Your Questions About Business Online Payroll

Jere answers:

1

Check with the local building code inspector and fire marshal to get exact requirements for businesses, apartment buildings, and single-family rental properties regarding fire extinguishers. They will be different in various states. This way you will know who is required to have them and you can plan on keeping the largest amount on hand of the most common one.

2

Meet with an accountant to have him set up your bookkeeping system. He will be able to tell you what is tax deductible, how to pay your estimated federal income taxes, how to set up a payroll and how to collect and pay state tax, if any apply. Go over a budget with him so you know what percentage of your capital you should use for each part of the business, such as inventory, office supplies, advertising and utilities.

3

Download a money management program to track expenses and inventory and pay bills. Most programs also have customizable invoices that you can use for your business. Set up the program according to your accountant’s suggestions. Then download a calender for the following year. This way, you can easily determine when the fire extinguishers need to be updated or charged for your customers.

4

Set up a filing cabinet to keep all of your paperwork. You will need a drawer for customers, another for receipts and expenditures, and another for keeping track of utilities and other bills. This will make doing your taxes much easier come tax time. Plus having all your paperwork is advantageous if you should get audited by the IRS.

5

Market yourself by getting business cards out to everyone you know. Leave them in offices where people may wait and post them on bulletin boards wherever you find one. Leave a pile in the local Real Estate offices. Join local groups and organizations like the Kiwanis Club. Advertise in the local paper and on Craigslist.org. Send brochures to apartment building owners and business owners throughout your area. Be creative, like asking the local school if you can come into the classes to show children how to use a fire extinguisher, and then let them take home a packet with your brochure and business card in it.

6

Set up a website and have a designated email address and phone number on it that is just for your business. Try to get an 800 number that is catchy like 1 800 get fire, or see fire. Do the same with the website address. The easier your name is to remember, the more customers you will have. Make sure you get listed in the Yellow Pages, in your phone book, and online too

Jere answers:

Why don’t you just wait until you can get QuickBooks? Why do you need one right now?

Have you looked into the QuickBooks Simple Start program? If you don’t have inventory or payroll this is the cheaper way to go.

You can download a trial version here http://quickbooks.intuit.com/product/about_quickbooks/trials.jhtml

Or you might consider the online version. You will see it available at the above link also.

If you decide to get QuickBooks in a few weeks you can just wait and enter all the info then.

Good luck!

Jere answers:

You need a detailed financial plan
write down what everything costs. Everything.
Write down what your dinners will cost
You need an accountant to finalize it after you give him a very detailed an accurate statement.
You will not get any serious help unless you have a real financial plan, period.
For
your bank
landlord
financing for equipment
etc…

Unless you have the cash up front, or a family or friend will back you.
You have an uphill battle.
The landlord, to start with, wont want to rent to someone with bad credit.
Your score needs to be at least 750 and above.
And your report should be clean even with a high credit rating.
Even if you have good references.
The fact that the bad credit will show the landlord you have a history that you don’t pay your bills, Hence, you wont pay the monthly rent. But you can still try.
You need a place to start your business.

If you own a home with equity in it, you can either refinance and get the equity out, or get a line of credit, or second mortgage. But it is unlikely with bad credit.

They do not have grants for small businesses
They DO however have small business loans you can apply for, ( this is a great way to go!!!)
Go online for Small Business Loan, government. For info Google it.
Make sure you get the REAL gov. Site.

And again to get the government to help you, which they would love to because right now they want as many small businesses out there to hire all those unemployed people, you again need to show through your history you are reliable to pay it back.

Also, 90 percent of all businesses fail the ** first year because they don’t have enough money to support the business for the first year. ( until the business starts to make money)
Meaning on top of rent, 2 months security rent, money for supplies, equipment, contractors, ( Plumbing, electricians whatever you need for start up)

You need money secured in the bank for ** Future – rent, payroll, electric, water, supplies, loans etc…

One of the things I learned when starting my business was…
NOT ONE person I knew thought I could do it. I was 27.
But I KNEW I could do it.
I worked my ass off and did it. And surprised everyone.
I didn’t let anything or anyone take me down.

You may have to wait, but do not ever think you cant do it.
Stick to your dream.

Good Luck

Ps
I hope I didn’t lecture you. Because I wasn’t trying to.
I just know what is like to have haters.
I just wanted to tell some things you may not have thought about.

Jere answers:

I agree with anyone who mentioned QuickBooks as an accounting solution. I may be a little biased since I used to work at Intuit, makers of QuickBooks, but I believe it is the gold standard for small business accounting solutions. They have taken complex accounting terms like “debit and credit” out and replaced them with simple to understand terms like “pay my bills.”

On the other hand I would strongly encourage you to use caution in selecting Intuit as a payroll provider. They’ll try to dazzle you with their “seemless integration” between QuickBooks and their payroll service, but what they won’t tell you is that it’s very fragile and error prone. Not to mention you still do most of the work – enter employees, enter hours/salary, print paychecks, print reports, make payroll deposits, file tax returns, etc. It’s a far cry from a fully outsourced payroll service. Intuit also has a fully outsourced payroll service, but they recently announced they are selling it to ADP, so again use caution before selecting Intuit.

My favorite choice for fully outsourced payroll (where you call it in and checks arrive the next day) would be Paychex and for online payroll (where you generally have to enter payroll info and print the checks but the service handles everything else) is either Sure Payroll or Pay Cycle.

P.S. I don’t work for any of these companies, but I do run the site mentioned below.

Jere answers:

Batch processing is used when there is a lot of transactions affecting a high percentage of master file records and the the response needed is not immediate, usually until the end of the week or month. A good example of this in a large, national business, would be payroll processing, where nearly every master file record will be affected. The data is collected over a period of time, then input and verified by clerks (verified means input by someone else and then both inputs are compared by computer) and processed centrally.

The transactions are entered in batches by keyboard and stored in transaction files. These batches consist of thirty or so records which are given a batch control ID. The batches are then run through a validation process and to make sure the batches balance a computed total is compared with a manually produced total. This helps to ensure that all data is entered without error or omission. The actual updating of master files only takes place after verification and validation are complete. This means batch processing is often run overnight, unattended. A new master file is produced as a result of a batch processing run. The original master file is kept along with a previous version.

After processing the output is produced, and is usually printed media such as payslips or invoices, although this is changing with the advent of the web.

There is really no such thing as real-time. The best you will get is a few milliseconds from input to response. However such fast systems are used in critical systems that control aircraft or the manufacture of sensitive or dangerous compounds.

Online processing means users directly enter information online (usually, online, in this case, means online to a central processor, rather than its modern connotation of the Internet, but it could mean both!), it is validated and updated directly onto the master file. No new file is created in this case. Therefore, there is near immediate input process, and output. Imagine a cash dispenser transaction or booking a holiday at a travel agents or over the Internet. Compared with batch processing the number of transactions will be few.

Online comes in many different flavours such as centralised, distributed, time-share etc and the choice of architecture will depend on cost, speed needed, number of users, number of transactions and time needed for a response.