If your car is used for business purposes, whether you are self-employed or an employee, you can get the benefit of tax deductions. You have 2 choices for claiming deductions on a business car:  You can deduct the actual business-related costs of gas, oil, lubrication, repairs, tires, supplies, parking, tolls, drivers’ salaries, and depreciation.  Ã‚ Use the standard mileage …
Lenders will want to see documentation that supports all of your information. There are many types of documents that can be included, but there are several that are considered to be the most common. Personal resumes should be included for all owners and anyone in management. Each resume should be a one-page document that includes work history, educational background, special …
Note: This portion of the business plan should not be completed until the organizational and marketing plans have been completed. The financial plan is the analysis of measurable figures for a business plan. The organzational and marketing plans are put together and from this we calculate the projected financing Ã‚ costs. The following two pieces of information need to be included only if you …
An effective marketing plan will address the details of sales, advertising, PR campaigns, and market analysis. Keep in mind that a plan in this technology age should include online strategies as well as traditional strategies. Who will be responsible for your in-house marketing, and who will you use for outsourced marketing campaigns? Identify your target market and competition, along with trends in …
We have previously discussed the importance of every business having a good business plan. This plan is of particular importance if you, the business owner, are looking for any type of financing and/or investors. The focus of the last blog was the summary and what information to include in the summary.  Today we will focus on the second part of your …
I want you to try and remember back to your days in junior high, high school and, if you attended, college. One of the things you probably dreaded most was a research paper. Do you remember doing all the reading and researching? Writing and corrections? The outline? In my last blog, we discussed the importance of having a business plan and business goals. For the …
Two things happen when you, a seller, offer credit to your vendors or customers: you raise your potential to increase revenue or you increase your chances for potential loss. By extending credit, your buyers will appreciate the convenience, as well as the ability to pay the debt at a later date. On the flip side of this appreciation, is that some of your customers may not pay …
Hopefully, you had a chance to think about the information I posted last week. If you have are doing your own business bookkeeping and you don’t have an accounting degree, perhaps you realize that you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Clients frequently tell us they thought they could figure out how to do their own bookkeeping.  Their goal is …
If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up somewhere else  â€â€Yogi Berra There may not be another quote that more eloquently brings to mind the importance of planning or budgeting in business. Frequently in our work with closely held companies we encounter newly hatched entities with little or no thought to how much money they expect …
