Business Matters

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Hotties and Notties

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Junior high school is a difficult time for parents as well as students. It's a time when boys start to discover girls, and girls start to discover boys. (Reports differ on exactly which group discovers the other first, but it's equally terrifying for most parents.) One of the very first things junior high boys and girls start doing when they discover each other is rating each other — usually on a scale of 1-10. The 9s and 10s form cliques to congratulate each other on their good fortune, while the 3s and 4s learn to tell jokes, plan on making money, or learn to get by with a "great personality." (In case you've forgotten, junior high school can be really cruel.)

It turns out, though, that junior high kids aren't the only ones rating the world around them. Now comes news that two German economics professors

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Party Time at the IRS

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You probably don't think a conference for a bunch of IRS bureaucrats would be much fun. Apparently, though, the IRS knows how to throw a party. Back in 2010, they hosted an event dedicated to "Leading into the Future" for 2,609 executives and managers in the Small Business/Self-Employed division. (You're excited already, aren't you?) It turned into a $4.1 million boondoggle, complete with first-class air travel and Presidential Suites at three different hotels, that even Jay Gatsby might appreciate.

We'll never know how many of our friends at the party woke up hung over the next morning. But predictably, someone blew the whistle on "excessive spending," and now we have another IRS scandal on our hands. Last week, the party poopers at the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released a 56-page report titled

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Help Wanted

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On March 8, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the unemployment rate had edged down to 7.7% for February. That's good news compared to the high of 10.1% registered back in October, 2009. But unemployment is still unacceptably high, and surveys show Democrats and Republicans alike are citing jobs as our most pressing problem.

You might think that with jobs still scarce, employers would have their pick of applicants. In fact, the New York Times recently reported that some employers are requiring bachelors degrees for positions like file clerk, dental hygienist, cargo agent, and claims adjustor that don't require college-level skills. Nevertheless, there's one pretty important organization who's having trouble with jobs — and that employer, surprise surprise, is our old friend the IRS. It's a cushy enough gig — air-conditioned offices, great holidays and benefits, no heavy lifting, and flexible schedules that let you hit the road before traffic gets ugly. So, what's the problem?

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Ten Cash Flow Tips

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1. Know your business’ balance sheet thoroughly.

This may sound obvious, but, as your accountant can confirm, many business people don’t know how cash flow works and its significance to keeping their operation afloat. Many owners focus on their business’ profit and loss statement alone. It’s a potentially fatal mistake because healthy profits can mask an impending cash flow crisis. Profit and loss statements don’t usually contain the information required to make an adequate cash flow projection. For that, you’re going to need a structured balance sheet that includes all the influencing factors including debts, interest payments, inventory and so on. This is the basis for your cash flow projection which represents an “educated guess” at the likely incomings and outgoings over the period of time you have selected to map out.