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vineri, 16 noiembrie 2012

How to Quit Your Job

Do you to know without ending up on the street? In a nutshell, you need to avoid the self-employment trap, think like a business, and create multiple passive revenue streams.

Avoid the Self-Employment Trap

If you quit your job and hang up your own shingle, you might work harder for less money. You may enjoy working from home or choosing your own clients, but you might end up living from client to client without building any real wealth.

Many self-employed people I know suffer from feast or famine. They spend lots of time and money marketing their services and get lots of clients. They get really busy doing the work and stop marketing and then their prospective client pool dries up.

If you set up your business so that you do everything - marketing, sales, bookkeeping, operations, and fulfillment, then you are limiting your success potential from day one. You will spend lots of time on non-income generating activities and may get frustrated and burned-out in a short time.

The real key to successfully creating wealth outside of a job is to avoid the mistake of trading one boss for another boss. You need to stop trading your time for dollars. Stop thinking like a wage slave. Look beyond earned income.

Think Like a Business

There are many problems with earned income. The biggest one is that you are trading your time for money. If you stop trading your time, the dollars stop coming. This is a huge problem if you decide to have a baby, get sick, want to take an extended vacation, or are ready to retire.

The IRS penalizes self-employed people who operate as a sole proprietorship with a hefty self-employment tax. How can you avoid this? Well, I am not an accountant or CPA, so I am not giving legal or accounting advice, but I have learned to think like a business. Before you quit your job, interview local tax advisors to educate yourself on different business entities and tax strategies. Start thinking big.

Build a Company with Multiple Passive Income Streams

You need to build a company that works for you. My best advice on how to quit your job is to build a business that offers multiple streams of passive income in addition to your earned income. There are so many exciting ways to design your income portfolio. It requires imagination, courage and planning.

Structure your business so that your daily activities are fun and challenging. Identify the things that you don’t enjoy or are not good at and find other people to do these activities – outside partners, independent contractors, or employees.

How to Quit Your Job

My advice for how to quit your job is to avoid thinking that you have to do everything yourself to make your new enterprise run. Think big! Set up systems and structures that work for you so you don’t have to work so hard. Incorporate and make the tax system work for you. Design your work around multiple passive income streams to support your active work. And finally, have fun!

How To Write A Quick and Relatively Painless Business Plan

If you've never written a business plan before, the idea alone can be overwhelming.

It doesn't have to be the nightmare of your imagination.

Traditionally, a business plan is used to secure funding from a lender or a potential investment partner. It serves as something akin to your business's resume, outlining the purpose and scope of your business, identifying the goals, marketing and management, and establishing a basic balance sheet.

Now, even if you aren't going to seek additional funding, even if you're going to grow your business by yourself from your office at home, you'd be wise to put together a business plan. Simply going through the process has value. It'll help you develop a clearly defined vision of what you intend to do with your business and how you intend to do it.

These are some of the questions you should already have asked and answered before you sit down to write your business plan:

== What "want" does your business fill, and what service or product will you be providing to fill that want?

== Who will be your potential customer (this should be an established, niche market with die-hard buyers).

== Why will people purchase from you as opposed to the business down the street (in other words ... what's your Unique Selling Position)?

== How do you intend to reach your customers? A storefront? An ad in the phone book? Direct mail? An Internet campaign? Selling door-to-door? A combination of these?

== Will you need additional funding and if so, how much will you need and how do you intend to secure it?

Okay, so let's take a look at what you'll want to include in your business plan.

Most business plans are structured to examine four primary areas:

1. Executive Summary - a decription of the business
2. How you intend to market the business
3. How the busines finances will be arranged and handled
4. How the busines will be managed

Let's take a further look at these.

Executive Summary: what the business will do, its Unique Selling Position, the business goals, its ownership and legal structure, your skills and knowledge and how they will benefit the business.

Marketing The Business: describe your product or service, identify your market niche, how big it is, and how you plan to reach it. Define your customer, identify your competition, detail your pricing plan, outline how you intend to attract and convert customers.

Financing The Business: estimate your start-up costs, project your monthly operating budget for the first year, outline your ROI (return on investment) and cash flow for the first year, project your income and expense balance sheet for the first two years, explain how you're going to compensate yourself, establish who will maintain the accounting records and how they'll be maintained, and if you're in need of funding, explain how much you need and how it'll be used by the business.

Managing The Business: how will the business be managed day-to-day, what the hiring and personnel procedures will be, how the products or services will be developed and how they'll get into the hands of your customers. You'll also need to account for equipment the business will need, and how insurance, rental agreements, etc. will be handled.

That's it. In a nutshell.

If you'd like to see some free sample business plans to get a better idea of how they're structured and how they read, here's a good source for you: http://www.bplans.com/sp/businessplans.cfm

How Nov. 15, 2004 Deadline for Sarbanes Oxley 404 Compliance Affects You

Public companies have 90 days from the end of their fiscal year to comply. For those with market capitalization of $75 million or more, this clock starts on Nov. 15, 2004; while all others with less than $75 million market capitalization begin July 15, 2005.

Fast Relief for Sarbanes Oxley Section 404 Compliance

Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires management to confirm the effectiveness of their IT and financial controls in an "internal control report", which is contained within the annual report (10-K) issued to the public. But what exactly is an internal control report, and why is it important to you?

The Section 404 Internal Control Report

First, the internal control report must affirm management’s responsibility for controls and procedure, and second, it must contain an assessment of the effectiveness of the internal controls and procedures for financial reporting. Although both of these issues might at first appear difficult to solve, they are actually not as hard as you would think.

Management’s Responsibility for Controls and Procedures

Affirming management’s responsibility for controls and procedures means more than to simply say management believes in or trusts their system. The affirmation will also need to include a program for a code of ethics for senior financial officers. The program must include prompt disclosures of any changes to your ethics program. So how do you do this?

Business Ethics and Compliance Program

You can easily implement a business ethics program using a step-by-step guide for developing your firm’s business ethics and compliance program. This manual will save you time researching, writing and editing your program. It provides sample policies, surveys, forms and training session outlines that are fully editable using MS Word. And it is also fully endorsed by The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) as a tool to maintain a culture of integrity.

Internal Controls

Your internal control report must also contain an assessment of the effectiveness of your internal controls and procedures for financial reporting. In practical terms, control is equivalent to predictability. Everyday management creates forecasts and budgets to predict the future. And the further into the future you can accurately predict, then the more control you have.

Achieve More Control Over Your Forecasts And Budgets

A training class for creating well defined processes shows you how to attain more control. Real world exercises and examples explain how to increase management effectiveness, achieve process control, communicate clear procedures, and verify if your processes are working. So what about procedures?

Procedures Effectiveness

For dealing with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, you can look at products like the Management CFO Value Series that includes Accounting, Human Resources, as well as policies, procedures and forms for other departments. Such procedures will save you time researching best practices, creating a standard format, and thinking of clear and concise paragraphs to write.

Easier Section 404 Compliance

Your internal control report is the key to your Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 compliance. You should also look at a business ethics and compliance program, attend a training class for creating well-defined processes to learn more about management effectiveness, and use a CFO Management Value Series to speed the development of your procedures. You want to achieve fast, easy, and effective relief for your Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 compliance.

How to Start an Investment Club - Business Model

Your investment club will need to decide what type of entity you're going to adopt for business purposes. You'll have to decide whether you're going to be a corporation, a general partnership, or limited liability partnership.

Each of these business models has their own advantages and disadvantages.

· Corporation. Most investment clubs will avoid becoming a corporation. This is because corporations are taxable business entities that require knowledgeable accounting skills to make them run smoothly and in accord with government regulations. A corporation generally means a lot of paperwork. This paperwork can be avoided by choosing another business model for your purpose of running an investment club.

· General partnership. This type of business model requires less paperwork and knowledge about taxes and other financial issues. Most investment clubs choose a general partnership as their choice of a business entity. A general partnership has nominal paperwork and costs associated with it because the taxes are passed to each partner's tax returns. This type of business model will let you accomplish what you need to do to run your investment club with the least amount of tax influence.

· Limited liability corporations. This type of a business model is much like the general partnership but it gives individual members of your investment group a bit more liability protection. Keep in mind that this type of business entity can be expensive and will need more paperwork.

Members of your investment group will have to decide which of the above business models works best for your club.

You will have to make a decision one way or the other since establishing a business entity is a requirement for tax purposes.

HOW TO STAY FOCUSSED AND BUILD YOUR BUSINESS

You have a detailed business plan, which showed the overall intent of your company. You presented the business plan to your bank before start-up and they submitted funding in the amount that you both deemed acceptable. The original business plan contained the basis of the procedures that will help you stay focussed while the company grows. Let's examine some of these processes that you will use to give your business the focus it needs to grow and succeed.

1. A marketing plan. If sales are a part of your operation (and it seems that some form of selling is always a big part of every company), then, you will need to have your sales group focussed on a marketing plan. Short term and longer-term analysis should be a part of this planning and will likely contain an analysis of your competition, market potential and sales projections. Be careful not to fall into the trap of letting “the business take care of itself”, stay focussed at all times and be sure your managers are tuned into this market monitoring regularly, nothing is more defeating to the general manager/owner than to be told by a sales manager…I didn't see that coming! YIKES!
2. Accounting procedures. If sales are important, then the need to stay focussed on receiving the proceeds from sales is equally important. Accounts payable, expenses and accounts receivable need to have fixed procedures in place to allow money to flow freely through the company coffers. Focussing on these procedures at regular weekly and monthly meetings will put the accounting and marketing groups on the same path. A rift between marketing and accounting is a common bureaucratic occurrence; so don't be surprised if one point you hear from someone from sales state, “We make the money here, how come I have to live by their rules?” Getting these two operations to stay focussed on a bottom line results oriented approach is a regular part of an owner's job description.
3. Human resources. If you have ever worked for a manager, who considered his employees as expenses rather than assets, then you will be familiar with the need for managers to stay focussed on human resources within the company. A manager who is fixated on staff reduction regardless of their accomplishments will create an atmosphere of fear. Certainly, no one wants to be grossly over-staffed, but a good owner/manager will focus on keeping adequate employee base numbers, and ensure continuing training, safety programs and top of the line employee benefits. It's your campground, why not have “happy campers?”
4. Selling your business. This does not mean selling in the true literal sense. It means focusing on being sure your company image is one that is the envy of your competitors and is known in the business world as a first class operation. You can do this by having key managers attending industry conferences. Be clear and tell them that their focus at these seminars is to network, thoroughly gathering as much new information that they can. They should also 'sell' other attendees on the importance and efficiency of their company in the industry. Upon their return, have follow-up meetings with these managers where they will report in detail on what they have learned. Managers attending conventions and seminars should take opportunities to enjoy themselves, nevertheless, they will be the “face” of your company, it's wise be sure that they focus on making them business meetings, and not all “playtime.”

If planning, organizing, staffing, direction and control are five major factors in managing a company, staying focussed throughout the process, is paramount!

How to Stop Waste, Fraud and Abuse

Each year, businesses write-off six percent of revenue to waste, fraud and abuse. But why would managers throw all that hard-earned money away when there is a reliable way to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse using accounting policies & procedures to create internal controls. Internal controls eliminate uncollectible receivables; prevent theft or embezzlement; optimize inventory; and stop waste, fraud, and abuse. Utilizing just a single control will add real money to your bottom line each month.

Look for Easily Customizable MS-WORD files to Save Time

You can quickly and easily develop customized procedures and internal controls for your organization, no matter what size it is. WORD templates reduce the stress of writing clear internal controls, policies or procedures; of staying late at the office to research “best practices” or of worrying over what format to use.

Use Prewritten Text by Industry Experts

It's much easier to edit prewritten controls than to develop them from scratch. Let experienced CPAs, auditors, and business process experts think through the steps for each procedure or form. Then, save even more time by using the resulting content that technical writers have edited in MS-WORD instead of re-entering the text.

Vital Procedures Resource used by Thousands

Accounting Policies and Procedures is one such vital resource used by thousands of executives and managers to strengthen their financial operations. Such a manual contains an introduction to accounting, an explanation of how to create your own controllers manual, an example of a complete prewritten manual, ample policies, procedures and forms for the most common processes (revenue, cash, assets, purchasing and administration), a detailed index to every keyword, phrase and regulation used, plus a Guide to Embezzlement Prevention.

Examples for Every Owner or Executive

Every month executives share their stories about satisfying their auditors with new controls, of increased earnings found in their business and how much time was saved. So, if you want to increase the profits of your business then consider an Accounting Policies & Procedures manual.

Help Your Business Grow Now

Can you afford to let a single precious hour pass without finding out what Policies and Procedures can do for your business?

How to Choose the Right Accounting Software for Your Business

With any good luck and a good amount of hard work, you're having the same problem many business owners today are facing. Your business is growing rapidly and you're having problems controlling your finances. Time and time again, that Microsoft Excel spreadsheet you've been using just isn't getting the job done for you.

So, you’ve decided that you’re ready to take the next step, and buy a full-featured accounting software program. Many options are available to choose from, but I believe the best solutions to be Quicken Premier Home and Business by Intuit, QuickBooks Pro also by Intuit, and Peachtree Accounting by Sage. In order to decide on the right package for you, you need define the type of business that you operate.

With the rise of self-employment (businesses with one or more owners but no paid employees) a need has arisen to manage business and personal finances on one platform. Intuit has released Quicken 2005 Premier Home and Business to fill this need.

This software is perfect for the small business owner who receives income from investments, real estate, and/or internet
marketing. Also, Quicken 2005 Premier Home and Business is well priced at only $89.95.

For more typical brick-and-mortar business owners, you will usually need a more robust solution like QuickBooks Pro or
Peachtree Accounting for functions like payroll reporting and check producing. Each piece of software has its advantages,
but don't forget that QuickBooks has been the standard in business accounting software for many years now. As for features and basic operations, both applications will provide you the same functionality and convenience for your business.

One additional factor to consider in your decision is that Peachtree Accounting is less expensive than QuickBooks. Both
starter versions of Peachtree and QuickBooks are priced at $99.95 each, but the full-featured version of Peachtree is priced at only $199.95 while the full-featured QuickBooks Pro is priced at $299.95.

At the end of the day, the biggest advantage QuickBooks offers over Peachtree is compatibility with other applications. For example, most commercial banks (Bank of America, SunTrust, etc...) provide you with files designed to work directly with

QuickBooks, so that you can read, study, and decipher transaction details. Also, some banks will allow you to update account information in real-time with QuickBooks. Check with your bank to see what accounting software their online services support, and you should be able to make your decision.