State governments across the country are facing some of the worst budget deficits in history. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan organization that provides research, technical assistance and opportunities for idea exchange among legislators, states are facing an aggregate budget gap of at least $83.9 billion for the 2011 Fiscal Year. This estimate is likely to increase materially as the economic recovery fails to materialize. For the 2010 Fiscal … [Read more...]
Crackdown on Misclassification of Employees as Independent Contractors
I recently wrote about the tax gap and how the IRS is changing some important policies to minimize the difference between what businesses and consumers owe in taxes and what they actually pay. As both Federal and State budgets become more strained, the IRS and state tax authorities sharpen their pencils further to extract as much in unpaid taxes possible. The next target: misclassification of employees as independent contractors. Why all the fuss about misclassification? When workers … [Read more...]
Online Finance Classes: Beef Up Your Skills and Get Relevant
One of the greatest challenges of running a business is finding the time to do everything that you want to do. Even after you prioritize your tasks, implement the KISS system and promise yourself not to check email every eight minutes, your day will still be limited to 24 hours. One of the areas that usually suffers first is continuing education. Unless your line of work has mandatory continuing education requirements, many business owners don’t take the time to take classes and learn … [Read more...]
So What’s Really Going on With Bank Lending?
Every quarter the Federal Reserve conducts an important survey among large domestic banks and the U.S. branches of foreign banks operating in the U.S. The “Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices” typically covers three areas: Changes over the past quarter in lending standards and terms that banks are offering to consumers and businesses. Changes over the past quarter in loan demand from consumers and business. Current events that impact banking. The survey … [Read more...]
How to Decipher Your Next Finance Hire’s Credentials
With the unemployment rate across most sectors still high (including finance), the number of job candidates with advanced degree in business is growing too. In many cases, It’s just not enough to help candidates stand out from the competition for finance and accounting jobs. One path that many practitioners take to enhance their candidacy is to earn professional certifications and designations. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, a division of the U.S. Department of … [Read more...]
Risk Management 101 for Small Business Owners
Risk is an inherent part of being in business. It can be managed and its adverse outcomes can be mitigated. The greatest challenge for small business owners is to find the proper balance between peace of mind and profitability. Trying to completely eliminate risk from your business is unrealistic and can be prohibitively expensive or cause you to institute policies that may be so risk averse that your business never grows. When many business owners think about “risk management” it’s … [Read more...]
How Any Business Can Generate Recurring Revenues
Recurring revenues are revenues that repeat periodically from a single sale. This is the opposite of non-recurring revenue, which occurs only once. Consider a company that sells installation services for HVAC systems. When they sell an installation, deliver as promised, and get paid, they have non-recurring revenue. It happened once and that’s that. But if the company decides to start offering an HVAC monitoring service for a monthly fee where they remotely track the condition of the HVAC … [Read more...]
Why You Should Follow the Beige Book
The U.S. economy is in a precarious position. The chatter among pundits, reporters, experts and so-called experts ranges from “green shoots”, referring to signs of recovery, to “double dip”, referring to another downturn. On a daily basis a new statistic, report or analysis is published leaning one way or the other. But keeping track of so much information that often contradicts itself isn’t practical. It wouldn’t leave any time to prepare your business for the anticipated direction of the … [Read more...]
ACH: How Booming Businesses Get Paid
Getting paid used to be quite simple: cash or check were the basic forms of payment accepted by small businesses. How times have changed! Improvements in secure communications, new technologies, economic conditions and the competitive landscape have led to tremendous innovation in the most important part of any business transaction: getting paid. Let’s take a closer look at ACH, a cost-effective, innovative payment method. Getting paid via the ACH network The Automated Clearing House … [Read more...]
Are You PCI Compliant?
According to the most recent Unisys Security Index, a leading social indicator of how consumers feel about certain risks, financial fraud – especially the unauthorized use of credit and debit cards – remains one of the top concerns across the country. Sixty two percent of adults are “seriously concerned” about the unauthorized use of their cards. Financial institutions and businesses, which lose billions of dollars to fraud every month, are continually fighting both amateur and … [Read more...]