Posts by Rick Gossett
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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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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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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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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When Do I Need an HR Department?
Whether it employs 50 people or 5,000, every company must manage certain basic issues related to human resources. These generally include recruitment, interviewing and hiring of employees, orientation and training for new hires, maintenance of personnel records and compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines and reporting requirements, and the administration of salary reviews, increases…
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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 Elements of an Effective Performance Review
As you add employees to your small business, it becomes increasingly important for you to have a way to evaluate their work and keep your workers on the right track. Having the framework in place for effective performance reviews will give you the opportunity to identify the goals and objectives for your company and determine…
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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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Is This Really a Business?
Small home-based businesses have been touted as the last great opportunity for tax shelter. Maybe they are, but there are rules requiring that your business actually be a business and not merely a hobby for which you bring in a little cash to help cover costs. Hobby Loss Rules A Hobby Loss is a loss…
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Understanding a Financial Statement: 3 Key Metrics
Your accounting will ultimately produce financial statements for your business. They are there to help you run the business, and effectively represent each decision you’ve made in the past to help you make decisions for the future. The financial statements accomplish this by translating everything into dollars and cents. But there are other benefits to…
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