Every business should prepare an annual budget. Creating a comprehensive, realistic spending plan allows you to identify potential shortages of cash, possible constraints on your capacity to fulfill strategic objectives, and other threats. Whether you’ve already put together a 2022 budget or still need to get on that before year end, here are four red flags to watch out for:
Whether the customer is always right is debatable, but businesses should put their customers first when developing a strategic plan for next year.
Commercial loans, particularly small business loans, have been in the news over the past year or so. The federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program has been helpful to many companies, though fraught with administrative challenges.
Fun fact: A summer job may enable your teen to contribute to a Roth IRA.
Most business owners would likely agree that strategic planning is important. Yet many companies rarely engage in active measures to gather and discuss strategy. Sometimes strategic planning is tacked on to a meeting about something else; other times it occurs only at the annual company retreat when employees may feel out of their element and perhaps not be fully focused.
What you need to know now about the Employee Retention Credit
Since March 2020, many small business owners and their advisors have been focused primarily on Paycheck Protection Program Loans (PPP), PPP forgiveness, and Employee Retention Tax Credits (ERTC). That focus certainly has made sense; however, as you wrap up your PPP forgiveness and ERTC calculations, this is a brief reminder not to forget about the research and development (R&D) tax credit.
Most of us are taught from a young age never to assume anything. Why? Well, because when you assume, you make an … you probably know how the rest of the expression goes.
A dangerous assumption that many business owners make is that, if their companies are profitable, their cash flow must also be strong. But this isn’t always the case. Taking a closer look at the accounting involved can provide an explanation.
Have you created a viable succession plan for your business? This daunting task can be made easier by choosing the right perspective.
Many business owners generate financial statements, at least in part, because lenders and other stakeholders demand it. You’re likely also aware of how insightful properly prepared financial statements can be — especially when they follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. But how can you best extract these useful insights? One way is to view your financial statements through a wide variety of “lenses” provided by key performance indicators (KPIs). These are calculations or formulas into which you can plug numbers from your financial statements and get results that enable you to make better business decisions.
Some might say the end of one calendar year and the beginning of another is a formality. The linear nature of time doesn’t change, merely the numbers we use to mark it.
It’s been estimated that there are roughly 5 million family-owned businesses in the United States. Annually, these companies make substantial contributions to both employment figures and the gross domestic product. If you own a family business, one important issue to address is how to best weave together your succession plan with your estate plan.
In part one of Surviving Adversity: A CEO Panel Discussion, we highlighted the main topics of conversation around revenue following a Printing Industry Midwest (PIM) Financial Executives Council (FEC) meeting. In part two, we’ll cover the discussion by the panelists on how they’ve adapted the way they manage their graphic arts business in light of COVID-19, including the impact to staffing and internal processes.
In a recent Printing Industry Midwest (PIM) Financial Executives Council webinar, a panel of CEOs from several Minnesota printers got together to discuss surviving the adversity, the state of the graphic arts industry, how it’s been impacted, and where to go from here.