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How To Protect Your Business

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When you own a business, you need to know how to protect it. There are threats that could damage it – and you – from all directions, including cybercrime, lawsuits, and contract issues among many more. By putting some of these ideas into practice, you can give yourself an added layer of protection that could save you a lot of worry and money in the long run. Read on to find out more.

StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | How To Protect Your Business

Be Wary Of Social Media

Social media can be great for business; it’s the ideal way to connect with more of your target audience, and you can advertise very cheaply – if you post the right kind of post that captures people’s imagination, you might even go viral and essentially advertise for free.

But just as social media can be wonderful for your business, boosting it much further and giving it greater reach than any other method could, it can also be dangerous. Anything you say online will be archived for all time, and sometimes it can even be taken completely out of context and used against you, and this is especially true if it’s a business account posting.

When using social media, always think twice about what you’re about to say, and if it could be taken the wrong way, think again. In the worst cases when your reputation has been attached through social media, you can hire reputation management services to help you regain your good name.

Train Your Employees

No matter how much you know not to open email attachments from strangers or to click on links that look suspicious, your employees might not, and it’s vital that they are trained to understand more about online safety because it’s all part of protecting your business. Don’t just assume that they know what to do and what the best practices are; ask them outright.

To be completely sure, even if most people are aware of what to do, it’s still a good idea to implement regular training on the issue. The more they know, the more they’ll notice, and the more protected your business will be.

Destroy Your Data Properly

All businesses are going to have some form of confidential data or sensitive information in their files somewhere. Whether it’s customers’ address details or credit card numbers, or the company’s own bank accounts, if any of this information were to get into the wrong hands, it could spell disaster for you, either because your finances could be compromised, or because the information could be used to steal your customers’ identities.

If you have this information on paper, make sure you destroy it properly when you need to – shred it, rather than simply throw it in the trash. If it’s digitally stored, make sure you destroy the information completely rather than just deleting it because a cybercriminal will be able to restore it and use it for their own illegal needs.

Using the cloud is going to help in most cases with this issue. The information will be securely stored, so you’ll be able to access it whenever you need to, and no one else will be able to find it.

Is your Business Not Growing? Here’s What you Could be Doing Wrong

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If you feel as though your business is stagnating, then you will know how frustrating this can be. You may be able to fix the issue though, if you are able to pinpoint the cause properly.

You Don’t have a Good Marketing Plan

Operating without any kind of written plan is not a good idea if you want to keep your business running like it should. If you do not have a good plan, then you may find that your competitors end up surpassing you and this is the last thing that you need. Sustained growth and cost containment all require a huge deal of planning, so you have to make sure that you explore every option here so you can prepare your business for any future hiccups.

You Don’t have a System

Believe it or not, systems save time and they also give you the chance to monitor all of the different parts of your business. If you want to facilitate growth, then you need to try and track your weekly and your monthly productions. You also need to develop and track your leads, and boost your customer retention rate. If you can use tools to monitor your customer satisfaction, then this will help you out a lot here, so keep that in mind as much as possible. Look into sample accountability to find out more. You can find additional info here.

You Cannot Differentiate Yourself

If you or your team can’t answer why you are different from your competition, then you may have just found the reason why you are not growing as well as you could be. Take the time to come up with the answer and then tell your staff. The answer here should be automatic. It’s the key to making sure that you are not selling price over value and that you are able to close big sales with ease.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Is your Business Not Growing? Here’s What you Could be Doing Wrong

You’re Not Investing

Some say that it takes money to make money, but so many companies underspend when it comes to marketing and advertising. You have to know that your business growth is often related to how much you are able to allocate in this area. You should be spending around 9% of your projected revenue every year on reinvestment. If you can do this then you will be able to increase your company potential more than you realise.

You’re Not Staffed

You may say that you do not have enough money to hire help. That being said, you have to make sure that you don’t defer hiring staff. If you do, then you may find that you end up losing out and that you are not able to advance your company. This is the last thing that you want, so you have to make sure that you invest in your business and that you hire people to help you out with any non-essential tasks. Outsourcing is a fantastic way for you to do this if you want to stay under budget. Little things like this can really work wonders for your profit and your rate of progression.

How To Market Your Small Business Locally

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Unless you are specifically choosing to market to a huge audience right from the start, when you run a small business, it’s often better to start with your local community, even if you’re only selling online and don’t have a physical store in the area. If you do have a store, it’s even more important to use your local area in your marketing practices; now more than ever in the last few decades, local business is something that more people want to support, so it’s a good idea to use what you have and create a marketing campaign around it.

Marketing locally doesn’t mean you have to limit yourself and your business. It simply means that you have a sure footing to launch a wider campaign from, and by establishing yourself as the leader in your sector and being part of your local community, you can more easily fend off competition. Read on to find out how to market your small business locally and make the most of your hometown.

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | How To Market Your Small Business Locally

Use Local SEO

SEO is crucial for any business, and getting it right is one of the most important elements of any marketing campaign. This is why it can often be a good idea to go to a white label agency for advice and to outsource your SEO entirely. No matter who creates your SEO and the strategy behind it, however, making sure that local interest is piqued is going to have to be a part of it.

When writing your blog posts, social media posts, and other content, use your local area. Talk about why you love it, what it has to offer, how much your business could improve the lives of those who live there, and more. SEO revolves around keywords, and although they must be relevant to what you’re selling, and to the phrases that people will search for, try to incorporate your town within them.

Use It In Your Brand

When you want to attract customers from your local area, you can use that area in your branding (although be careful of copyright and make sure you are completely in line with all laws and regulations when you do so). The name of the town in your brand name can work well, announcing that you are local and proud of it. Or you might take one element that the town is famous for (a particular tree, a historical figure, a view, and so on) and include this in your branding.

Although this is a great idea to gain more local interest, it should be used with caution – if you want to expand your business at a later date, anything that is too specific might work against you, putting people off the idea of working with you or buying from you because they don’t realize you can help them. Assuming you want to grow your business in other areas, try to be subtle when using your local town in your branding.

Be Part Of The Community

It won’t help your business if you play on the fact that you are local but you are never seen in the community, and you are never a part of what is happening. The more you can be part of the community itself, the more your business will be remembered, and the more likely it is that people will want to buy from you.

One way to do this is to organize local events. Although this will cost you money, it will give you a good standing in the community and it will set you apart from your competition. Events could include a local fair, a fun day, or perhaps a workshop wherein you show your skills and have community members try their hand at whatever it is you do too. Not only is this fun, but it will show them that you have the talent to help them.

If you run a business that has no tangible product, then sponsoring an event is a good idea too. You can also sponsor a local sports team, and your name will be seen every week when they play or practice as it will be on their uniforms and even around the field they’re playing on. Think about the things that happen in your community; how can your business be part of that?

Comment On Social Media

Social media is a huge force when it comes to advertising, but users are becoming savvier, and they don’t necessarily like to see adverts taking up their feeds. Because of this, businesses need to think differently, and one way to advertise your business without actually creating adverts is to comment on other people’s posts.

Facebook offers the perfect platform for this. You can create a business page and then, commenting as that page, you can write thoughtful, helpful, or interesting comments on other local businesses’ pages, or join in with discussions that relate to local events. Just make sure you are always polite and think before you post because one wrong post on social media can be a disaster.

The Basics of Franchise Accounting

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Franchising Your Business |The Basics of Franchise AccountingOwning a franchise is an easy and affordable way of starting a new business. As a franchise owner, a lot of the heavy lifting involved in starting a business is already done for you. Franchisees can take on an already established brand and don’t have to worry about marketing themselves, as this is done by the franchise centrally.

All the franchisee needs to worry about is dealing with the day to day running of the business, which includes the accounting. Many aspects of a franchise business will be managed centrally. In particular, the costs of marketing and developing new products don’t fall on the shoulders of individual franchisees.

Franchise accounting is similar to accounting for any other type of business, although there are a few extra steps. Let’s take a look at exactly what a franchise is and how they are run and managed.

How do Franchises Work?

A franchise location is owned by an individual, the franchisee. However, the franchise as a whole is owned by a larger corporation. For example, each individual McDonalds store is owned and operated by an individual franchisee. However, McDonald’s decides what’s on the menu, how the store functions, etc. They also handle all of the marketing and other costs of developing and growing the business.

franchising makes owning and operating a business accessible to people who would otherwise be unable to. Returning to the example of McDonald’s, a franchisee may be able to open a McDonald’s franchise as the first business that they run themselves. It’s hard to envisage most people launching a startup that has the kind of name recognition that McDonald’s does, or the existing infrastructure.

With the franchising model, new locations can be opened easily and quickly. From the perspective of the larger franchise business, this makes expanding a much simpler proposition. New franchisees will bear many of the responsibilities, and some of the costs, of opening a new franchise. If the new franchisee fails, the franchising corporation hasn’t lost as much in terms of time and money as it would if it had invested fully in a new physical location.

Franchisees, on the other hand, get to open a new business with an already established customer base, marketing strategy, etc. The franchisee will have to pay the franchising business according to their contract. This can either be in the form of a percentage of the profits, or it might be a flat rate.

Role of the Franchisor

The franchisor is the larger corporation that ultimately owns all the franchises. They manage the brand and business as a whole, deciding how to market the business and how to develop the available product ranges. The franchisor also provides assistance to their franchisees as and when it is needed.

Fees and Franchise Accounting

A franchisee owns the franchise location that they run, even though the business they operate is under license from the franchisor. They are required to follow all the guidelines set out by the franchisor. If they don’t, the license can be revoked and the franchisee can end up with a location but no business to occupy it. The franchisee will be required to pay fees to the franchisor; that’s how the franchising business makes their money.

The fees a franchisee pays are used to cover a number of costs. For example, these fees allow the franchisee to use the franchisor’s trademarks, brands, products, and services. Franchisors are legally required to set out all the fees involved in being a franchisee upfront and they cannot spring unexpected charges on the franchisee at a later date.

There will be an initial fee to pay the franchisor, which serves as a kind of entry charge. There will also be some form of ongoing fee, usually a royalty fee. Proper franchise accounting requires you to be familiar with all the expected fees and charges; you won’t be able to maintain accurate accounts unless you know what deductions and fees to factor in.

Initial Fees

The initial fee is the entry fee that grants the franchisee the right to use the franchisor’s trademarks, including brand, products, services, logos, etc. And, of course, the most important thing your initial fees will pay for is the right to use the franchisor’s name. Finally, your initial fee will cover some of the costs associated with opening a new business.

For example, the franchisor will cover the costs of training staff to use their point of sale systems, as well as any other in-house sales software. Initial costs are paid as a lump sum to the franchisor. Before you pay any initial fees, it is important that you establish exactly how much business capital you will need.

Amortizing Initial Fees

When filling out a business tax return, a franchisee can deduct their initial fee from their total profits; this is known as amortizing. Amortizing is similar in nature to depreciation, except that it deals with tangible rather than abstract assets. By amortizing a fee, its cost can be spread out over several years. This makes it possible for franchisees who can’t afford to pay a lump sum to instead pay the fee gradually over the useful lifetime of tangible assets, such as trademarks.

You can amortize the fee over a relatively long period of time, paying off fractions of it annually. For example, if you amortize your initial fee over a period of 20 years, you divide the total fee by 20 to work out how much of it you will pay per annum.

Royalty Fees

Royalty fees are the main way that the franchisor makes their money. Royalty fees are a little bit like a tax that the franchisee pays on every sale. This is the cut of the profits that the franchisor gets in exchange for essentially providing the core business. In some cases, royalty fees might be specified at a flat rate. However, the majority of the time they will be paid as a percentage of sales.

Marketing Fees

Some franchisors will further charge franchisees to cover the costs of marketing. Even though individual franchisees aren’t involved in the centralized marketing efforts, they still benefit from the effects of new marketing campaigns, so it does make sense that the franchisor would want to recover some of their investment.

Both franchisors and franchisees need to understand the intricacies of franchise accounting if the arrangement is to work. A mistake in a franchisee’s bookkeeping can end up in the franchisor being paid incorrectly and can lead to a distorted image of how healthy individual franchises are. For this reason, many franchisors are now centralizing their accounting and utilizing cloud-based accounting software. This allows individual franchisees to access and update their business accounts on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

Conclusion

Franchise accounting needs sophisticated accounting software like QuickBooks Enterprise hosting which can be accessed on Citrix Xendesktop VDI that enables accountants to work remotely for franchise-based models to work from anywhere anytime.

Starting And Running Your Own Restaurant

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Do you want to get started in the hospitality services or cafeteria food services? Whether you’re operating out of a catering van or you’re running a restaurant, it’s a dream a lot of people can afford to do nowadays; years of family recipes being passed down through the generations and you’ve got yourself a time honored tradition that people love to indulge in. If you think it’s time to make money off Grandma’s mashed potatoes, here’s a couple of tips on getting started in the food business.

Make Sure You Love to Cook

Running a restaurant means you need to know your craft and know it well. If you don’t like the ins and outs of cutting up a chicken or frying off your vegetables without getting them brown, and you know inside you’re not willing to learn, this maybe isn’t for you. Of course you can bring in talented chefs and let them go to town with their skills, but if it’s a family run business you need to be personally invested.

Similarly, if you’re not invested in what you do, it’s very unlikely you’re going to be able to grow in the potential you should. You’re less likely to be on the lookout for opportunities, and you can more easily get bogged down.

Find a Good Place to Start

Location is everything in the food business, especially when you’re running a themed restaurant. You need to be able to attract people to your business and have free advertising from your shop front. Thankfully people like to eat, so this usually works in your favor.

Individual growth is also important for an ever growing market sector. Shop around for somewhere affordable that you know you can do something with. You may need to expand a seating or kitchen area at the end of the day, when you’ve drawn in enough customers and got yourself a good following. Plan for this from the beginning and you won’t be able to disappoint yourself or your clientele.

Know Where to Find the Parts

If anything goes wrong in your kitchen, you’re going to want to know what you can do to quickly replace any faults. The cooking area is your livelihood, so if that goes down, so does business! Don’t let yourself panic by doing a little preparation before you get yourself up and running; planning ahead is always the best way forward.

Let’s run through a quick example: for your cooking vats, or any part of your system that takes away waste oil and water, your waste storage systems are a very important part of your working life. Look into something like Simplex Pipeline Strainers when these stop doing their jobs and you notice a difference in the cooking ability of your oil.

Whilst food is serious, restaurants are lovely businesses to start and run, as you’re making good food for a mostly appreciative customer base. It just makes it all the sweeter if you can specialise on your local culture and climate as well.