How can you prevent employee fraud in your business? Here are four suggestions: Screen job applicants. Check work references, criminal records, and professional recommendations. By instituting a screening policy, you may save a lot of cash and grief. Just remember to treat every applicant equally, and get written permission for background checks. Reconcile [...]
Disaster preparedness involves answering the question: How would a disaster affect your business? If you're not sure, it's time to start planning. Here's a quick look at how you can prepare beforehand, and what relief might be available afterward. BEFORE DISASTER STRIKES Identify key issues. Bring together managers of key areas and brainstorm [...]
The prices you set for your products and services affect every aspect of your business, including long-term viability, short-term profits, market share, and customer loyalty. While the guidebook or financial guru who can provide the perfect answer to this important decision doesn't exist, tried-and-true principles can help. Here are three suggestions to arrive at reasonable [...]
As a business owner, monitoring operations and dealing with everyday problems no doubt takes up the bulk of your day. But carving out time for a comprehensive review can benefit your business. Here are key areas to consider. Insurance coverage. Automatic renewal may appear to be a time-saver. But you might be missing out on [...]
As a business owner, monitoring operations and dealing with everyday problems no doubt takes up the bulk of your day. But carving out time for a comprehensive review can benefit your business. Here are key areas to consider. Insurance coverage. Automatic renewal may appear to be a time-saver. But you might be missing out on [...]
Do you think pulling the plug on a failed contract would be "wasting all the money" your business has spent to date? If so, you may be making the choice based on emotion and "sunk costs." Sunk costs are past expenses that are irrelevant to current decisions – such as those spent on non-performing contracts. [...]
As an owner and/or manager, you probably spend a lot of time monitoring business operations and dealing with everyday problems. But a longer-term approach is also useful. Just as an annual checkup from your physician helps monitor and manage your personal health, an annual checkup can do the same for your business. Here are [...]
Breakeven analysis is an important and useful tool in business. Whether you're starting a new business, expanding current operations, contemplating an acquisition, downsizing, or approaching banks and other potential lenders, you'll want to know your breakeven. Breakeven is defined as the point at which costs equal income – no profit, no loss. It's an excellent [...]
For many companies, inventory is a significant dollar amount on the company's financial statements. So it's crucial that recorded inventory balances reflect actual values. When such accounts aren't properly stated, the cost of goods sold and current ratios – numbers that often matter to decision makers – may be skewed. If banks discover that your [...]
Most businesses hope to grow. They consider themselves successful if growth is taking place, and the faster the growth the better. Can too much business growth be bad for a company? It can be if the growth is not adequately planned. For example, an established company that doubles its sales volume in a year may [...]