accounting

Protect Your Business: 4 Strategies for Preventing Money Laundering

/ nancyrubin / Leave a comment

You’ve put in a lot of hard effort to make your business the successful profit-churning powerhouse that it is. The idea that someone could be ripping you off and laundering money from your hard work should be disgusting to you. However, it might even be happening right now with you completely unaware. To ensure that your business is protected from criminals looking to siphon off of your hard work, utilize these four strategies to help prevent money laundering. 

Appoint an Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Officer

Initially, you should create an anti-money laundering policy that is clear in its dictation and punishments. As a further safeguard, it’s also prudent to hire an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Compliance Officer who will routinely check the accounts and ensure there’s no fraud taking place. If they notice anything odd, they can report it to you. Keep in mind that the AML Compliance Officer should have extensive experience and knowledge in terms of financial policy, procedure, and crime.

Utilize Software 

Besides just an employee looking over the books, it’s also a wise idea to have an impartial bit of software looking over your shoulder for you, too. One piece of software you might want to consider is one that provides name matching services. This can be used as an anti-money laundering process that ensures those you bring into the business and those you do business with are legitimate people without fraudulent claims attached to their names. 

Bolster Accounting And Cash Handling Processes 

Another strategy to prevent money laundering is to bolster the accounting and cash-handling processes so that it makes laundering a lot more difficult. Additional watchdogs can be set to overlook these processes. However, you should keep the number of people who handle the accounts and cash handling as minimal as possible. Not only does this decrease the chances of someone with questionable morals from accessing your accounts, but it also helps narrow down the suspects when laundering is suspected. 

Knowing The Deal 

It’s also a good strategy to be a part of all of the deals that are made in your business. Or, at least, to be able to observe them, so you can ensure you understand the exact terms and benefits of the deal. Most importantly, you should know who is benefiting from the deal, how, and why. You may be able to sniff out questionable parties and report them. 

Money laundering is a terrible way to lose hard-earned profits in your business. By following these four strategies, you can bolster the security of your business and prevent laundering from occurring.

Guest author, Lizzie Weakley is a freelance writer from Columbus, Ohio. She went to college at The Ohio State University where she studied communications. In her free time, she enjoys the outdoors and long walks in the park with her 3-year-old husky Snowball.  @LizzieWeakley

4 Ways to Put an End to Your Debt

/ nancyrubin / Leave a comment

We have strong impulses that can quickly get us in trouble, and that’s a fact. Probably the strongest is the impulse to spend money – too much money. Sometimes it’s just a stupid thing, like relying too much on the power of our credit cards, but you don’t have to be reckless to end up in large debt.  Borrowing money has become a pretty normal thing in every grownup’s life – in this capitalistic society it may be the only way to get things we want or even really need. You’d say that there’d be a great debt awareness by now, but that’s not always the case. Even when it is, not many people are prepared for the unexpected that can take many forms – childbirth, lost job, an accident, etc. All these life-altering experiences will also quickly alter your finances and prevent you from paying back your loans on time.

Even if you lead a pretty steady life and are punctual with your repayments, their end may seem far out of reach. You’d want to pay off your loans faster and be done with it, but coming up with enough money seems impossible. That’s how you get accustomed to your debt. If you’ve signed a loan to finance your business you might expect that the growth of that business will take care of the repayments. But nothing can grow in financial shackles – not your business, not your life. And you’re the only one who can break from them. Poor financial decisions can be overcome with the right ones, and debt can become a thing of the past.

1. Make it a Priority

This is the worst thing about debts – the bigger they get, the less we want to look at them. You might say that you’d rather live your life than deal with numbers all the time, but there’s not much life in the situation where you’re running in circles. If you want to find the way out you need to look the numbers straight in the eye. It is actually a pretty obvious move and a really simple one. All you need is a Google Spreadsheet or a piece of paper if you’re a pen person. First, you need to visit the websites of each financial institution you have a debt to. Then simply copy down all balances along with their respective APRs, exactly as they appear – and pay special attention to your minimum payments for every account. Only after you track down all your debts this way you’ll know how much exactly do you owe and that is the road to getting rid of it.

2. Set Goals Along The Way

Knowing the exact amount you need to pay back can be overwhelming even for the most goal-oriented person, so the best way to go is to break it. Once your debt is in the form of manageable parts it won’t be scary anymore, and every small victory will provide you with more determination. The first thing you need to do is to assess how much money can you set aside for monthly repayments since that will shape your periodic goals. It will also provide you with a rough estimate of how long it will take you to get out, eliminating the factor of a neverending financial nightmare. To make these goals even stronger and boost your motivation, try to negotiate a lower interest rate with your creditors. Most people think that this possibility of interest rate reduction is a fairytale, but if you’ve done your homework on comprehensive credit reporting you should know better.  And now you have a bigger monthly repayment budget.

3. Catch The Big Fish First

When you have a clear list of debts in front of you it might be difficult to figure out where to start and decide on debt payment portion. Most people decide to pay balances low to high, not thinking about interest rates. It is understandable to try to keep your money, but that way you’ll do quite the opposite. If you’ve succeeded in reducing your interest rates you might be encouraged to take this road, but this should actually serve as a motivation to attack the debt with the highest interest rate and continue with the buildup of your budget. Debt is probably the only area in life where working your way down will get you much quicker above the surface. So you need to focus on the big fish you wish to eliminate first, making the minimum payment on other accounts. Then simply pass onto the next debt on the list, adding the money you’ve freed up to the minimum payment. People call this the snowball method, but once you try it it will seem more like a cleansing avalanche.

4. Balance Your Work And Savings

It is obvious that you’re gonna need to work more to pay off your debt faster. People go at great lengths, working overtime, taking second jobs, babysitting in their free time, etc. Although this is a very responsible thing to do, it could take you to the extreme where you’ll make your final payment in the nuthouse. That’s why it’s important to find the perfect balance between your work and savings. Yes, but you’ve thrown your complete savings on that big fish we’ve talked about above. Well, there are other ways to save up without working your ass off. It is just the question of how you look at the money. You have your bonuses, tax returns, birthday and wedding gifts, don’t you? Instead of treating that indirect income as a reward which you’ll use to buy you something nice, apply it directly at your debt.

But this windfall money is still not the only way to save up. You can downsize, for start. You have a shiny new car in your driveway, but you also have debt. So trade it for something cheap and you’ve saved up. Do the same with all your ʽtoysʼ – there’ll be plenty of time to play once you’re out of your debt. Once you’re out of big-ticket items that don’t mean your race is run. Every house or apartment is full of things we’re never gonna need, and yours is not an exception. And there are many people who do need (or think they need) that stuff, so it’s time for a garage sale.

In the end, you’ll save up by careful spending. Start with your utility bills. It’s pointless to pay for cable if you only watch Netflix, right? Then take a look at your fridge. Do you really eat all that? How about planning your meals? Maybe you can walk to the store instead of calling delivery every time? When you go shopping, leave your credit cards at home – handing cash will always remind you that you have to save up.

There you have it – looking your debt straight in the eye and breaking it down into manageable pieces it’s already half of the work done. It will boost your motivation to work harder and determination to keep the cash flow in the right direction.

Guest author Lucas is a business consultant with a passion for writing. Doing his research, exploring and writing are his favorite things to do. Besides that, he loves playing his guitar, hiking and traveling.

Maintaining Certifications and Compliance—3 Areas Every Business Should Consider

/ nancyrubin

Every business has to stay on top of its management. From licensure to certifications, it’s vital that every operation stays organized. Mismanagement or even a temporary lapse in attention can result in major liabilities that cost thousands of dollars down the line. In order to keep employees happy and finances in check, don’t overlook these three major compliance and certification considerations. 

Employee Insurance

Depending on the size of your business, you may be legally obligated to offer your employees some form of healthcare coverage. The Affordable Care Act employer mandate requires any organization with 50 or more full-time (or full-time equivalent) employees to offer health insurance coverage. 

Failure to offer coverage to 95-percent of full-time employees will result in a fine of $2,320 per employee, excluding the first 30. Even if you’re only left with 20 employees after the subtraction, you would still face a penalty of $46,600. 

Full-time employees are considered anyone who works 30 hours per week or 130 hours each calendar month, including paid-time-off and vacation days. Teachers and other education employees are considered full-time even if they don’t work all year. 

While healthcare is expensive, it’s more than just a liability for businesses. Offering health insurance demonstrates you care about your employees, and greater benefits will boost morale and increase loyalty. 

Quality Assurance

Depending on your line of work, quality assurance may be more than just a form of risk management. There are different quality requirements across various industries including engineering and food servicing. Failure to meet these standards don’t just open the door for lawsuits but also jeopardizes your entire business’s reputation. 

QA allows business owners to consistently gain insight into their products and improve their services and delivery. Quality assurance is more than just protection; it also provides valuable insight into your company’s day-to-day operations and ensures your customers never received anything less than what they’ve paid for. 

Taxes and Finances

Even the most diligent business owner can slip up and miss some important figures come tax season. In order to ensure that your company doesn’t get audited or fined for a costly oversight, consider outsourcing your tax preparation and business financing to a professional accountant. Accountants adhere to proper standards and are able to fully commit to managing your business’s finances. Also, using software like this HCP aggregate spend reporting can also help significantly with organization and tracking.

Remember that business is all about improvement. Revisiting your foundation and making any adjustments to your current operations will ensure that your company is always capable of accommodating new changes and adapting to growth. Staying in compliance with business laws and ethical standards will help make your company a more effective, enjoyable and reliable establishment for everyone involved.

Dixie Somers is a freelance writer and blogger for business, home, and family niches. Dixie lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and is the proud mother of three beautiful girls and wife to a wonderful husband.

A Shortcut To The Skills: Areas Where Outsourcing Can Really Save You Time And Money

/ nancyrubin / 1 Comment

As a business that is constantly looking forward, we’ve all got to embrace the latest trends, albeit to an extent. Whether we’ve gone analog and we’re embracing a new era of digital transformation, or we’re looking to round off the edges, the latest trends don’t necessarily mean the best for our business. Outsourcing is one of those things that, understandably, we all look upon with some form of trepidation. Some think outsourcing rids businesses of their personality, but outsourcing, for numerous startups, can save an infinite amount of time and money. Let’s show you how.

The Ever-Changing Technological Landscape

Because technology progresses at such a rate, the race can be hard to keep up with. These days, as there are so many different IT consulting firms, such as cyberjaz.net, we can choose the right company to partner up with, so they can guide us with a steady hand through these changes. For those people who aren’t able to acquire the skills of workers in-house, outsourcing to an IT support company can make the processes easier to handle.

Content Marketing

Creating content that is easy to absorb by potential customers is a fine art, because it can come across as being a bit too commercial-esque in the wrong hands. And when we haven’t got the time to learn how best to develop our voice, we have to outsource to a content marketing company that has the strategies in place that lends themselves well to your brand. The goal is always the same- to sell products- but we have to do it in such a way that it doesn’t seem like you are relying on sales and leads. We have to generate leads but we have to start relationships with our customers.

Bookkeeping

You may think it’s easier to manage all of the tasks yourself. After all, when you are a novice startup, it’s cheaper! But because the balancing of many plates can result in a dip in productivity, outsourcing to a bookkeeping company isn’t just taking advantage of their expertise, but it’s offloading the more mundane and stressful tasks. Your business needs adequate accounts and documents to support every item of expenditure, and while there are many reasons to not use outsourced bookkeeping services, accountingdepartment.com provides a solid argument for you to use them. You can’t be too careful when it comes to your money. After all, it’s a legal requirement that you keep everything in order.

Outsourcing isn’t a bad word anymore, and it is certainly a way for us to take advantage of the resources out there when we can’t complete certain tasks ourselves. Put simply, outsourcing gives you the opportunity to look at the skills you don’t have, and give the tasks to those that do. From content marketing to bookkeeping and the complicated minefield that is technology, we’ve got so many aspects to outsource. But these things can save us so much time, not to mention money. We could spend years finding the right people to benefit our business, but we have to pay them a full wage. Outsourcing is a great shortcut to the skills.

It’s Time To Pay More Attention To These Parts Of Your Business!

/ nancyrubin

When you’re running your own business, it can often feel as though you’re spinning plates. You’re trying to keep everything together but it feels like the moment that you turn your attention to one thing, something else goes wrong. The truth is that this is just a fact of life when you’re a business owner and it’s something that you have to get used to.Sure, there are plenty of things you can do to make life easier but sadly the most common things that a lot of business owners do is to just ignore certain parts of their business that they consider to either be unimportant or that they simply take for granted. If you do that, it’s always going to cause more problems than it solves. With that in mind, here are some parts of your business that you need to stop ignoring.

Your IT solutions

IT is the backbone of pretty much all modern businesses. We live in such a heavily digital world that trying to run any business without IT solutions is just asking to get left in the dust by the competition. Of course, not everyone is going to be an IT expert and trying to deal with it all on your own can often cause more problems than it solves.That’s why it’s so important to find companies that can offer solid IT support to your business. After all, if you’re outsourcing it, you are able to focus your energy elsewhere while ensuring that it’s always being looked after.

Your accounting

Accounting is one of those things that a lot of businesses work incredibly hard to avoid as much as possible. This is often for two reasons. Firstly, accounting is difficult and complicated. And secondly, it can be incredibly boring. Most business owners would rather ignore something quite so dull and would rather focus on the more dynamic aspects of their business. However, just because it’s not that fun doesn’t mean that it’snot incredibly important. If you’re not staying on top of your books then not only could your business end up in financial difficulty, but you could end up in some pretty serious legal hot water to

Accounting is one of those things that a lot of businesses work incredibly hard to avoid as much as possible. This is often for two reasons. Firstly, accounting is difficult and complicated. And secondly, it can be incredibly boring. Most business owners would rather ignore something quite so dull and would rather focus on the more dynamic aspects of their business. However, just because it’s not that fun doesn’t mean that it’snot incredibly important. If you’re not staying on top of your books then not only could your business end up in financial difficulty, but you could end up in some pretty serious legal hot water too.

Employee support

Your employees are the lifeblood of your business and if you’re just treating them like machines who are going to do great work because you pay them every month, you’re letting them and your business down. The truth is that your employees need your care and support in order to feel motivated and happy at work. From rewarding great work to being a little more flexible with them, it’s crucial that you put the effort into making your employees feel supported and cared for as much as possible.

The truth is that you’re almost always going to be in a position where you feel like you’re playing catch up with certain aspects of your business. The key is to make sure that you’re planning and prioritising things carefully without falling into the trap of letting certain things go entirely ignored. Sure, that might sound like a serious challenge but that’s just part and parcel with running a business.

Getting Help with Your Finances

/ nancyrubin

Most of us are in debt. We’ve got credit cards, loans, overdrafts, store cards, and car financing plans. Some of us even owe money to our utility providers and landlords. Even those of us that aren’t are cutting it fine. We want to save, we even open savings accounts, but find ourselves struggling to put any money in them. Many of us want to set up businesses and build home offices, but our financial situations won’t allow it.

But, just as many of us are doing nothing about it. We’re getting by paying the minimums back on our debts.We’re letting any savings that we do have just sit there, instead of finding ways to make them grow. We’re living paycheck to paycheck without taking the time to improve things.

This is often because we’re embarrassed. We don’t want to admit that we need help or that we’re in debt. We don’t want to ask for advice on how to save or make our money grow because we are ashamed to admit that we don’t know already or that we’ve been wasting our money up until this point. We are afraid of speaking to an accountant only to find that we’ve been recording our profits incorrectly and our small business accounts are in a mess. We bury our heads in the sand because we are embarrassed and afraid. But,there’s really no need to be. There’s plenty of help out there, and plenty of people that need it. You just have to make that first move. Here’s a look at some of your options.

Visit a Financial Advisor

If you’ve got debts, you might find that their repayments are crippling. That you’ve got very little disposable income each month because paying off your debts is eating it all up. It doesn’t need to be like this, but it’s so hard to see a way out when it’s your money.

A financial advisor can take a look at your situation and help you to find ways to improve it. They’ll look at your income and expenses and recommend consolidation loans or other options that could help. They can even help you to create a budget to manage your money.

Most banks offer a free financial advisor service. But, remember your bank is only likely to recommend their own products. You may have to pay to see an independent advisor, but you could be offered a wider range of options.

Get Help with Investments

Investing your money is a fantastic way to watch it grow. But, it’s complicated and confusing. If you’ve never invested,you might worry that you can’t because you don’t know enough. The good news is,you don’t even need to meet an advisor in person, read https://budgetboost.co/etrade-review/for another option that’s great for beginners and novice traders.

Hire an Accountant

If you run your own business or work as a freelancer, you might try to manage your own finances to save money. But, it can be all too easy to make costly mistakes. Hiring an accountant can actually save you money. They’ll ensure you are claiming any tax deductibles that you are able, and they’ll make sure you don’t face a hefty fine because you’ve either missed your tax return deadlines or made a mistake in your working out.Read more about deducatbles at https://www.raymondbenn.co.uk/services/businesses/detailed-list-of-tax-allowable-expenses.

Give Consumers What They Want With These Ecommerce Trends

/ nancyrubin / 2 Comments

The future of online retail isn’t just evolving, it is changing at an extremely rapid rate, a rate which many ecommerce owners are struggling to keep up with. It wasn’t that long ago that buying things online was considered remarkable and there were only a few companies out there that would provide this service. Some of them are even Nowadays, eCommerce sales are in the trillions of dollars, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to stop increasing any time soon.

Today, we look at the future of ecommerce with great optimism. The guys at Subscriptionly put together an infographic showing how brands both big and small are making improvements to their services, and making the entire online shopping process easier, more efficient, and quicker.

Industry experts have been following the movement of eCommerce since its beginning, and by also looking at consumer wants and needs, have come up with some predictions for the future of this industry.

One of the biggest changes that is set to come about in the near future is the rise of digital currency. Already, people all over the globe have started to use cryptocurrencies as a form of online payment method. As an immediate result of this, a few established ecommerce stores have started to accept certain cryptocurrencies, most commonly Bitcoin.

Over time, it is looking likely that the use of digital currencies will become more commonplace, therefore, people may favor stores that will let them pay using this method.

There are many perks with using this way of payment. For example, the transaction fees are much lower than credit card or PayPal fees.

Another benefit that people will be interested in is the fraud prevention that comes with it. All transactions that take place using digital currencies are recorded on a blockchain, a sort of digital ledger, making them safe and irreversible.

Speed is also a positive that comes with using digital currencies. When using a credit card to make a transaction, it will sometimes take hours or even days for the transaction to process. Some digital currencies are a lot quicker and could end up saving the user and store owner a lot of time.

If you are an ecommerce store owner, it may be worth taking the time to look into the various benefits of accepting cryptocurrencies as a form of payment.

You can find out more about this as well as various other trends that are set to change the course of ecommerce in the infographic below.

future-of-ecommerce-0607