend on each job. Expenditures should be tracked for direct labor and material costs on each job. In addition, you should also be tracking overhead costs and allocating them to your various jobs as applicable. There is always going to be some general overhead, but too often dollars are thrown into general overhead, when those dollars could easily be attached to specific jobs. Intuit’s QuickBooks software program has easy-to-use features that allow you to do job-costing for time and materials, so you don’t have to worry about having to track it all manually. Rely on tools to help you run your business more efficiently and effectively. Are you curious how you are doing with job costing measurements? Here are some quick and easy questions to gauge your job costing performance: 1. Do I track each customer’s revenue information through a detailed invoice? 2. Do I have a way of breaking down my direct job materials cost by customer? 3. Do I associate all time spent to each job accurately with actual dollar amounts? 4. Do I have access to reports to monitor profitability on each job in a timely manner? 5. Do I have a way to trend the fluctuations in job profitability from job to job, month to month, etc? If you answered “no” to any of these, then it’s time for you to take an objective look at your financial goals. It’s time for you to implement a job costing mechanism to help you answer “yes” to all these questions. How can you track your profitability and long-term growth plans if you don’t have detail at a job level? QuickBooks Can Help Here are some easy ways to utilize QuickBooks effectively to help you with your job-costing process: 1. Set up the QuickBooks Item list so that you’ll have both an expense and an income aspect to each of the items. This will allow you to track your costs and your income, and will provide you profit by item. 2. Record your sales through the invoicing or sales receipt process. This will record the income aspects of the items. 3. As you purchase the product or service items, make sure that you utilize the Items tab so that it will record the cost to the appropriate item. In addition, make sure to assign your customer/job information to each line item so that you’ll have the costs associated to the appropriate customer/job for job-costing. 4. Utilize the time-tracking mechanism in QuickBooks so that you and your employees can track time by item and customer/job. No dollar value is associated with this time until you actually pay the employees within QuickBooks. 5. QuickBooks has preformatted reports that you can access to have job-costing information right at your fingertips. These are found under the Reporting menu and the Jobs/Time/Mileage option. 6. QuickBooks has the ability to provide reports for any time period you select. This will allow you to have a variety of detail over the growth of your business and to produce trending reports. You can modify the report as needed to meet your needs. A good accounting professional can help you understand what these reports are telling you, in terms that you can use. Reports alone don’t provide value if you don’t understand them. So it is key that you understand the reporting information and how you can use that information to assist you in decision-making as you grow your business profitably. Job-costing is easier when you set-up your accounting/bookkeeping software package and know how to use it. So, challenge yourself today to become more adept at running a financially savvy business through job-costing. Then, you’ll know, without a doubt, whether your company is profitable. About the author: Pam helps business owners keep money from slipping through their fingers. She is a Certified Management Accountant, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and Author of Out of the Red and Unlocking the Secrets of QuickBooks. For more information, you can visit our website at http://www.quickbooksinformation.com

Here is the latest and accurate assistance relating to laptop bags.

by: Tom Brown

Here is the latest and accurate assistance relating to laptop bags. When you are on the lookout for excellent information relating to laptop bags, you'll find it's complex sorting out the best information from unprofessional laptop bags proposals and guidance so it is important to know how to judge the advice that is offered. Here's a few tips which we sincerely believe you should use when you're searching for information about laptop bags. You need to understand that the advice we present is only relevant to web based information about laptop bags. We do not offer you any advice or guidance for conducting research offline. A good hint to follow when offered help or advice concerning a laptop bags site would be to confirm the sites ownership. This could reveal the people behind the website laptop bags authority The quickest way to work out who owns the laptop bags web site is to find the sites 'about' page. All decent sites providing information on laptop bags, will nearly always have an 'about' or 'contact' page which will record the owner's details. The info should make known major points about the site owner's capability. This permits you to make an informed assessment about the vendor's education and practical knowledge, to give recommendations about laptop bags. About the author: Tom Brown is the webmaster at accountingdata-info-news.info

Resume Writing and Preparation is Free Online

by: Donna Monday

Creating a strong resume is a very important part of applying for a job, either online or off line. There are many resume writing services that will help you build an impressive resume for job interviews. You can also learn how to write a resume for free by surfing the Internet for resume writing help. Many sites will show you tips and advice on choosing a resume style that works best for you. You can also find samples of resumes, resume templates, resume software, and examples of resume cover sheets or letters. Whether you’re looking to create a business resume, marketing resume, military resume, electronic resume, accounting resume, nursing resume, acting resume, sales resume, teacher resume, executive resume, student resume or a customer service resume, you can find great advice online with a little research. When preparing your resume, keep in mind that employers use resumes for several purposes: ** Screen Applicants – Most employers will only look at a resume for about 30 seconds to determine whether or not an applicant is a good fit for their organization. ** Develop Interview Questions – Statements on your resume can be used to formulate questions they may ask during an interview. ** Communication Skills – Employers want to see how well you express yourself. ** Qualifications – Employers will reference your resume when making hiring decisions based on how closely your qualifications match their needs. Writing a resume isn’t easy, but by studying various tips and advice, you can learn to create a type of resume that will get you one step closer to your ultimate goal of finding a great job. About the author: ********************* Copyright 2004 Donna Monday writes employment related articles for http://www.get-a-job-interview-quick-tips.com

Company/Employee Handbook as Organisational Improvement Tool

by: Stephan Szugat

A business is only able to grow as fast as the internal organisation is able to process higher volumes of sales. But how to get an optimal internal organisation? Well, you will need to adapt your internal organisation over and over again. It’s a never ending story. However, a Company/Employee Handbook could assist you to achieve the best internal business organisation. This brings up the question, What has to be included in a Company/Employee Handbook? Everything what has influence to your business operation. First of all, it has to be outlined which areas the Company/Employee Handbook will cover. As it has to do with internal operation, here is a list of items you should include: - Company Background Information (Name-Development, Foundation date and place, History-Milestones, Vision) - Owner and/or Manager Bios/Profiles - Listing of Officers and Board of Directors - Employment Roles (Job Roles, Job Descriptions) - Description of the main products and services (just use your marketing material) - FAQ (about internal subjects only) - Company timeline (What, when, where) - Office procedures (Workflow-Information, Working Procedures) - List of persons to know (Bank Contact, Tax Advisor, Laywer, Main Suppliers, etc.) - Overview of agreements (Rental, Leasing, etc.) - Internal Policies (Dress code, Phone usage and answering, Voice Mail Procedure, Parking, Business Cards, Drug Policy, etc.). The above list shows which information should be included. The following list shows which departments should be included: - Distribution - Inventory/Warehouse - Marketing (How Follow-up’s are handled, Lead-Generation, etc.) - Customer Support - Research and Development - Accounting - Human Resources - Purchase/Procurement. The above two lists just show, how complex it could be to setup a Company/Employee Handbook. But it don’t have to be complex, just start partial. Only include the information which are already available and use the help of your employees. The benefits of having a Company Handbook are numerous, your employees will save time, it will be easier to improve procedures, because the procedures will be broken down into small sections of the whole precodures. Everything is clearly described, so nobody needs to ask over and over again. In case of holiday or illness of an employee, others could jump into the job, because they could be trained faster. As employer, you could hire employees with lower education. And your employees will love it, because they know where to look, when they have questions and they could improve their working environment as well. But the most advantage for the owner is, that the organisation will be able to work properly, when the business grows and when the owner might sell the business one day, it might get sold easier, because of the proper organisation. When installing a Company Handbook, you will find procedures you could automate. Automating the operation as much as possible will also be a big benefit, because employees and employer are able to focus their workforce on more important topics, such as improving the sales volume. Furthermore automatization will reduce to cost of operation as well. A Company/Employee Handbook is a bit like a Business Plan, but far more detailed, because it will contain information on every internal procedure. Only the financial part of the business plan will not be included, but if you like you might include some financial information you like to share with your employees. As you describe your procedures just do it as a numeration or listing. The description don’t have to be very well formed, it’s just important that everyone who will read it, is able to understand what has to be done. Remember, a Company Handbook is a living system, if you and your employees are not updating it regularly, it will be death one day, because it will only contain old stuff. So keep all people within your business engaged in improving the Company Handbook, because it will improve your business internal organisation as well. While starting to write the content of your Company Handbook, concentrate on job roles at first, afterwards write down job descriptions, in case a job role has been given to employees twice (Accounting Staff, etc.). Job Roles need to include the duties and the responsebilities of the described job. Job Roles, Job Descriptions and Workflow-Descriptions of sepcial procedures don’t have to be the same, but take care that the information is consistent, that means that it is written in a stream. This way the entire Company Handbook will be of benefit for everyone. When rereading something on your Company Handbook and you still have questions, than the entry is not finished. Last but not least, your Company/Employee Handbook should be available everytime. To do this, think about an Internet or Intranet Solution, depending on the size of your business. Keep it simple and slim, and you will have many benefits from it. Good Luck. About the author: Stephan Szugat is founder of abenetis a web-based service about Business Management Solutions. He has approx. 15 years experience in the Finance and Accounting Area from companies of different size and from various industries. http://www.abenetis.com

10 Amazing Ways To Jump Start Your Sales

by: Wesley Atkins

1. Find a strategic business partner. Look for ones that have the same objective. You can trade leads, share marketing info, sell package deals, etc. 2. Brand your name and business. You can easily do this by just writing articles and submitting them to e-zines or web sites for republishing. 3. Start an auction on your web site. The type of auction could be related to the theme of your site. You'll draw traffic from auctioneers and bidders. 4. Remember to take a little time out of your day or week to brainstorm. New ideas are usually the difference between success and failure. 5. Model other successful business or people. I'm not saying out right copy them, but practice some of the same habits that have made them succeed. 6. Take risks to improve your business. Sometimes businesses don't want to advertise unless it's free, sometimes you have to spend money to get results. 7. Include emotional words in your advertisements. Use ones like love, security, relief, freedom, happy, satisfaction, fun, etc. 8. Ask people online to review your web site. You can use the comments you get to improve your web site or you may turn the reviewer into a customer. 9. Out source part of your workload. You'll save on most employee costs. You could out source your secretarial work, accounting, marketing, etc. 10. Combine a product and service together in a package deal. It could increase your sales. If you're selling a book, offer an hour of consulting with it. About the author: Wesley Atkins is the owner of http://www.reviewbooth.com/ - containing numerous web site marketing tips, articles, and reviews of marketing tools and software.

An introduction to point of sale software

by: Jakob Jelling

Point of sale software gives business owners a convenient way of checking out customers and of recording sales. It can keep a record of the store inventory, updating it when an order is processed. It can also print out receipts, carry out credit card processing, track customers, etc. Point of sale software eases the flow at checkout terminals, while recording all the information that can help you make better business decisions. Point of sale software allows users to input via keyboard or mouse, and some even have a touch screen interface. You can install the software on your checkout register. When checking out a customer you can either input the sales item yourself or use a bar code scanner. The point of sale software will look up the item in the inventory and bring up the price. It can also calculate tax on the item and change for the customer. POS software can print out receipts and reports. Point of sale software makes your business accounting a lot easier by creating reports on inventory, sales, customers, etc. Since it is already recording each sale, it can easily tell you the sales and revenue of the day. Point of sale software can also help with credit card processing. Credit cards are the preferred method of payment. People do not want to carry around cash for all their purchases. Credit card is a convenient method of payment and if you do not have credit card processing, your business can lose some of its competitiveness. Point of sale software receives input from the POS hardware, which is the scanning station for the credit card. The software will process the credit card payment for you. It can check that the card has not expired and is valid. You will need a merchant account for the point of sale software to do its job. POS software is generally easy to install and easy to use. You will need to know how to update inventory and record a price change for an item. Point of sale software usually provides an easy to use interface to do this. It can make the job of the cashier a lot easier by automating the routine tasks of the day. There is a wide variety of point of sale software available. You can choose one that fits your budget and meets the needs of your particular business. The software will have compatibility requirements with the point of sale hardware. It will also have operating system requirements such as it might need a Windows or Linux system. Point of sale software can more than pay for itself over time by making checkout faster and doing your accounting for you. Point of sale software may be the right solution for your business and can provide you with tons of benefits. About the author: Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.cashbazar.comVisit his website for the latest on personal finance, debt elimination, budgeting, credit cards and real estate.

Bottleneck-oriented Business Management

by: Stephan Szugat

Simple and effective Business Management In every enterprise there are, at every time, one or more bottlenecks, which have influence to the commercial situation. Bottleneck-oriented business management has the purpose to early track the bottlenecks and to remove them, to allow an optimum of commercial development. To know at any time, what a business lacks of and to be able to add the missing things, is today a determining competition advantage. Bottlenecks can be, e.g.: low sales proceeds high due or overdue accounts receivables low liquidity (Cash on Hand, etc.) high amount of liabilities low number of customers too many new customers too high capacity utilization defective administration or management and a lot more. These example show that bottlenecks not only concern negative circumstances, but also can apply to positive commercial development. If an enterprise takes up many new customers, this results in new orders, which lead to other circumstances, like a possible excess in capacity utilization. In case the excess of capacity utilization stays for a longer time, this may result in a lower employee motivation, because of a slump in working atmosphere within the company, which then could lead to less qualtiy of the work performed. Due to a TIMELY reporting system many companies take care of reaching the desired commercial development. However, a regular analysis of expenses or the annual reports are not enough to control a business today. In the today's dynamic markets these evaluations are too statical, too much oriented on the past commercial development, which had been achieved. Also cost accounting only shows what has happened in the past. The actual direction in which a business is running could not be seen. Imagine a business to be a car. If you sat down in a car, do you like to receive information from the instruments from the last year or month? Probably not. You would like to have actual information about fuel tank content, coolant temperature and a lot more. Bottleneck-oriented business management should exactly bring the most important and actual information about a business to you, including so-called early warning signals (Screenshot abenetis ERS-Diagram). Data oriented to the past for early-warning-systems? A working early-warning-system needs data which are not oriented to the past, like from cost accounting or year-/month-end-closeings. It needs data from so-called early indicators, which has to be gathered from different areas of an enterprise. Of course, figures from the finance and accounting department belong into an early-warning-system, but they only have a subordinated role, because they are oriented to the past. Nowadays the reporting must show the present situation of a business. In many businesses the expenditure of time for the reporting rose considerably, due to the today's flood of information. Aggravatingly added to this, is the selection of the really relevant business ratios, which allow an appropriate overview of the actual business situation. Too often reports are prepared, which are not perceived by anybody, due to the lack of necessary statements about the business development. There are already proven business-ratio-systems, that enterprises only need to take over. Get back into the car again, imagine you have only one instrument in front of you, which shows the value "35". What does this signify? It is not recognizable how many fuel exists, how the Temperature of the coolant is or how fast the car is driving, etc. At this example you could recognize the little expressiveness of only one business ratio. It shows the importance to use the right business ratios, which must have a connection to each other and which have a different temporal origin. Nevertheless, many business ratio systems are mostly based on data which originate from the past. This turns often to the problem, that immediate information are not available, to indicate the actual situation of a business. However, there is still the alternative, to reduce the period of the past. How would it be with one week instead of analysing business data every 4 weeks? This would lead to the fact that you could act a few weeks earlier, if something should run a little bit inclinedly. Only very few data are needed to receive an informative evaluation. This again is comparably with a car. If you are driving with your car, you only receive a small, well-chosen number of information and nevertheless, have an actual picture of the situation. This is also possible for businesses, as well! As a motorist we receive only one fraction of the data which is acquired by the system of the car, and just these fraction of information is enough for us to reach the desired destination. When traveling usually we are well prepared, but the principle of the preparations is often neglected in business operation. As it is with traveling, the final goal has to be clearly stated by the business management. This could be done by having planing data available. Only by target/actual comparison divergences of the commercial development will be recognized. Unfortunately, many small businesses renounce to use plan data. Besides, it is not about, to cut plan data into the smallest pieces, but only to get a rough picture, what the business is going to achieve. It is absolutely possible to run a business on the basis of the figures from the previous year, however, to use these figures, the past commercial development should be taken into consideration. So the figures from the previous year should be improved to fit with the new goals. And finished are the planning data and the basis for an operational risk management are laid. Still if it is most important to know the actual bottlenecks in business operation. Recognize problems and act! One of the most important factors in business management is the early recognition of problems and potentials. There are bottlenecks in every business, which could have serious results. Pecuniary difficulties could lead to bankruptcy for example. Therefore symptoms must be recognized early, in order to turn a possible crisis away and to secure the future of your business. Also to use available potentials, regular analyses should be done. Nowadays products and services could not be sold forever, because product cycles become shorter and shorter due to market dynamism. The recognition and development of potentials is exceptionally important, to avoid losing the already achieved basis of a business. About the author: Stephan Szugat is founder of abenetis a web-based service about Business Management Solutions focusing on the core needs of business management. This includes operational and strategic analysis especially Early-Recognition-Systems, Knowledge-Management and other Services for small and mid-sized businesses. He has approx. 15 years experience in the Finance and Accounting Area from companies of different size and from various industries. http://www.abenetis.com

Why Online Presence Is Essential For Small Business Success

by: Srinivasan R.G.

If you are any kind of small business or home operated business, online presence is essential. Majority of web site visitors are from the English speaking population due to the high levels of internet penetration in that category, online presence for all small enterprises cannot be overemphasized. The research data in the US about online connectivity reveals the following facts which may help to understand the importance of the web presence for businesses especially the small enterprise. 70 % of the US households have web connectivity. In 2004 worldwide online population was 801 million worldwide. Of these 36% used English as the language. Of this U.S. alone accounts for close to 200 million. The next major group was European languages with 38 % and major single language next to English was Chinese accounting for 14%. Home web users were generally affluent, literate, and belonged to the younger age profile. This means the web presence for any business is necessary if you want to succeed in promoting your products and services to a population who can afford them and also willing to buy them online. The household that did not own a computer or who were were not connected to the web, generally felt it is not useful or needed and cost too much. What this means for a small business owner is that they are better off promoting their products to people who were online. You small business success is undoubtedly linked to your online presence

Starting An Online Business From Home

by: J. Elisha Burke

Many people believe that starting an online business from home is difficult. In fact it is quite easy. If you are already familiar with what product you will sell you will need to create or hire someone to produce an online website for you. This website should list the product or products you have available. If you will be selling your own products, make sure that your online business has a name that reflects you and what you offer. After this has been completed, you should inquire in your local state to learn the guidelines necessary for you to run a business from your home. Many states require that even an online business register with them and receive a business license. You will have to get the necessary forms to request this license. After you have obtained you license, you should also find out how running an online business from home will affect you tax situation. You would still need to report any income you make from your business, even if you are working at home. After all this paperwork is completed for you business, it is important to set up your home office for you new job. It is suggested that you have a separate space to conduct your business affairs. A separate phone line that customers can call is also very necessary and I strongly suggest you get a fax machine. You will lose customers if you are not able to be reached by telephone, fax and e-mail. Having a separate phone line from the rest of the house is essential! Other than a second phone line, it is also a good idea to buy the necessary hardware and software for you home office. You will save lots of money if you have your own fax machine, scanner, and printer. Also it is probably wise to have the latest software additions for word processing and accounting. The accounting software is especially useful for you to keep track of all expenses and revenue for your online business. When you have established the business and things are going well, it is a good idea to consider outsourcing. This would mean hiring someone to take care of the little jobs that you would have to do such as email or letter correspondence or creating marketing brochures. By doing this, you will be able to focus on the more important areas of making money and marketing your business, which will be key to your success. Copyright 2005 Burke Publications All Rights Reserved

9 things you must do to maximize your chances of obtaining a small business loan

by: Neil Best

To get approval for your small business loan application, you must be able to meet the lending criteria set down. Some organisations are more risk averse than others, and will therefore have more stringent criteria. To vastly increase your chances of a successful funding application, you will need to present the following information: 1. The reason for the loan. The lender will be looking for something that fits within the normal range and expertise of your business. The amount may cover a number of items, so you will need to cover each. 2. The amount required, and the repayment term of the small business loan you want. (e.g. $10,000 term 5 years, payable quarterly). 3. Details of how you will repay the amount borrowed. For example, “From the increase in profits of reduced running costs of the Whizzbang Go4It” 4. Details of security you will be able to offer to the lender. This will act as reassurance for the lender. If you’re not prepared to put up some aspect of security, then why should they? 5. You will need to include your business plan which will serve to answer essential questions relating to management capabilities, information about the market you operate in. What kind of business you are in etc. 6. 3 Years financial statements. You will need to present quality financial information from your accounting software, preferably signed off by your accountant or tax advisor. 7. Latest Set of Management accounts. Again produced from your accounting software. 8. Accounts receivables (debtors) and payables (creditors) ageing reports. 9. Principals financial statements. – Particularly required if some form of security is necessary. If you are a new company, the emphasis is going to be on your business plan , and the security (also called collateral) you or your business can provide against the loan. You must take the time to practice presenting your case to the bank or lender to iron out any glitches. Practice on your colleagues and family (you never know, they might be so impressed, they'll invest or lend!). It may help to role play the lender and come up with as many pointy questions as possible. The more time you take the better your chances will be. (But remember, don’t fall into the analysis paralysis trap!) Good luck!

Taxing Overseas Firms for SOX Compliance

by: Neil More

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, also called the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002 was signed into law on July 30, 2002 by President Bush. In the aftermath of Enron, Arthur Andersen, Global Crossing, and WorldCom, SOX promises greater corporate accountability and transparency. Named after Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael G. Oxley, SOX focuses on the importance of ethical behavior in corporate governance-across the United States and now…overseas. All countries have government-required laws like Sarbanes Oxley. In the UK, it’s the "Combined Code on Corporate Governance," in The Netherlands it’s the "Code Tabaksblatt," Germany has a "Bilanz Reform" and a "Bilanz Kontroll Gesetz." But then, why do we need SOX overseas since we already have the required laws? It’s because companies with U.S. headquarters must ensure that all foreign outposts meet federal standards. This is the major cause of concern in the management and accounting circles. According to some experts, the Sarbanes Oxley Act might have dictated convoluted rules and regulations on the U.S. businesses. While the rules are concrete ideologies that prevent accounting scandals, the constant flux in the policies confuses businesses around the globe. SOX compliance by vendors and business partners outside the U.S. is a frightening task. The risks and complications involved in enforcing the regulations for multiple firms around the world are enormous. The U.S. firms should keep themselves abreast of the data operations and data management followed by overseas vendors. This complicates the case further as the data should be integrated in financials or entered in balance sheets. Cumbersome processing of data would step up IT-related expenses. The global impact of SOX is tremendous. At the moment, the UK Big Four firms are feeling SOX repercussions in their consulting sectors. http://www.big4.com -a website for global Big4 alumni - receives periodic updates on the latest news and trends at the Big Four firms. The Big Four in UK reportedly lost GBP250 million in consulting fees since 2002-a direct outcome of Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Among the Big Four firms, PricewaterhouseCoopers faced a huge decline in their consulting fees. Causes for this decline can be attributed to: ·The increased cost of compliance that usurped consulting budgets. ·Independence restrictions in Sarbanes-Oxley have restrained companies from utilizing their auditors for many consulting services. There is an apparent role reversal in consulting fees and audit services. If consulting fees have declined, audit fees have considerably increased. A whopping 30% increase in Big Four audit fees has been observed over a period of two years. This spike does not compensate for the revenues lost for consulting. Consulting was the major strength of the Big Four in the UK. But, in the present conditions, the significant decline in consulting fees clearly demarcates the performance of the Big Four in the UK. According to a survey by an European firm, many overseas firms with their shares listed in the U.S. were not ready to meet the deadlines of Sarbanes-Oxley. Since European firms already have specific regulations, SOX compliance is extremely difficult. Some overseas firms have been attempting to get delisted from the U.S. stock markets since SOX’s inception. Foreign firms about to get listed on overseas exchanges are also resisting to get listed in the U.S. These problems would take toll on the U.S. market performance and economy. But, the exit of foreign firms from the U.S. exchanges is not that easy. As per SEC guidelines, foreign firms holding 300 or more shareholders in the U.S. cannot delist from the U.S. exchange where they trade. In the light of these problems, the Securities and Exchange Commission-in its bid to offer sustained flexibility-started modifying rules for overseas firms listed in the U.S. The SEC would facilitate foreign firms to delist their securities that are traded on the U.S. exchanges. Modifying SEC rules to accommodate European firms would create a state of unrest among the American managements. The SOX compliance should be an “all-encompassing” formula-that which enables governments and managements worldwide to function efficiently and in rhythm. A level headed approach to weed out this disconcert would improve the situation.

Top 7 Strategies for Writing Accounting Procedures

by: Chris Anderson

You have permission to publish this article free of charge, as long as the resource box is included with the article. If you do run my article, a courtesy reply to sean@bizmanualz.com would be greatly appreciated. This article is 909 words long including the resource box. Thanks for your interest. Part Two of Cash to Cash Cycle Series Part One: http://www.bizmanualz.com/articles/01-05-05_inventory_procedures.html/?ART78 Next Week: Sales We’ve already found $250,000…so let’s find another $250,000… Laying the Foundation Last week, we raised the question: what would your business do with $1,000,000? To lay the foundation we introduced inventory as the first of four areas that will lead toward our million dollar goal. And you saw exactly how to achieve the first $250,000 in cash savings by avoiding delays with an increase in velocity, as well as an increase in discipline and competency. But how exactly? With time – as you saw with inventory and as you’ll see this week. Tackling Accounting Procedures Let’s continue that crucial theme of time with another major source on your balance sheet – specifically, accounts receivable (A/R). If you have $500,000 or more in accounts receivable then STOP! We have found it again. Reducing Average Days Collection Why? Because if we focus on reducing your average days collection by 50%, then your accounts receivable balance will fall to $250,000 and the result will be an extra $250,000 in your bank account. And just like that, we’re halfway to our $1,000,000 goal. So now, let’s see how this actually works in a real-life business scenario. Accounting Procedures Service Business Example A service organization with $700,000 in average A/R balances needed assistance. So we examined their A/R function to understand and quantify the workflow and workload issues. Then we designed and implemented a process to improve the A/R performance. The metrics we developed reduced their “over 60” accounts receivables by 85% and their overall A/R balance by 50% within 90 days of implementing the new procedures. With these new processes and reports, the company now tracks Average Days Collection and past due rather than just Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) as the measure of their collection effectiveness. The result: an extra $350,000 in cash. And, again, we explicitly see the crucial role of time and how an increase in velocity and discipline directly yields an increase in efficiency and cash savings. So how can you use time to your advantage? Methods to Design the New Accounting Process Decrease collection cycle. Examine customer accounts that go beyond your terms. Do not wait until twice the net terms to take action. Tighten credit policy. Examine credit process for slippage. Do you have a credit approval process? Do you perform credit checks? What standards are used to extend credit? Reduce credit terms. Change the credit terms you offer your customers. If you offer terms of net 45, reduce it to net 30. You might offer a discount of 1% if paid within 10 days else net due in 30 days. This is equivalent to 18 % annual interest and most businesses will take those terms. Shorten the invoice process. Bill your customers immediately. This is a big one. Many service organizations wait until the end of the month to tally billable hours and determine customer charges. Do not wait until the end of the month. This could reduce your day’s receivable by as much as 15 days right there. Email or fax your invoices to save another day or two (e.g. QuickBooks accounting software contains this feature). Reduce billing errors. Most customers delay payments because of invoice errors. Customers won’t recognize the invoice until it is corrected and may not even notify you, the vendor, of the error until you call for collection. Again, avoiding this delay in error and time will amount to cash savings. Train Accounts Receivables personnel. Make sure that all personnel involved are training to understand the performance metrics for their jobs. For example, a company will manage $500,000 in monthly A/R balances (that’s $6 Million a year!) using an A/R clerk who makes $30,000. But then the supervisor uses nothing more than On-The-Job (OJT) training for the clerk. Then the CFO thinks that he or she (the CFO) is really managing the money. But, in reality, that’s not the case; the clerk is managing the money day-to-day. So shouldn’t the A/R clerk receive enough training to manage such a significant amount? After all, it only takes a 6% change in A/R in one month to equal the A/R clerk’s entire annual salary. Isn’t the A/R savings worth a little extra time in training? Maximize the Accounting Process. With the Accounts Receivable department you should use each element of the process to gain the most benefit for your business. And with time-saving procedures set in place, you will let your efficiency work for you. Grabbing Your Policy Goal With well-defined processes and procedures in place, you will increase efficiency by reducing your Average Days Collection. And of course a reduction in Average Days Collection means your Accounts Receivable balance will also fall, creating more cash in cash on hand. And just like that we’re halfway to our $1,000,000 goal. All you have to do is grab it. Next week, we will look at finding still another $250,000 in the Sales function – which will give us $750,000 toward our goal of 1 Million in cash savings. So, again, not only do you aim to reap the rewards of extra savings to your bottom line, but also see more cash in the bank - $1,000,000 cash to be exact.

mmaterial Values in Business Management

Article Title: I Author: Stephan Szugat Word Count: 915 mmaterial Values in Business Management Maybe you have already heard that in some ways immaterial values are important for business management. But you might not found how to bring them into your management processes or into your reporting packages. However, first of all we should be clear, what immaterial values are? Well, this includes the balance sheet information about intangible assets, but is going far behind it. As we all know, decisions are mostly based on feelings or emotions, than on logical judgement. A feeling is an energy. Energy is not material, it is immaterial. The overall emotions or motivation of employees in a business is a immaterial value, it could have positive and negative impact on the business development. Does sound very esoterical for you? Might be, but today we know that our emotions drive a lot of our life. Not only the feelings of the emplyoees have an impact on the business development, also the feelings of potenial customers have it. These customer feelings could be measured as customer satisfaction, as how customers see the company or it’s products and services and so on. There is more energy, which is immaterial, included in our business life as we are aware of. Until today we might know about these energies or have read that businesses have to be more aware of them. But to find Solutions which are able to measure these energies are not very common and hard to find. Business Management still uses hard figures such as ratios based on financial values and just forgets that there has been more than only the numbers from the accounting and the money in the pocket. If you only look to the accounting figures of a business, you only look to this company as if you were looking at an iceberg. You only see a fraction of the iceberg, only what is above the surface. Everything below the surface is out of your view. While the iceberg is melting away, it still brings up new parts of it self. But you only see this new parts, when the iceberg is melting. It’s just the same with the accounting figures as soon as you see them they are gone. That means they are old, it’s nice to knew them, but they relate to business already accomplished. The accounting figures are just like to iceberg when it comes above the surface while it is melting away. Now, wouldn’t it be great to see the whole iceberg, even if a big part is below the surface? Yes, it would be great. The immaterial values of your business are just below surface. If you bring them up, you could see the whole picture of your business. Running a business only focusing on profit could lead to running into a collapse. It might take time, but soon customers and employees will find out that just the profit counts to a specific company. Well, it’s correct, no business could survive without profit, but first of all every business has to make profit on immaterial items, such as image, motivation of employees and customers faith. One day from these immaterial profits the financial profit arises. That’s the theory. Propably you already read about this, but have you found a way to measure immaterial values of your business? It’s not that difficult, but it needs some thoughts. First of all it is important to make a list of immaterial values which have the most impact on the business development. When this has been finished, methods to measure and valuate the immaterial values have to be found. And at last, the values for all the selected immaterial items have to be analysed regularly. Setting up such a Reporting System for immaterial values could be a long lasting task. You might try to do it with a spreadsheet program or with a database, but either way will take it’s time. Using ready made Standard Software might be another option, but there are not much choices. In case you use the Balance Scorecard, you might think having all the data mentioned above and you might think having a good solution for analysation. The Balance Scorecard has it’s advantages, but for a short, fast and regular analysis of immaterial values it is far to complex and much to slow. There is just the need to measure, store and analyse some data. About 30 items will be enough to have an overview of immaterial values and some material values as well. Most of the necessary data are usually already stored in every business. They only need to be concentrated into one table and have to be analysed. Are immaterial values important for every business? Yes. This includes big businesses as well as the one-man-business, retail stores, mechanics, freelancer and so on. You may find more information on immaterial values in business management, when searching for Early-Warning-System, Early-Recognition-Sytems and something similar. You are able to find one or the other immaterial value included in Management Methods, Ratio Systems and Financial Analysis. But still, most Reports and Measurement System are based on financial data. A Solution which every business, no matter of size, could use, is the abenetis ERS (Early-Recognition-System). It is called Early-Recognition-System, because with the used immaterial values every business could be aware of tendencies in it’s business development soon. At the moment the abenetis ERS is available only as Online-Service, but could soon be delivered as Intranet-Version, too. More details are available at our ERS-Subscription Page.

HOW TO STAY FOCUSSED AND BUILD YOUR BUSINESS

by: Matt Bacak

You have a detailed business plan, which showed the overall intent of your company. You presented the business plan to your bank before start-up and they submitted funding in the amount that you both deemed acceptable. The original business plan contained the basis of the procedures that will help you stay focussed while the company grows. Let's examine some of these processes that you will use to give your business the focus it needs to grow and succeed. 1. A marketing plan. If sales are a part of your operation (and it seems that some form of selling is always a big part of every company), then, you will need to have your sales group focussed on a marketing plan. Short term and longer-term analysis should be a part of this planning and will likely contain an analysis of your competition, market potential and sales projections. Be careful not to fall into the trap of letting “the business take care of itself”, stay focussed at all times and be sure your managers are tuned into this market monitoring regularly, nothing is more defeating to the general manager/owner than to be told by a sales manager…I didn't see that coming! YIKES! 2. Accounting procedures. If sales are important, then the need to stay focussed on receiving the proceeds from sales is equally important. Accounts payable, expenses and accounts receivable need to have fixed procedures in place to allow money to flow freely through the company coffers. Focussing on these procedures at regular weekly and monthly meetings will put the accounting and marketing groups on the same path. A rift between marketing and accounting is a common bureaucratic occurrence; so don't be surprised if one point you hear from someone from sales state, “We make the money here, how come I have to live by their rules?” Getting these two operations to stay focussed on a bottom line results oriented approach is a regular part of an owner's job description. 3. Human resources. If you have ever worked for a manager, who considered his employees as expenses rather than assets, then you will be familiar with the need for managers to stay focussed on human resources within the company. A manager who is fixated on staff reduction regardless of their accomplishments will create an atmosphere of fear. Certainly, no one wants to be grossly over-staffed, but a good owner/manager will focus on keeping adequate employee base numbers, and ensure continuing training, safety programs and top of the line employee benefits. It's your campground, why not have “happy campers?” 4. Selling your business. This does not mean selling in the true literal sense. It means focusing on being sure your company image is one that is the envy of your competitors and is known in the business world as a first class operation. You can do this by having key managers attending industry conferences. Be clear and tell them that their focus at these seminars is to network, thoroughly gathering as much new information that they can. They should also 'sell' other attendees on the importance and efficiency of their company in the industry. Upon their return, have follow-up meetings with these managers where they will report in detail on what they have learned. Managers attending conventions and seminars should take opportunities to enjoy themselves, nevertheless, they will be the “face” of your company, it's wise be sure that they focus on making them business meetings, and not all “playtime.” If planning, organizing, staffing, direction and control are five major factors in managing a company, staying focussed throughout the process, is paramount!

Outside The Box

by: Phillip A. Ross

Outside The Box Thinking "outside the box" or as it is sometimes called, "coloring outside the lines" is a popular idea in the business world today. People and organizations are told to think outside the box or color outside the lines as a way to stimulate creativity when they need to solve problems like streamlining production, establishing a new product, or developing a new process. And it's true that creativity and innovation often arise from unexpected and unconventional thinking. But there is a serious problem with trying to apply such thinking too broadly. For instance, creativity is valued in art and advertising, but not in banking and accounting. An accounting firm recently ran an ad suggesting that it could think "outside the box." Do you really want your business to be associated with creative accounting? Aren't accountants supposed to put the numbers in the right box? Wasn't creative accounting a serious problem for Enron? In reality, clear thinking and the creativity that it produces are rarely a matter of thinking outside the box. And coloring outside the lines is for the most part just sloppy workmanship. The art of clear thinking is a matter of putting thoughts in to the right boxes or categories. Clear thinking is a matter of mental organization. Conversely, sloppy thinking involves the confusion of categories, of putting ideas into the wrong boxes or not putting them in order at all. Is a child who will not straighten his or her room creative or just sloppy? There is a significant difference. While creativity sometimes looks sloppy to an outside observer, it does not issue from sloppiness. Picasso was a creative artist. But his creativity was not a matter of the art he produced. In reality his abstract work is technically sloppy. It looks like the work of a child. Picasso could sell his abstract art only because he had previously established himself as an artist who could color inside the lines very well. Had he not first proven his artistic talent in the traditional way, his abstract art would have been worth much less. He used his reputation as a traditional artist to establish a new direction in art. He didn't so much color outside the box, as he expanded the boundaries and definition of the box. But the point is that his abstract creations were valuable only because of his proven abilities in the traditional arts. Contrast my own efforts to establish myself as an abstract artist. My art has gone unnoticed because I have not been able to prove myself as a traditional artist. Not that I actually tried to do so, but I am using myself as an example to make the point. The creativity of a novel idea requires the discipline of order and structure to be valuable. Picasso's art is valuable because he was an accomplished painter who intentionally colored outside the lines. My art is not valuable because I am not an accomplished painter and I accidentally color outside the lines. While the two products may look similar, the difference is critical. Creativity is more than breaking the rules. Similarly, Joseph Heller was able to break the rules of English grammar in his book, Something Happened (Scribner, 1974), only because he was intimately familiar with them. Having taught English at the University of South Carolina, he was a master of grammar. And only out of his expertise could he creatively exploit, expand and redefine the boundaries of grammar. And so it is with regard to thinking outside the box. Thinking outside the box apart from being able to think inside the box is worthless. Such thought is just plain sloppy. Thus, the suggestion that creativity lies in the ability to think outside the box is mostly nonsense. Creativity issues from talent, ability and discipline. Talent must be forged and shaped on the anvil of discipline in order to develop ability. Great ability is always the result of study, discipline and practice. Creativity is more a matter of seeing that the boxes themselves are inadequate and suggesting a better arrangement or a better definition. Creativity doesn't simply discard the boxes, it redefines and/or rearranges them after becoming intimately familiar with them. Real creativity is always the fruit of discipline and order. Creativity, in order to be genuinely creative and not simply sloppy disorganization, must emerge out of discipline and order as an intentional effort. While a creative idea often comes unbidden out of unexpected places, it requires discipline, study and order to make something of it. Apart from discipline and order, what passes for creativity is nonsense, and to suggest otherwise actually undermines and/or weakens the creative process. What does this mean for our industry? Distributors and suppliers should apply themselves to mastering the basics before attempting to break the rules in the name of creativity. Don't start outside the box. First, establish your ability to think within the box. Master the rules before you suggest breaking them. For example, before a distributorship presents a wild, innovative concept to a client for a campaign, it should first establish its expertise with campaigns and/or ideas that have a track record of yielding good ROI. Designers, artists, and copy writers should establish their mastery of basics before experimenting outside the box. For the most part the important stuff is inside the box. ©2002 Phillip A. Ross

3 Essential Tools for Starting and Maintaining a Small Business

by: Ryan Hough

We believe that there are 3 factors that drive the success of small businesses. 1) Acquiring start-up capital 2) Finding customers 3) Accounting for, budgeting and controlling sales and expenses The following resources will help your small business achieve these success factors. Acquiring Start-Up Capital An adequate supply of capital is essential as many profitable businesses fail because they don’t have enough cash to pay their employees and suppliers. But what is an adequate supply of capital? The only way to tell is by doing a significant amount of research on your potential market and formally documenting this in a business plan. I’m sure you know that a business plan is a very important document that is crucial to convincing your banker to lend you money. There are two ways to obtain a business plan. 1) Do it yourself by amending a business plan template, or 2) Hire a professional to do it for you. Obviously obtain 1) will be a great deal cheaper. Our research led to a website that has over 60 high quality and free business plan templates. We also found a directory that you can use to easily find a business plan writer in your city – where ever you live in the world. Finding Customers Finding customers is a difficult and expensive task for service business owners such as accountants, lawyers and plumbers. We believe that a cost effective marketing strategy for service business owners is to simply give all their personal contacts a few business cards. Our research led to a few websites that have pre-designed business card templates. We felt that the diversity and quality of these designs was outstanding. In addition, we found that you can obtain a significant saving by finding a printing service on the Internet. We found that you could get 2,000 full color business cards for as little as US $150. Accounting For, Budgeting and Controlling Revenue and Expenses Accurate accounting is very important for small business owners. It’s essential that you have timely access to information that could make or break your business. If stocks are running low – you need to know about it. If a large proportion of your debtors haven’t paid – you need to know about it. If you do not react to these situations quickly you may have a situation where you don’t have enough money to pay your employees – or worse still someone is stealing cash out the till. Our research led to a website that compares and reviews top accounting software for small businesses. The cheapest software cost US $89.99 and the most expensive software cost US $1,499. It was interesting to note that the top 3 ranked websites were not the most expensive and cost between US $250 - US $300. Hopefully you now have an idea of some of the tools that you can use to grow and maintain your small business. If you would like to benefit from our research please visit our website. We do not charge for this research and offer the content freely on our website. About the author: http://www.best-quality-small-business-resources.com/ Ryan Hough is the webmaster of best quality small business resources.com, who's aim is to help you save time and money by finding reviews and case studies that will enable you to choose the best resources at the right price. Circulated by Article Emporium

Understanding Depreciation: It May Be More Simple Than You Think

by: John Day

Depreciation is defined as a portion of the cost that reflects the use of a fixed asset during an accounting period. A fixed asset is an item that has a useful life of over one year. An accounting period is usually a month, quarter, six months or one year. Let’s say you bought a desk for your office on January 1, for $1000 and it was determined that the desk had a useful life of seven years. Using a one year accounting period and the “straight-line” method of depreciation, the portion of the cost to be depreciated would be one-seventh of $1000, or $142.86. Most non-accountants roll their eyes and shudder when the topic of “depreciation” comes up. This is where the line in the sand is drawn. Depreciation is far too complicated to try and figure out, or so it seems to many. But is it really? Surely the definition of depreciation mentioned above is not that difficult to comprehend. If you look closely you will see that there are five pieces of information you must have in order to determine the amount of depreciation you can deduct in one year. They are: -The nature of the item purchased (the desk). -The date the item was placed in service (Jan 1). -The cost of the item ($1000). -The useful life of the item (seven years). -The method of depreciation to be used (straight-line) The first three are easy to figure out, the second two are also easy but require a little research. How do you figure out the useful life of an item? Let me regress for a moment. There is “book depreciation” which is based on the real useful life of an item, and there is the IRS version of what constitutes the useful life of an item. A business that is concerned with accurately allocating its costs so that it can get a true picture of net profit will use book depreciation on its financial statements. However, for tax purposes the business is required to use the IRS method. The IRS may have shorter or longer useful lives for fixed assets causing a higher or lower depreciation write-off. The higher the write-off, the less tax a business pays. The long and short of it is that you end up having to create a book financial statement and a tax financial statement. So, most small businesses that aren’t concerned with a precise measurement of their net profit use the IRS method on their books. This means that all you have to do is look in IRS Publication 946 to find the useful life of a particular item. The last piece of information you need is found by determining the method of depreciation to use. Most often it will be one of two methods: the “straight-line” method or an accelerated method called the “double-declining balance” method. Let’s briefly discuss these two methods: Straight-line This is the simple method mentioned in the definition above. Just take the cost of the item, divide it by the useful life and you’ve got the answer. Yes, you will have to adjust the depreciation for the first year you placed the item in service and for the last year when you removed the item from service. For instance, if your depreciation for one year was $150 and you placed the item in service on April 1 then divide $150 by 12 (months) and multiply $12.50 by 9 (months) to get $112.50. If you removed the item on February 28 then your deduction will only be $25.00 (2 x $12.50). Double-declining balance The idea behind this method is that when an item is purchased new, you will use up more of it in the earlier years of its life, therefore, justifying a higher depreciation deduction in the earlier years. With this method, simply divide the cost of the item by the useful life years as in the straight-line method. Then, multiply that result by 2 (double) in the first year. The second year, take the cost of the item and subtract the accumulated depreciation. Next, divide that result by the useful life and multiply that result by 2, and so on for each remaining year. But, wait! You don’t have to do this. The IRS provides tables that have the percentages worked out for each year of the two different methods. Not only that, they have set up special first year “conventions” that assume you purchased your depreciable fixed assets on June 30. This is called the one-half year convention. The idea behind this is that you may have bought some items earlier than June 30 and some after that date. So, to make it easy to figure out, they assume the higher and lower depreciation amounts will all average out. Actually, the IRS doesn’t even call it depreciation anymore. They call it “cost recovery”. Let’s face it. This is a political tool. Congress giveth and taketh away. They have been playing with this system for years. If they want to stimulate growth in business they will shorten the useful life of assets so businesses can attain a higher write-off. If they are not in the mood, they will extend the useful life of an item. A good example is the 39 years set for the useful life of commercial property. This means that if you lease a building for your business and make improvements, those improvements have to be depreciated over 39 years. Now congress is working on a bill to drop that down to 15 years for leasehold improvements. Before December 31, 1986 we had ACRS or Accelerated Cost Recovery System. Currently, we have MACRS or Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System. Every time congress tweaks the rules they give it a different name. Keep in mind there are different schedules for different properties. For instance, residential real property is depreciated over twenty-seven and one-half years and non-residential real property is depreciated over thirty-nine years. In addition, if more than forty percent of your total fixed asset purchases occurred in the last quarter of the year, then, you must use a mid-quarter convention. This convention assumes that your purchases made in the last quarter of the year were made on November 15. This prevents you from buying a big expensive piece of equipment on December 31 and treating it as though it were purchased on June 30 and gaining a larger depreciation expense. Understanding how basic depreciation works can be valuable to the small business owner because it helps to know the tax implications when planning for capital equipment purchases. About the author: John W. Day, MBA is the author of two courses in accounting basics for non-accountants. Visit his website at http://www.reallifeaccounting.comto download for FREE his 3 e-books pertaining to small business accounting and his monthly newsletter on accounting issues. Ask John questions directly on his Accounting for Non-Accountants blog . Circulated by Article Emporium