Republicans Eye Making Bank Bill Even Weaker For Consumers

The original bill would have required credit monitoring companies like Equifax to offer free credit freezes to all consumers, and to exclude medical debt for one year from the credit reports of U.S. An amended version of the bill, introduced late Wednesday, would also give free credit monitoring to active-duty members of the military.

When you’re a small business owner, you have to be the man (or woman) of all hands: you’re usually the one who sells products or provides services, as well as takes care of all the administrative arrangements and financial management. Everything that’s related to the operation of your business turns into the burden on your shoulders, your sole responsibility.

As providing quality services and ensuring great customer support are the top priorities that take up a lot of time, keeping up with the financial side of running a business often turns into a secondary task. At the same time, remaining on top of the financial records, sustaining healthy finances and increasing revenue are the things no business may survive without.

If you’re new to financial management or want to improve your skills for the sake of your business development, use these hacks to improve your financial skills and conquer your accounting. The first thing a beginning entrepreneur has to do is to separate his personal finances and business-related matters to be able to monitor both personal and occupation-related money flows.

Don’t get your personal and business bank accounts mixed up and avoid using business funds for personal expenditures and vice versa. Manage them independently. Start separate business and personal accounts to record different transactions, avoid accounting complications and keep your taxes as clear as possible. This habit will also save you hours of administrative work, as way as allow you to increase your tax returns, as you’ll have you deductible business expenses in order.

• track your major business spending, a.k.a labor, to see if your employee-related expenses don’t fit into your budget or if you have a spare fraction of revenue to spend on encouraging your staff financially. As I’ve already mentioned, finances is the most annoying part of business operation. But, if you pay required attention to it on a regular basis, you won’t have to deal with the accounting mess at the end of the month/week, as well as experience financial troubles caused by your negligence.

Therefore, make a conscious effort to turn financial monitoring into one of the top priorities and spend at least 15 minutes a week to organize your finances. It’s not that difficult to find that much time in your schedule, is it, Just skip one social media visit on Friday/Monday afternoon and devote that time to keeping your business finances in order. Hiring a professional accountant and tax preparer may seem as an unnecessary cost to many.

But, once you look into it a bit more and combat your temptation to save a few dollars on professional services, you’ll understand that an expert accountant will prove himself being quite cost-effective. 5. he’ll prepare your taxes and make sure to claim all deductions and credits you’re entitled to.

I’ve already mentioned the importance of keeping a close eye on your business records and claiming payments from your clients on time, especially if you’re a general contractor or a similar professional, which works with the installment payments. But, it seems like I can’t emphasize that enough. Getting substantial revenue is the ultimate goal of every businessman.

Nevertheless, it’s crazy to think how many entrepreneurs neglect their business finances, forget to claim payments from their clients and fail to maintain a positive balance between the profit and the expenses even when their business is doing quite well. So, keep your business finances in order by writing down every single payment in your accounting journal, note when those payments are due and set reminders to claim/pay them when expected. Otherwise, you may lose your profit and face an accounting failure, which may lead to involuntary legal problems and penalties.

Services usually alert you of changes to your accounts by email, text message, or phone. Prices and services vary widely. Before signing up for a service, make sure you understand what youre getting. This is particularly important if you are offered “free” credit monitoring. Before accepting a “free” offer, check for any hidden fees or cancellation requirements. Also check with your local consumer protection agency and State Attorney General office to see if complaints have been filed against the company. You can request a free credit report from a nationwide credit reporting company once every 12 months. By requesting the reports separately, you can monitor your credit files at no cost more frequently throughout the year.