POSTS TAGGED : Finance

How To Start Succession Planning

You’ve invested so much in building your business – time, money, effort and talent. Whatever type of transition you’re considering – whether it’s retirement, selling to a third party or handing the business down to a family member – succession planning is an important piece of the puzzle that can set your business up for success – or failure – in the future.

The first step is looking at your business and – based on your objectives – determining that you need to start succession planning. There’s a lot of elements to think about – your personal goals, the status of the business and how children or other family members will come into play, to name a few.…

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What Is Working Capital Financing?

Working capital “¦ the lifeblood of growing companies, and a term every corporate accountant and analyst must have an intimate understanding of. Easily defined, working capital is simply the difference between current assets minus current liabilities, or the cash on hand for a company to use as necessary.

For any successful business to thrive, it must have ready reserves of working capital, which can be utilized at a moment’s notice. Without sufficient working capital, an organization is doomed to fail – regardless of the quality of its goods and services.

What Is Working Capital Financing?

There are plenty of options when it comes to acquiring working capital; one of the more popular ways is a commercial term loan.  …

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Small Business Budgeting, Insurance Renewal Checklist

Business insurance is designed to protect you against unexpected and unmanageable losses, but it can’t do that if you don’t keep your policies up to date. Although the laws and regulations regarding insurance coverage are many, and at times can be confusing, it’s important to make sure your policy is up to date at least once a year.

Small Business Budgeting, Insurance Renewal Checklist

The following questions will help you know what information to collect before renewing your policy.

  1. Type of Business – Has the type of business you do changed since you started? If you’ve grown your business to include a new industry, or have taken on a partner, you may not have sufficient coverage.
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What Small Businesses Need To Know About Rolling Forecasting

Budgets are no longer unchanging entities. In the midst of the information age, with transactions moving faster, business spanning the globe, and technology providing helpful tools to re-plan and re-think budgets, many small businesses are adopting a new way of thinking about their financials.

What Small Businesses Need To Know About Rolling Forecasting

Conventional budgeting wisdom offered this guidance to small business owners: create a budget and don’t stray from it. An article from CFO Magazine points out that traditional budgeting is expensive, time-consuming, and quickly becomes out-of-date within a few months.

The benefits of rolling forecasting are vast, but overall, the methodology allows small (and large) businesses greater ability to adapt to what many people say is a volatile financial environment.…

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Perfect Your Small Business Skills With Open Courseware

Perfect Your Small Business Skills With Open Courseware

While yes it is true that one doesn’t need a Masters of Business Administration degree in order to run and manage a successful small business, the leadership and business skills one learns pursuing an MBA can in fact help one launch their business to even further heights. Unfortunately not everyone has the time or the money to return to school in order to learn a new set of managerial and business skills. But thanks to open courseware, it might just be possible.

Open courseware is a term used to refer to free online classes offered by various prestigious institutions such as Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.…

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7 Small Business Scams To Watch Out For

7 small business scams to look out forAs if running a business in today’s economy is not tough enough, we also have to deal with fraud on top of it all.   Fraud can cause a small business to experience financial effects as well as damage to your hard earned reputation.

Every year the BBB receives thousands of complaints from small business owners who fell for an invoicing scam or were misled into paying for products and services they didn’t want. Scammers aren’t always trying to steal money from a business; sometimes they are after a company’s financial or customer data and will use many kinds of high and low-tech methods for getting it.

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Protecting Your Business from Bankrupt Customers

avoiding bankrupt customers and clientsMany small businesses don’t have the time or resources to adequately monitor their own financial status, no less the ability to screen the finances of their partners, vendors, suppliers or customers. However, if SMB CEOs take away one thing from the current recession – it should be a clear understanding of how important it is to have a transparent view of their customers’ financial situation.

But with so many CEOs plagued with time, money and employee restrictions, how can they effectively implement the strategies to do so? Here are a few tips to help small businesses get started:

1. Evaluate Your Businesses’ Current Financial Standing – You can’t monitor your customer until you monitor your own business.…

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