Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Grow Your B2B Small Business Without Marketing
Summary: Want to grow your business-to-business small business without chasing after new clients? Expand with new value-added services that complement your existing offering. Find out how. If you have a business-to-business small business, some of your clients inevitably will go out of business, get bought out, undergo management shake-ups, or just get seduced by a new vendor. You have to grow your business just to stay in business. But how? • Undertake costly and time-consuming marketing and networking projects to get new clients to make up for the inevitable attrition. • Ask your existing clients to refer new clients. This is always a good idea, but it's not the fastest or most reliable way to get new business. You could wait months to see results. • Don't get new clients at all. Instead, expand your offerings to your existing clients. Choosing Your New B2B Small Business Offering: What to Look for Expanding your B2B offering might sound like a bit of a headache and that is a possibility. You have to select your expanded offering carefully. Here's what to look for: Complements existing offering In case you're tempted to branch out too far, keep these factors in mind: • Market. If your expanded offering complements your existing offering, your existing clients will provide a ready market. • Credibility. "Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none:" it's a cliché, but people instinctively believe it. Which would you trust more: a shoemaker who also sells wristwatches or a shoemaker who also sells socks? • Skills. You will inevitably need new skills for your new offering. This includes the softer skills of selling and servicing the offering. The fewer skills you have to acquire, the smoother your rollout will be. Modest investment to start The only guaranteed way of minimizing your risk is to minimize your investment. Remember: investment doesn't just mean money, but also your time and energy. Choose an expanded offering that won't be all-consuming. Strong existing demand Face it: your small business already has its hands full with its existing business. You can't afford to break ground on something the world doesn't know about yet. Look for an unfulfilled demand on the part of your existing client base. Hypothetical Case Study: B2B Service Expansion Lisa is a virtual assistant who has expanded from data entry to helping her clients organize their internal records. But offshore companies are taking away record-keeping clients just as they did with data entry. Getting new record-keeping clients would be an uphill battle against offshoring. What does Lisa do? 1. Lisa gets into a few long telephone calls with her favorite clients. One client mentions his secretary is tired of handling payroll. Another says he is fed up with being put on hold with his current big-name payroll processing company. 2. Lisa researches payroll processing outsourcing. She finds it's a business where offshore companies have not made great inroads. Domestic businesses have not glutted the market, either. Traditionally, the technology needed to run a payroll process business was so expensive that only a few large firms could compete. The new software that allows any small business to offer payroll processing services has only been on the market a short time. Meanwhile, the cost of startup is only the cost of the software, plus a portion of her sales. Best of all, the only training she needs is to read up on a few payroll manuals, and do a test run with one or two of her most supportive clients. 3. Lisa gets a few of her clients on the phone and asks them point-blank if they would be interested in outsourcing their payroll processing to her. They sound interested. 4. Lisa finds a reputable payroll processing software company founded by someone with extensive experience in the field. She calls the company up and confirms that they have not sold a franchise in her area yet. 5. Within six months, Lisa has taken over the payroll processing of about one-fifth of her existing clients. Though she has lost two large clients to offshore virtual assistant services, her business income has grown by fifteen percent, since she has gotten more work without having to invest in marketing. Of course, Lisa's success took hard work. But she was able to maximize her effort by choosing an offering she could expand her business into easily. Payroll processing is one example of a value-added service that many B2B small businesses can transition into smoothly. But whatever new offering you go with, just make sure to choose your new offering carefully.
Government Grants - What are they and how to get them ?
None of these Government Grants require a credit check, collateral, security deposits or co-signers, you can apply even if you have a bankruptcy or bad credit, it doesn't matter. Its Free Money Never Repay! The Federal Government is Giving out over 155.5 billion dollars in Business Grants! Receive Government Small Business Grants for virtually any type of business. Whether it is to start a business or expand your existing business there is money for waiting just for you. The Federal government provides this money to help existing small business owners and those who want to start their own business change their lives and achieve financial independence. The United States Government wants your Small Business to succeed and you will be amazed at the lengths they will go to help ensure your success. At Grant Seeker Pro™ we have designed a State of the art software program that will aid you in locating the perfect grant or grants for your small business! Once you find the programs for Small Business Grants that fit your needs you can use the Grant Seeker Pro™ software program to complete the applications! Don't forget to use your Grant Seeker Pro™ to complete your business plan also! Facts About Government Business Grants: # Over 20 million people gets Government grants every year # Over 10 BILLION dollars for entrepreneurs in the form of Low Interest Small Business Loans. # 4,000,000 people get money to invest in real estate! # Did you know that if every business in America were to apply for and receive an equal share of Government Small Business Grants that each and every business in this great country would receive a $70,000 free cash grant? # Did you know that H. Ross Perot has received Government Small Business Grants? # Did you know Paul Newman has received Business Grants. # Did you know Donald Trump has used Small Business Grants to fund many programs. # Most recently the airlines have received Billions in grants to make sure they stay afloat through these troubled times. Learn about complicated Tax Refunds or Tax Credits. These are programs largely overlooked by the Small Business owner. At tax time these special incentive programs can (depending on the size of your business) save you tens of thousands of dollars! In spite of the perception that people should not look to the government for help, the great government give-away programs have remained so incredibly huge that if each of the approximately 8 million businesses applied for an equal share, they would each receive over $70,000. Thought Affirmative Action was dead? If you did you thought wrong. Though many of the catch phrases are no longer in use most of the money that was available still is. Every year Congressmen and Senators make promises to the people that put them in office. Many of those promises are made to minority groups in specific areas but most are made at a National level. There are also Reserved Free Government Cash Grants now available for the following special interest groups. American Indians, Veterans, Family Members of Veterans, Low Income Families, Community Block Grants, Non Profit Organizations, First Time Home Buyers, Artists, Musicians, Nurses, Teachers, Researchers, The Disabled, People Suffering From HIV and AIDS, Substance Abuse. There are literally Millions Available; All you have to do is ask! Can You Imagine receiving: One Billion Dollars in Minority Business Grants for business start up! Millions in Minority Business Grants to expand your existing business! Receive $8,000 in Minority Grant for Free Legal Advice! Millions Available In Minority Grants for the purchase of your first home! Receive $75,000 Housing Grant to Remodel Your House! Receive $6,000 in Minority Scholarship Grants for College Tuition!
Myths About Starting Your Own Small Business
Before you jump into small business entrepreneurship, consider first the following myths which we will debunk. 1. Starting a Small Business is Easier Work This isn’t true. You'll probably work harder. A small business needs more work to survive. However, the potential to earn is more. The difference is, at work you would balk at overtime. With your small business, you may actually enjoy working overtime because you are caring for your own business. 2. MYTH: I'll be the boss. You may be the boss of your company. But you will still have to please someone else: the client. So in truth, they are the boss. Make sure you keep them happy and well served. 3. MYTH: I Can Now Ratchet Up My Asking Price We often think that we work too much and are paid too little. When starting a small business we may be tempted to think that we can now push for a price more befitting our skills. However, we should remember that we have competition who might be offering their services for a pretty low amount. We always have to be competitive and practical. And exorbitant pricing may not help our small business any much. 4. MYTH: I Don’t Have to Deal with People I Don’t Like Anymore! Unfortunately, no. You might find that the clients you now have may be pushier than your boss. And as we said in number 1, your clients are your boss. The goal here is for you to have more and more clients. So from here does it follow that the more the clients, the more the bosses, the more the headaches? 5. MYTH: I Own My Time! Yes, you do own your time. Unfortunately you will find yourself using more and more of this time to tend to your business. So ultimately, no, you won’t gain much in the time department. 6. MYTH: I can't work any harder. I can't do all this. Do you know that they most managers give more jobs to busy employees because they seem to know how to balance and allocate their time? The key to working more is to work smarter, not harder. This will take a lot of organization, but being able to accomplish much in less time will prove to be its own reward. 7. MYTH: Freedom at Last! Free from what? And free to do what. Yes, you will have more leeway to do things when you want to. But this does not mean that you will be free to do nothing. Or be free to do something else than tend to your business when you have to. 8. MYTH: I’m in Charge. There’ll be No Mismanagement from Me. You may think that your boss was foolish not to listen to your suggestions regarding work. But unless you are on the hot seat, you will not appreciate how hard management really is. 9. MYTH: If I'm good, I'll be a success immediately. The unfortunate reality of life is that sometimes, talent and hard work are not rewarded. However, if one is patient with his or her small business, the chance that that business will turn out to be a success increases. So always be practical in your expectations of success. Don’t count your chicks when the eggs haven’t hatched yet. 10. MYTH: I Can Motivate Myself No man is an island, remember? In any business, your first line of security is your friends and family members. They will help you assess yourself and should be ready with a kind word or two to motivate you to start your own business. But aside from them you should be driven yourself. Without this drive you might not find the fortitude needed to weather the trials that beset starting businesses.
Picking A Small Business Accounting Program
A small business accounting program should accomplish three tasks: track income and expenses, generate business forms, and keep detailed records for other assets and liabilities.
Tracking Income and Expenses
The task of tracking a business’s income and expense is really the most important job of an accounting system. If you own or manage a small business, obviously, you need some tool for measuring your income and your cash flow.
Although checkbook programs like Quicken and Microsoft Money does little more than keep a checkbook, you can actually keep financial records for a business right out of a checkbook. To do this, you simply categorize deposits as falling into some income category. And when you write a check or make some other withdrawal, you categorize expenses as falling into some expense category.
One problem with using a checkbook program, however, is that by using a checkbook program, you are implicitly using cash-basis accounting to track your income and expenses. Cash-basis accounting counts income when you receive a deposit and counts expense when you write a check.
Cash-basis accounting is easy to understand, and that means you are less likely to make errors in implementing it. However, cash-basis accounting is generally too imprecise for more complicated businesses. If you use inventory in your business, for example, cash-basis accounting isn’t very accurate—and the Internal Revenue Service does not allow it.
And there are other circumstances, too, in which cash-basis accounting produces serious and usually unacceptable errors in precision. For example, if you often receive money before you have actually earned it or if you often incur expenses long before you actually have to pay for them, you need to use a more sophisticated accounting program than a checkbook program.
Generating Business Forms
The second task that a small business accounting program should help you with is the generation of business forms. The most common business form is simply a check. Any checkbook program help you do this. Other business forms that small businesses commonly need to produce include invoices, credit memos, monthly statements, purchase orders, and so forth.
If you have a small business with very simple form requirements—perhaps you need only checks—then a checkbook program may work very well for you.
However, if you have extensive or complicated business form generation requirements, a more full-featured small business accounting package, such as Intuit’s QuickBooks, Peachtree’s Complete Accounting, or Microsoft Small Business Accounting will do a better job for you.
If you produce more complicated forms, but you produce these other forms with a word processing program, then a checkbook program may still work for you.
Detailed Record Keeping for Other Assets and Liabilities
The third task that a small business accounting program should help you with is detailed record keeping of your most important assets and liabilities. A checkbook program lets you keep good detailed records of cash, and for some businesses that is the principal asset. But many small businesses have other significant assets and liabilities they need to track, for example, accounts receivables, inventory, and vendor payables.
Whether or not a particular software program’s accounting tools provide adequate asset and liability record keeping depends on the situation. However, no small business accounting program does everything you need it to do. Any accounting program that provides an extensive list of features, by its very nature, becomes a challenge to use. For example, moving to the accrual basis of accounting adds an entire layer of complexity to financial record keeping, and keeping detailed records of inventory adds another layer.
For these reasons, even when a particular program doesn’t do everything you need it to do, your best choice still may be to use the program—and then simply live with its shortcomings.
Tracking Income and Expenses
The task of tracking a business’s income and expense is really the most important job of an accounting system. If you own or manage a small business, obviously, you need some tool for measuring your income and your cash flow.
Although checkbook programs like Quicken and Microsoft Money does little more than keep a checkbook, you can actually keep financial records for a business right out of a checkbook. To do this, you simply categorize deposits as falling into some income category. And when you write a check or make some other withdrawal, you categorize expenses as falling into some expense category.
One problem with using a checkbook program, however, is that by using a checkbook program, you are implicitly using cash-basis accounting to track your income and expenses. Cash-basis accounting counts income when you receive a deposit and counts expense when you write a check.
Cash-basis accounting is easy to understand, and that means you are less likely to make errors in implementing it. However, cash-basis accounting is generally too imprecise for more complicated businesses. If you use inventory in your business, for example, cash-basis accounting isn’t very accurate—and the Internal Revenue Service does not allow it.
And there are other circumstances, too, in which cash-basis accounting produces serious and usually unacceptable errors in precision. For example, if you often receive money before you have actually earned it or if you often incur expenses long before you actually have to pay for them, you need to use a more sophisticated accounting program than a checkbook program.
Generating Business Forms
The second task that a small business accounting program should help you with is the generation of business forms. The most common business form is simply a check. Any checkbook program help you do this. Other business forms that small businesses commonly need to produce include invoices, credit memos, monthly statements, purchase orders, and so forth.
If you have a small business with very simple form requirements—perhaps you need only checks—then a checkbook program may work very well for you.
However, if you have extensive or complicated business form generation requirements, a more full-featured small business accounting package, such as Intuit’s QuickBooks, Peachtree’s Complete Accounting, or Microsoft Small Business Accounting will do a better job for you.
If you produce more complicated forms, but you produce these other forms with a word processing program, then a checkbook program may still work for you.
Detailed Record Keeping for Other Assets and Liabilities
The third task that a small business accounting program should help you with is detailed record keeping of your most important assets and liabilities. A checkbook program lets you keep good detailed records of cash, and for some businesses that is the principal asset. But many small businesses have other significant assets and liabilities they need to track, for example, accounts receivables, inventory, and vendor payables.
Whether or not a particular software program’s accounting tools provide adequate asset and liability record keeping depends on the situation. However, no small business accounting program does everything you need it to do. Any accounting program that provides an extensive list of features, by its very nature, becomes a challenge to use. For example, moving to the accrual basis of accounting adds an entire layer of complexity to financial record keeping, and keeping detailed records of inventory adds another layer.
For these reasons, even when a particular program doesn’t do everything you need it to do, your best choice still may be to use the program—and then simply live with its shortcomings.
Why Is Small Business Health Insurance Worth It?
If you’re looking for a guide to how to get health insurance and what kind of health insurance is best for your small business, then this is the article for you. Your business qualifies for small business health insurance if you have anywhere between two and fifty employees in it. If you are self employed then you’ll want to look into getting self employed health insurance. There are many benefits to getting small business health insurance. A small business health insurance plan will help spread the financial risk around to everyone and not just yourself. As this is the case, this generally will bring lower premiums and more extensive coverage. Along with this, the health insurance provides medical care for you and all other employees as well. With a small business health insurance people often get group insurance. This too has its advantages on several different aspects. All contributions from the employers are 100% tax deductible, and you’ll save on payroll taxes as well. Small businesses will be eligible for group insurance just as long as you have two or more full time employees working. When setting up a group insurance plan for your small business, all members will be set up with a coverage plan with rates calculated using the group and individuals. After that it is up to the separate employees themselves if they wish to add riders and additional coverage to satisfy their needs. Keep in mind that not all employees in the small business have to join the group plan. Just as long as there is no fewer then two employees in the business that have the group insurance plan, then you will be fine. The cost of the group insurance plan varies based on several different characteristics. Some of these include age, health status, business and/or residential location and so on. Like everything in this world it’s not going to be cheap, but it will be cheaper then having a bunch of separate health insurance plans. Most health plans are going to require employees to pay at least half of the premium cost for covered employees. Some employees will offer to pay 100% of the cost, white now there is a new health plan giving employees the option to pay as little as 25% of the cost. Just know that typically most types of coverage will cost employees a minimum of $1,600-$2,500 per year per employee. By clicking on the link below you can begin getting quotes for your small business health insurance. http://www.buyerzone.com/benefits/health_insurance/qz_questions_2.jhtml Just remember that many times medical services are needed unexpectedly. If you or other employees do not have health insurance this could be a devastating blow to the wallet. The cost of a hospital visit, depending on the circumstance, will many times be much higher then the cost of health insurance. You want to be able to live life knowing that you’re insured just in case the unexpected happens. Nothing hurts to at least look at some quotes and talk it over with other employees, but you have the power to make the decision.
Create Real Magic And New Customers
Do you want a small business opportunity that could create more business for you? It is a chance to sell to the government. Bring in new customers is always the number one goal of many business owners. It is the life blood of any operation and if you want your business to stay healthy then you must bring in fresh new customers and keep them coming back with a great service or product. I would like to introduce you to the 59.005 Business Development Assistance to Small Business program. This program is excellent for bringing in new business and revenue. Get help from this program to sell to the government. They will assist your small business in obtaining a "fair" share of contracts and subcontracts for Federal government supplies and services and a "fair" share of property sold by the government. What an excellent opportunity this is! I would rather sell a lot more to meet my goals than to have to get a small business loans or small business grants. What they can do for your company is: (Restriction of bidding/award to small business only) (1) Your application will set-aside the chance to increase the Federal procurement and disposal requirements awarded to small business for a great small business opportunity; (2) You will receive consultation with procuring activities on structuring of procurement and sales planning to optimize small business participation; (3) They will also review and analyze you small business capacity, credit, integrity, perseverance, and tenacity when challenged by contracting officers and certifying competence of such firms to perform as prime contractors, as appropriate, and monitoring performance of certificate of competency holders throughout contract life; (4) They will also review of subcontracting plans and programs of large prime contractors to determine the extent that they are providing subcontracting opportunities to small businesses, veteran-owned businesses, service-disabled veteran-owned businesses, HUBZone qualified businesses, small disadvantaged business, and women-owned small businesses; (5) When they give you consultation and advice for small businesses requesting assistance on government procurement or property sales matters, you must keep in mind that all consultants are not the same. It is very important to get one that you like and is passionate about their job. (6) They will also help you with specific contract administration problems; (7) They will see if you qualify for the SBA's procurement and financial programs; (8) By doing this they want to breakout of items from a the same old stale source of buying in favor of full and open competition in order to achieve savings; (9) One of the goals that they have is to review small business programs at Federal buying activities to evaluate effect on small business participation and recommend changes; and (10) management of the Central Contractor Registration's Dynamic Small Business Search, a nationwide Internet database of information on small business, a marketing tool for small firms and a "link" to procurement opportunities. It pays to at least get registered and listed in this data base. Existing and potential small businesses are eligible to apply. A small business is a business entity organized for profit, with a place of business located in the United States and which makes a significant contribution to the U.S. economy through payment of taxes and/or use of American Products, materials and/or labor. Generally, an employee based size standard not in excess of 500 employees is used for manufacturers for wholesalers, average employment not in excess of 500 is used; for general construction, a revenue based size standard not over $28,500,000 is used; for specialty trade construction, revenues not over $12,000,000 is used; for retail and services contracts, revenues not over $6,000,000 is used; and for agricultural enterprises, gross annual sales not over $750,000 is used. Self-certification of documentation is sufficient for representation as a small business, women-owned small business, veteran-owned small business and service-disabled veteran-owned small business. SBA certification is required for status as a HUBZone small business, 8(a) small business, and Small Disadvantaged Business. The range is about 15 days for certificate of competency; no approval is required on other programs for this .small business opportunity. The government grants that guarantees this small business opportunity programs for small business grants totaled: FY 04 $4,606,675,000; FY 05 est $3,250,000,000; FY 06 est $3,000,000,000. Administrative Expenses: FY 04 $38,013,000; FY 05 est $34,188,000; and FY 06 est $36,406,000 In fiscal year 2004, $11.2 billion in government grants for prime contracts was set-aside for procurement limited to small businesses to give you an excellent small business opportunity. Title 13, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 125; "Government Contracting Programs;" Government Contracting and information for this small business opportunity from SBA offices. Forms to obtain necessary assistance are provided by SBA field offices. To find where they are listed you can go to Associate Administrator for Government Contracting, Small Business Administration, 409 3rd Street, SW., Washington, DC 20416. Telephone: (202) 205-6460 http://www.sba.gov Other small business opportunity programs that are related to selling to the federal government are: 17.301, Non-Discrimination and Affirmative Action by Federal Contractors and Federally Assisted Construction Contractors can use this small business opportunity; 17.303, Wage and Hour Standards; 36.001, Fair Competition Counseling and Investigation of Complaints; 39.001, Business Services is another small business opportunity; 43.002, Technology Transfer is the chance to participate in another small business opportunity; 59.006, 8(a) Business Development is a good small business opportunity that you should consider.
Picking A Small Business Accounting Program
A small business accounting program should accomplish three tasks: track income and expenses, generate business forms, and keep detailed records for other assets and liabilities.
Tracking Income and Expenses
The task of tracking a business’s income and expense is really the most important job of an accounting system. If you own or manage a small business, obviously, you need some tool for measuring your income and your cash flow.
Although checkbook programs like Quicken and Microsoft Money does little more than keep a checkbook, you can actually keep financial records for a business right out of a checkbook. To do this, you simply categorize deposits as falling into some income category. And when you write a check or make some other withdrawal, you categorize expenses as falling into some expense category.
One problem with using a checkbook program, however, is that by using a checkbook program, you are implicitly using cash-basis accounting to track your income and expenses. Cash-basis accounting counts income when you receive a deposit and counts expense when you write a check.
Cash-basis accounting is easy to understand, and that means you are less likely to make errors in implementing it. However, cash-basis accounting is generally too imprecise for more complicated businesses. If you use inventory in your business, for example, cash-basis accounting isn’t very accurate—and the Internal Revenue Service does not allow it.
And there are other circumstances, too, in which cash-basis accounting produces serious and usually unacceptable errors in precision. For example, if you often receive money before you have actually earned it or if you often incur expenses long before you actually have to pay for them, you need to use a more sophisticated accounting program than a checkbook program.
Generating Business Forms
The second task that a small business accounting program should help you with is the generation of business forms. The most common business form is simply a check. Any checkbook program help you do this. Other business forms that small businesses commonly need to produce include invoices, credit memos, monthly statements, purchase orders, and so forth.
If you have a small business with very simple form requirements—perhaps you need only checks—then a checkbook program may work very well for you.
However, if you have extensive or complicated business form generation requirements, a more full-featured small business accounting package, such as Intuit’s QuickBooks, Peachtree’s Complete Accounting, or Microsoft Small Business Accounting will do a better job for you.
If you produce more complicated forms, but you produce these other forms with a word processing program, then a checkbook program may still work for you.
Detailed Record Keeping for Other Assets and Liabilities
The third task that a small business accounting program should help you with is detailed record keeping of your most important assets and liabilities. A checkbook program lets you keep good detailed records of cash, and for some businesses that is the principal asset. But many small businesses have other significant assets and liabilities they need to track, for example, accounts receivables, inventory, and vendor payables.
Whether or not a particular software program’s accounting tools provide adequate asset and liability record keeping depends on the situation. However, no small business accounting program does everything you need it to do. Any accounting program that provides an extensive list of features, by its very nature, becomes a challenge to use. For example, moving to the accrual basis of accounting adds an entire layer of complexity to financial record keeping, and keeping detailed records of inventory adds another layer.
For these reasons, even when a particular program doesn’t do everything you need it to do, your best choice still may be to use the program—and then simply live with its shortcomings.
Tracking Income and Expenses
The task of tracking a business’s income and expense is really the most important job of an accounting system. If you own or manage a small business, obviously, you need some tool for measuring your income and your cash flow.
Although checkbook programs like Quicken and Microsoft Money does little more than keep a checkbook, you can actually keep financial records for a business right out of a checkbook. To do this, you simply categorize deposits as falling into some income category. And when you write a check or make some other withdrawal, you categorize expenses as falling into some expense category.
One problem with using a checkbook program, however, is that by using a checkbook program, you are implicitly using cash-basis accounting to track your income and expenses. Cash-basis accounting counts income when you receive a deposit and counts expense when you write a check.
Cash-basis accounting is easy to understand, and that means you are less likely to make errors in implementing it. However, cash-basis accounting is generally too imprecise for more complicated businesses. If you use inventory in your business, for example, cash-basis accounting isn’t very accurate—and the Internal Revenue Service does not allow it.
And there are other circumstances, too, in which cash-basis accounting produces serious and usually unacceptable errors in precision. For example, if you often receive money before you have actually earned it or if you often incur expenses long before you actually have to pay for them, you need to use a more sophisticated accounting program than a checkbook program.
Generating Business Forms
The second task that a small business accounting program should help you with is the generation of business forms. The most common business form is simply a check. Any checkbook program help you do this. Other business forms that small businesses commonly need to produce include invoices, credit memos, monthly statements, purchase orders, and so forth.
If you have a small business with very simple form requirements—perhaps you need only checks—then a checkbook program may work very well for you.
However, if you have extensive or complicated business form generation requirements, a more full-featured small business accounting package, such as Intuit’s QuickBooks, Peachtree’s Complete Accounting, or Microsoft Small Business Accounting will do a better job for you.
If you produce more complicated forms, but you produce these other forms with a word processing program, then a checkbook program may still work for you.
Detailed Record Keeping for Other Assets and Liabilities
The third task that a small business accounting program should help you with is detailed record keeping of your most important assets and liabilities. A checkbook program lets you keep good detailed records of cash, and for some businesses that is the principal asset. But many small businesses have other significant assets and liabilities they need to track, for example, accounts receivables, inventory, and vendor payables.
Whether or not a particular software program’s accounting tools provide adequate asset and liability record keeping depends on the situation. However, no small business accounting program does everything you need it to do. Any accounting program that provides an extensive list of features, by its very nature, becomes a challenge to use. For example, moving to the accrual basis of accounting adds an entire layer of complexity to financial record keeping, and keeping detailed records of inventory adds another layer.
For these reasons, even when a particular program doesn’t do everything you need it to do, your best choice still may be to use the program—and then simply live with its shortcomings.
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