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In financial planning, forecasts and projections aren’t the same
Businesses are rightly encouraged to regularly generate professionally prepared financial statements. Doing so is important for both understanding your own financial position and providing accurate, comprehensive information to stakeholders such as investors, lenders and advisors. However, keep in mind that financial statements are historical records. They depict the state of the company at a given point…
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Hiring family members can offer tax advantages (but be careful)
Summertime can mean hiring time for many types of businesses. With legions of working-age kids and college students out of school, and some spouses of business owners looking for part-time or seasonal work, companies may have a much deeper hiring pool to dive into this time of year. If you’re considering hiring your children or spouse,…
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6 tried-and-true strategies for improving collections
Businesses that operate in the retail or restaurant spheres have it relatively easy when it comes to collections. They generally take payments right at a point-of-sale terminal and customers go on their merry ways. (These enterprises face many other challenges, of course.) For other types of companies, it’s not so easy. Collections can be particularly challenging…
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Addressing pay equity at your business
Businesses today are under increased pressure to fully understand and thoroughly respond to the issue of pay equity. And neither of these two broad undertakings is particularly easy. First, fully understanding what pay equity is and whether and how it’s played out at your company calls for research, analysis and perhaps some difficult discussions. The second…
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How to battle back against brandjacking
As individuals, we’re warned repeatedly about the dangers of online identity theft. Well, as a business owner, you’re in double jeopardy because a hacker might not only steal your personal identity, but also — or alternatively — hijack your company’s brand. It’s sometimes called “brandjacking.” Essentially, a fraudster copies or recreates a business’s digital assets and then…
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ACA penalties will rise in 2024
Recently, the IRS announced 2024 indexing adjustments to the applicable dollar amount used to calculate employer shared responsibility penalties under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Although next year might seem a long way off, it’s best to get an early start on determining whether your business is an applicable large employer (ALE) under the ACA. If…
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5 valuation terms that every business owner should know
As a business owner, you’ll likely need to have your company appraised at some point. An appraisal is essential in the event of a business sale, merger or acquisition. It’s also important when creating or updating a buy-sell agreement or doing estate planning. You can even use a business valuation to help kickstart or support…
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3 ways your business can uncover cost cuts
Every business wants to find them, but they sure don’t make it easy. We’re talking about cost cuts: clear and substantial ways to lower expenses, thereby strengthening cash flow and giving you a better shot at strong profitability. Obvious places to slash costs — such as wages, benefits and overhead — often aren’t a viable…
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Influencer marketing could help your business (or not)
Most companies today have some sort of presence on social media as part of their marketing efforts. If you’ve spent any time online as a business owner, you’d probably agree that building a following and getting meaningful reactions to your posts isn’t easy. One way that some companies rise above the din is to not only…
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Supreme Court: Overtime rules still apply to highly compensated employees
If you were told someone earns more than $200,000 annually, you might assume the person is a salaried employee who’s ineligible for overtime pay. However, as demonstrated in the recent U.S. Supreme Court case of Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt, this isn’t always a safe assumption. The FLSA rules Under the Fair Labor…
