Small Business Resource

As a new business owner, you will be using your personal credit history and potentially personal assets to secure any credit lines from institutions. It is possible that you may be able to get 30 day terms on purchases from a couple of vendors, but for the most part you will be paying by credit card or COD. Over time, you will obtain 30 day terms from your vendors. As far as banks are concerned, you are likely to be required to go the SBA route which requires the business owner to nut up roughly 25% of the assets in the firm and, depending on your credit history, collateralize the loan with some assets. Even this loan will require you to personally guarantee it. As the firm grows and acquires assets, loans can be setup with security from the firm itself and if your business is strong you may be able to avoid a personal guarantee on this loan eventually.

With regard to Dun and Bradstreet, I wouldn’t bother contacting them. If you have been in business a while, they will already be tracking your credit. Furthermore, if you are just starting your business, they will begin tracking your credit via the firms you do business with.

Writen by Marco Terry

Trucking company owners know that cash is king and prompt paying clients are critical to the company’s success. But, what can you do if you get a good client that insists on paying their invoice in 30 days or more? How do you pay fuel, drivers and repairs while you wait to get paid?

In the past, the only option you had was to take the client and grit your teeth.

However, there is an option that has been gaining popularity with the trucking community. It’s called freight bill factoring. Freight factoring eliminates the payment wait and gets your freight bills paid in a couple of days. But, transportation factoring is very different than a business loan. It works by selling your freight bills to a freight factoring company, who pays you for them and then waits to get paid by your customers/freight brokers.

Transportation factoring can be easy to use and works as follows:

1. You deliver the load and issue a freight bill
2. You sell the freight bill to the factoring company, who pays you a first installment of 90% to 97% of the freight bill
3. You get immediate money while the factoring company waits
4. Once the factoring company gets paid, any remaining reserves (less a small fee) are returned as your second installment

Freight factoring rates vary, but they go from 1.5% to 3% per 30 days depending on volume, duration of transactions and customer selection.

Writen by Arun Pal Singh

If you own a small business, you should know that often times it can be the little things, rather than the large expenses, that can eat away at your budget. But many times, small business owners will try and increase their profits by looking around at what larger expenses they can cut.

If you are looking to save some cash in your business, why not pay attention to our “small time” cost cutter ideas. You’ll find that if you add them up, they may just save you more than a penny!

And actually together they do save a lot.

#Change Your Plastic Options

If you own a small web site that doesn’t do tons of online business, then chances are you don’t need a merchant account. These can be costly, and probably won’t pay for itself unless you do a robust business. But instead of losing business by not accepting credit cards, you can use one of the other options such as Paypal or Clickbank. 2checkout.com is another good option for the few countries not accepted by clickbank.

With these types of payment systems, clients can use their credit cards, and once the transaction is complete, the money is instantly deposited in your online account. Then you will simply need to transfer it to your bank account.

Writen by Debbie Jenkins

CARD SHARK

7 Card Tricks That Improve Your Personal Networking Power

The humble business card has been a mainstay of business and industry for years. But despite it’s small size and cost, it’s one of the most powerful marketing tools you will ever possess. Because of it’s low cost many people take the business card for granted and don’t even think of the effect it can have on their networking and sales success. Here are a few tips for making your card do the business for you…

Card Tricks

Your business card can perform many different promotional jobs and usually all at once. I call these little jobs “Card Tricks” because they work like magic.

All you need to do is be aware of what you want the end effect to be and then set your business card up to work the magic for you.

Here are 7 Card Trick ideas:

Get a Most Wanted Response (MWR)

Get Read (Break The Ice)

Get Kept (And Referred To)

Get Passed On

Qualify/Disqualify Prospects

Sell Stuff

Make You A Celebrity

1. Get A Most Wanted Response

This is the action you want your new contact to take next as a result of your communication.

Office of the National Ombudsman Is Available to Assist America’s Small Businesses with Federal Regulatory Enforcement Actions

When America’s small businesses face unfair or excessive federal regulatory enforcement actions, the Office of the National Ombudsman at the U.S. Small Business Administration is available to ensure fairness in the enforcement process.

Created by Congress through the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, the Office of the National Ombudsman’s primary function is to work with small businesses and federal agencies to ensure that regulatory or compliance actions are handled and enforced fairly by all federal agencies. The National Ombudsman is empowered to receive, substantiate, and report to Congress complaints and comments from small business owners regarding regulatory enforcement actions taken against small businesses by federal agencies.

“The National Ombudsman helps small businesses navigate the seas of federal regulatory enforcement. With a strengthening regulatory paradigm, it is essential that regulatory enforcement be effective, and not excessive,” National Ombudsman and Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Nicholas N. Owens said. “The National Ombudsman’s focus will continue to enhance transparency for small businesses served, and strengthen the relationship between the small business community and the government.”

It is the primary mission of the Office of the National Ombudsman to assist small businesses when they experience excessive or unfair federal regulatory enforcement actions, such as repetitive audits or investigations, excessive fines, penalties, threats, retaliation or other unfair enforcement action by a federal agency.

Also, the National Ombudsman’s office works with 10 regional fairness boards whose membership is comprised of 50 small business owners from across the country.

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I always recommend ecommerce websites that need more than Google Checkout or Paypal to go with Authorize.net. Their fees are actually pretty competitive compared to most non peer-to-peer solutions like Paypal.

If you are unhappy with the fees I would say go with Paypal or Google Checkout as these are probably the easiest to implement non-merchant account based solutions available.

In order to remain in operation, you have to build up a certain level of trust with your customers while keeping your payment processing costs to a minimum. In this respect, both PayPal and Google Checkout should offer you what you need; the setup for both is relatively simple and the fees are competitive. Both carry a certain trust factor with the consumer, and Pay Pal offers the buyer added protections. In addition, the customer does not have to have a PayPal account to pay for their purchase by credit card, and you get your money instantly.

If your sales are less than say 3k a month …. then gateway fees, etc. can be high with a vendor like Authorize.net or PayQuake.com. Otherwise …. Authorize.net is a viable option.

What I suggest is a shopping cart with Paypal and 2Checkout.

Why two?