Lots of people will tell you that entrepreneurs are risk takers. That isn’t actually true. Most of the entrepreneurs I know would rather avoid risk. What they want to do is maximize their success by jumping into sure things that other people haven’t discovered yet. They use their inside knowledge or insight to make a…
There are many sources of capital for starting a business (or funding an existing one), but not all kinds are a good fit for each type of business. This post is a quick run through of each of the major types, pros and cons of each, the amounts available, the time frame and requirements to…
A point largely missed by many people new to the idea of starting a business for themselves is that you don’t need a blow-the-lid-off great idea to get started. In fact, most of the time, you are much better off not trying to launch a fantastic new idea. Or waiting around to have one. The…
This is a frequent topic of conversation among people considering entrepreneurial ventures- is it better to do what you know or do what you love? My response is that it is usually best to do what you know in a way that you can love. For me, I love working with entrepreneurs and hearing about…
Most of my clients need the same types of products and services to manage and run their businesses, but they end up choosing from a huge variety of different providers. Why is that? Most, I’m sure, go with whatever is convenient (hey- the guys around the corner) or a referral (Joe said he was good)…
Hey- I wrote a book! I always wanted to write one and now I have. Of course, I used to think if I wrote a book it would be a cool fiction book that would be read by millions. That hasn’t happened yet. But that’s OK- the book I did write is still great- if…
One of the fastest and easiest ways for us to provide a free review, evaluate a potential new client and/or to provide a quote for services is for us to take a look at the QuickBooks file currently in use. The question is, how to send it, since these files are often large (depending on…
The majority of states charge their shoppers sales tax and so it is the business owner’s responsibility to collect it for qualifying transactions. The collecting part usually isn’t hard. But it can be a bit of an issue after that! Sales tax is a little bit of a tricky concept in accounting because although you…
Reconciling is the process of matching your transactions in QuickBooks with a source document- usually a bank or credit card statement. This simple function is the way you make sure the balances you are seeing in your books actually match with reality. The longer you go without reconciling the more likely it is the books…
There are lots of things in business driving you toward saying “yes” but that is often not the best idea. For example, everyone’s heard “the customer is always right” but that isn’t always the case and you can be led down the wrong path by mindlessly following that saying. Sometimes the customer is right, but…