Starting your own business can be intimidating, to say the least. There are so many different ways to run a business these days that it can feel like a crowded field.
In this article, I will talk about one of the most basic forms of business – you make or get products or services and then sell them for money!
I will also discuss how you can easily start your own online business with free resources where you live and computer access.
This is what I call The Online Shopify Approach because it uses an already established ecommerce platform that does all the work for you. You just have to choose which ones you want to add onto as parts of your business!
This approach is perfect if you are beginner level in business but still want to create your own little piece of the internet marketing world.
A bookkeeper is someone who keeps track of all your financial transactions, or accounts payable for that matter. They also ensure everything in your business’s books is recorded correctly and consistently. This includes recording income into the system, taking notes to indicate what was done and how much money it made, and entering this information into the appropriate places in the software.
It is important to have a good bookkeeper because they can make or break your company when it comes to keeping accurate records. For example, if you are paying another person to do their job but you don’t believe them then there is no way you will be able to check their work. You need to know exactly what happened in your business!
Luckily, most people aren’t very creative with numbers so having someone else take care of this detail for you helps limit the risk of fraud.
Are you one of those people that keep looking through your receipts to find what you had for lunch two weeks ago? Or, do you save all of your receipts in an Excel spreadsheet that you then have to sort through later to make sense of them?
With mobile technology, there are easy ways to record your daily life!
There are apps that can help you track everything from how much money you spent during a trip, to what you bought at the grocery store. Some even create a diary type entry for every purchase you make so you can refer back to it later.
These apps also offer reports to show you where most of your money is going so you can take action on reducing or improving wasteful spending. It’s an excellent way to start investing in yourself and learning about your money.
I've listed some free and paid solutions below but I recommend trying out as many as possible to see which ones work best for you and your budget.
Now that you have been introduced to some of the basics of QB, it is time to start creating your own company in the software. First, you will need to pick your name for your business! You can use free online services to get professional looking names or just choose something you like and make it yours.
After you have picked your name, it is time to create an account with Intuit, the makers of QB. This way, anyone who uses a copy of QB will be able to access your financials via their account.
Once your account is created, you will want to gather all of your personal information and then link this to your account. This includes things such as banking info, proof of address, etc.
You also need to determine if you would like to do payroll through QB, or if you are already doing this. More advanced features take a little bit more work, but they are excellent ways to manage your business’ finances.
So now that you have done some research into the best free or low cost payroll software, you are ready to create your own company banking profile!
Most people begin paying attention to money in their lives when they become bosses themselves. It is very important to understand how money works before you make it yourself. This article will help you do just that!
First things first, you will need to pick your favorite online tool for creating business accounts. Most good quality programs allow you to create an individual user account with your username and password, as well as enable you to connect this account to various payment methods such as credit cards or PayPal. Some even let you link your Amazon Payments Account so you can accept payments through there as well!
It’s essential to know what kind of security measures these apps take before you use them to access your personal information. Some only ask you to enter basic contact info while others require more detailed questions that test if you really want to give up all your financial secrets- but only slightly more than what you would normally share anyway!
The last step is usually linking your new account to your current one, which should be easy to manage since most apps offer quick ways to do this.
The second step in starting up your business is to choose an income bracket for you and your employees. This will determine how much of your profits are taxed, as well as what taxable income means!
For example, if your business has no profit but your employee’s wages are $5,000 per year, then that would be their highest wage limit, or CPT (Concessionial Personal Tax) limit. Because there were no profits, they wouldn’t pay any taxes on this amount.
CPT applies when there are losses in excess of $2,500 per individual per year. In other words, if your employee makes $10,000 per year, their CPT limit is $25,000 because $2,500 x 12 = $3,750 per person is more than $2,500.
Now that you have found yourself a good accountant, it is time to pick which company will handle your personal finances as well as yours for the business! The first thing you should do is choose a tax filing status for your business. This determines what kind of income or deductions you can claim for your LLC or Corporation.
You will want to make sure you are able to take all of the proper steps before choosing this information, but most small businesses use “S” as their filing status. It is very common to use an LLC instead of a standard sole proprietorship or corporation because it allows you to limit your liability (legal responsibility) for debts and lawsuits incurred by the business to only yourself.
This makes sense since being sued as an individual rather than an organization would likely mean bigger legal fees paid out of your own money rather than the company’s. So, with an LLC, you simply work under the name of the business while still keeping your personal assets separate from the business ones.
After you have determined that your business will involve serving others through providing services or products, then it is time to choose your company’s name!
Finding a good business name can be tricky, but not because there are too many funny names out there! There are actually only very few types of businesses (and therefore limited number of slots for domain names) that allow hyphens in their domains.
And even though most companies these days have websites, this isn't always the case! A lot of people still prefer using phone books or word of mouth as a way to find customers, so making sure your business has a great website won’t necessarily help you.
Now that you have determined which business functions make sense to include in your accounting system, it is time to create an account for each one! These general purpose accounts will be used to store information about your businesses transactions, such as inventory, sales, purchases, etc.
The first step in creating these accounts is to determine what level of detail they should contain. It is not recommended to use the simple account option at this stage as we want to add additional levels later. The most common way to start off is by using the standard line item format. This includes a header, a description, and a column for notes or comments.
Once all of those components are added into the account, then you can begin adding more detailed information to represent different areas of your business. For example, if you are buying products online, you would enter the product, price, vendor, and date in the purchase row. If you do lots of baking, you could also add in ingredients and pictures of how to put together recipes in the food group.
After everything is entered into the account, save and close so you do not accidentally lose any data! Once done, you now have yourself a very organized bookkeeping tool that does not cost too much money to use every day.
