Your Questions About Business Online Payroll

Jere answers:

Have you tried asking your local bank? I know Bank of America has online Payroll where you plug in the numbers and they do it for you.

Jere answers:

I’m glad to hear that you’re using Business Plan Pro 2007 but sad to hear that you’re having problems with it calculating your Break Even point. One thing that you might try in Business Plan Pro is to reset the default formulas in the Break Even table so that it is pulling the correct data from your Sales Forecast and Profit and Loss to calculate the break even point. You can reset the default formulas by right clicking in the Break Even table and choosing Formula Reset > Table.

If you’re still having problems with it calculating a negative break even point, you might have an unusual forecast like a partial year for the first year in the plan. In that case, you’ll be better served by doing your own Break Even point. It’s usually calculated by taking the following:

Fixed Cost ÷ (1-(Unit variable Costs/Unit Price))

Where:

• Unit Price – The price that you charge per unit. Take into account sales discounts and special offers. For non-unit based businesses, make the per-unit revenue $1 and enter your costs as a percent of a dollar.

• Unit variable cost – The incremental cost of each unit of sale. If you are using a Units-Based Sales Forecast table (for manufacturing and mixed business types), you can project unit costs from the Sales Forecast table. If you are using the basic Sales Forecast table for retail, service and distribution businesses, use a percentage estimate. For example, a retail store running a 50% margin would have a per-unit cost of .5, and a per-unit revenue of 1.

• Fixed costs – Technically, a break-even analysis defines fixed costs as costs that would continue even if you went broke. Instead, you may want to use your regular running fixed costs, including payroll and normal expenses. This will give you a better insight on financial realities.

This information is available online in the HurdleBook at:
http://www.hurdlebook.com/
Here’s a selection of Break Even articles:
http://tinyurl.com/2bdspk
(sorry, I had to make it a TinyURL, Yahoo Answers didn’t like it)

Lastly, we do have a free “Break Even” calculator available if you want to use it instead. You can find that on our www.Bplans.com site at:
http://www.bplans.com/common/calculators/breakeven.cfm

Jere answers:

The business form that you choose to start your business is very important. It effects many other aspects of your business (like taxes, how your business is operated) and you need expert guidance on this subject.

There are several choices:

– a sole proprietorship
– a partnership
– a limited liability company
– a corporation (including a regular “C” corporation or an S corporation )

It is best to get the advice of a lawyer, and an accountant that is familiar with the type of business that you want to start.

You need to start with a business plan, then you can show the plan to your lawyer and accountant and they will give you advice about how to structure your business.

A part of your business plan will be a time line, and in that time line you will put mile stones like when to do certain paper work that needs to be done.

For example to hire programmers you have to have certain things in place like payroll, the deduction of their taxes, their health insurance, etc. That is why you need to put together a time line and let someone who understands the legal aspects of your plan.

Check out the web sites for you state, city and county under business and you should also be able to find more information.

Check out these links for small business

http://www.toolkit.com/small_business_guide/sbg.aspx?nid=P07_2011

http://www.sba.gov/

http://www.score.org/

Jere answers:

You should only need a PAYE reference if you are at the stage where you employ staff. Until then you will just need to register as Self employed but you cannot do this until you have commenced trading. On the first day of trading go to the HMRC home page. Click on the register as self employed and you can then register online. You probably wont receive your UTR or unique tax ref from your local tax office until several weeks after registration. Once you have been trading around 3 months you will receive your first payment slip to pay your National insurance contributions. It is worth ringing the Self Employed help line before this though just to make sure they have processed your application.
There is also info on the HMRC website about what to do when you have employees, the documents that you need to keep and how to process your payroll etc. Good luck!

Jere answers:

Even if you’re going into writing your own business plan with no prior experience, you’re far better off having a plan in place than not.

Business plans are like resumes, there’s not one specific way they have to be written. What’s important is that you’ve done your homework and covered your bases. Getting outside help, e.g. Assistance writing it from your local SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) chapter can definitely help, but isn’t strictly necessary.

Your plan should cover:
1. The Market
A. Who are your customers? How are they defined (age, income, geographic location, gender, etc.) How many of them are there? What are their current habits/preferences?
B. Who are your competitors? How many of them are there? What are your points of competitive (dis)advantage vs. Each of them? How will you sell against them?

2. Details of the products/services you intend to offer, including how you’ll price them

3. Your marketing strategy: How will you promote your business? Where will you sell your goods/services? Your store? Other retailers? Online? At trade shows? Some combination thereof?

4. Your organizational information: what kind of business are you? Sole proprietorship? LLC? S Corp? Partnership? How are the various functions of the business being handled and by whom? HR? Marketing? Production/service delivery? Etc. How are you handling banking? Payroll? Insurance? Logistics? What assets do you already have? What do you still need?

5. Finance: How are you obtaining the capital necessary to start your business? What are your projected revenue & expenses for the first year or two?

If you’ve got all that, you’ve got a pretty solid business plan, regardless of who wrote it or how it’s specifically formatted.