Posts by Rick Gossett
6 Steps to Proper Risk Management
Underinsuring your business can be devastating in the event of a loss, yet overinsuring your business can waste money with each payment of a premium. Risk management is the discipline that allows us to plan for an appropriate amount of coverage in each aspect of our business lives. This article outlines 6 steps to help…
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Correcting Prior Year Tax Mistakes
Situation #1: You’re preparing your income tax return for the current year and notice that you forgot to claim a large charitable contribution. Situation #2: You prepared your tax return and filed it on time, then you receive a corrected Schedule K-1 from an LLC in which you are a member. What to do: In…
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Streamlining Your Processes
Every startup has to develop a process for doing business. Whether that means the business owner has sketched a detailed map of each employee’s day-to-day functions or merely drawn out a list of guiding principles that lead the organization through each and every business transaction. There must be a process in place to set out…
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Protecting Your Intellectual Property
Whenever you start a business, it needs to have something about it that is special, some unique quality. Sometimes, that quality is just bringing an existing product or service into a new market. But other times, the unique quality of your business is a new product or service that you’ve invented. When you’ve taken the…
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4 Essential Elements of a Business Plan
A well thought out business plan is critical to the success of any new venture. The business plan not only identifies the goals of your business, but it also will outline the plans to execute those goals. It tells you both where you want to go as well as how you are planning to get…
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What Business Records Should You Keep?
Knowing what business records to keep is critically important to a small business entrepreneur. These records serve many functions. They help you quantify and monitor the progress of your business, and make decisions accordingly. They give you the information you need to prepare a financial statement. They allow you to identify your various receipts and…
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The Independent Contractor Checklist
Whether a worker is an Independent Contractor or must be put on payroll as an employee is a question of facts and circumstances. The primary issue is whether the employer has the right to “direct and control the exact duties and manner in which a worker carries out those duties.” There is no specific law…
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Make Time for Strategic Planning
Running your business is an exhausting, all-day-every-day enterprise. You have so many things to do—from the central task of finding more customers to the ins and outs of day-to-day operations. And it’s especially true for a small business, where you don’t have a huge staff of people to spread the tasks around. With so much…
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Consultant’s Corner: Establishing a Simplified Employee Pension Plan
Question: What is required when establishing a SEP Plan? A Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) Plan, also referred to as a SEP-IRA, is one of the easiest small business retirement plans to set up and maintain. You can make sizable contributions for yourself and any eligible employees. There’s little administration, any employer—including self-employed individuals—can establish a…
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Consultant’s Corner: Should I Use QuickBooks?
Question: It costs over $100 per month for an accountant to do payroll for my business. I could use QuickBooks and do it for under $50. What are the pros and cons of using QuickBooks for small business accounting? With user-friendly software such as QuickBooks available, many business owners feel they should be able to…
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