Year-End Tax Advice
During December, small business owners often feel like they are in a time warp. In the blink of an eye, it’s January 1st, and tax time. You still have time to get your business ready for the 2013 tax season.
How to Handle a Late-Paying Customer
It’s been a tough year for many small businesses, and some clients have been slower than usual to pay their outstanding invoices. When a customer fails to pay in a timely fashion, it creates a cash flow crunch. It would be great if customers paid you up front. But that, of course, isn’t realistic in most cases. So what do you do?
5 Tips to Keep Your Business Healthy This Cold and Flu Season.
The cold and flu season takes its toll on America’s businesses. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the flu alone costs U.S. companies $10.4 billion in direct costs — which includes hospitalization and other medical expenses. In addition, illnesses that spread throughout the work environment cause 22 million sick days which cost businesses significantly in terms of lost productivity. Healthy Work Place Project estimates a 25 employee company loses $33,000 every year to lost productivity and having to hire temporary workers to replace those who are because of illness.
New Online Resource Helps Small Businesses Save Money and Time.
When it comes to managing travel and related expenses, I find many small business owners are much like me. They don’t have formalized travel policies or a streamlined process. Plus, the majority of us manage our travel expenses by filling out reports manually and stapling receipts to them. Often we forget something or just fail to submit a report at all. That’s just not good business.
Exceed Expectations to Build Loyal Customers
Customers and clients expect satisfactory results. But in today’s competitive market, good isn’t good enough. To be a wildly successful business, you should strive to exceed expectations. Stay in touch before, during and after a job and inform customers about deliverable dates. Go above and beyond just getting the job done. These actions go a long way to build customer loyalty, repeat business and word of mouth referrals.