Business Finance Articles

Like elite athletes, successful entrepreneurs are always up for challenges. It doesn’t matter what economic situations they face, elite entrepreneurs are constantly finding ways to improve. Great managers achieve steady success regardless of occasional setbacks. It’s a relentless commitment to excellence that enables them to meet and exceed their goals. That and realizing that numbers [...]

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Few business problems are more costly, and more unnerving, than losing information. Recovering just a few hours of data entry can take several days and hundreds of dollars. The solution is proper storage of digital information. There can be intentional and unintentional reasons for losing data. Take, for example, deleting a file by accident. Or [...]

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Small-business owners run short of cash for many reasons. Understanding how the loan process works is half the battle to getting money from a bank. Bank Limitations When applying for a business loan you must remember that banks require assurance of repayment. Most importantly, a banker seldom possesses sole authority to approve a loan. The [...]

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Monitoring business equity is as important as knowing the amount of money in a company’s bank account. Adverse consequences arise if equity becomes negative. Equity is all of the owner’s investment in the enterprise. Retained earnings are the component of equity comprising all profits that remain in the business. A new business has no retained [...]

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Understanding one simple matter will allow faster completion of your tax return at a lower cost and with improved accuracy. This step is identifying asset costs separately from expenses. A common burden for accountants is adjusting expenses that belong in a fixed-asset category. Accounting for Assets Assets appear on the Balance Sheet of a business. [...]

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The federal government requires you to pay income tax throughout the year. A penalty is usually avoided by paycheck withholding or paying four estimated tax payments. No penalty is assessed when four equal tax installments fall within $1,000 or 90% of your tax liability. You also avert penalty with four equal tax payments totaling 100% [...]

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You cannot win a band competition without instruments, and you cannot succeed in business without a bookkeeping system. Hiring a bookkeeping service is normally the best choice for every business that isn’t large enough to have a bookkeeper on staff. Attempting a shortcut by assigning bookkeeping to an untrained employee as a side duty is [...]

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The allure of software for completely in-house bookkeeping and tax return preparation is a constant temptation to small-business owners. Unfortunately, the odds are against a mere software purchase achieving financial paradise. Bookkeeping software is only as reliable as the input. A substantial number of business owners don’t understand double-entry bookkeeping. Likewise, tax preparation software helps [...]

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Accurate payroll accounting is important to businesses of all sizes. Avoiding sloppy payroll accounting ensures accurate tax returns, reduced cost from accountant untangling and no omissions of valuable tax deductions. Few businesses realize that the Internal Revenue Service makes an accuracy assessment by comparing payroll figure consistency on a variety of filed reports. No business [...]

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Tip income is an important area of concern for several types of businesses. Employers are responsible for including tips received by workers on their W-2 forms. Workers must report to their employers the total tips received in a calendar month whenever the amount exceeds $20. Employers include reported tips in calculations for withholding of income [...]

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