Mike Thrift

Marketing Manager

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July 10, 20266 min read

AI Liability Insurance in 2026: The Coverage Gap Hiding in Your Small Business Policy

Two ISO endorsements effective January 2026 — CG 40 47 and CG 40 48 — carve AI-related bodily injury, property damage, and advertising injury claims out of standard general liability policies, while 74% of small businesses already use AI tools. This guide covers what the exclusions remove, why the Air Canada chatbot ruling makes customer-facing AI the biggest exposure, and the two paths back to coverage: write-back endorsements and standalone AI liability policies.

Mike Thrift

aibusiness-insuranceinsurance

July 10, 20268 min read

AI Receipt Scanning Apps in 2026: The OCR-to-LLM Shift and the Hallucination Problem

LLM-based receipt scanners read crumpled and faded receipts far better than template OCR, but when a field is ambiguous they can hallucinate a plausible wrong total instead of leaving it blank. What accuracy benchmarks actually show, the IRS's $75 receipt threshold and lodging exception, and a weekly review workflow that catches confident errors before they hit your books.

Mike Thrift

aimachine-learningexpense-management

July 10, 20269 min read

Algorithmic Pricing and Antitrust Risk: A 2026 Compliance Guide for Small Businesses

DOJ's 2025 RealPage settlement and new 2026 laws in New York, Maryland, and California mean small businesses using algorithmic pricing tools — from Amazon repricers to short-term rental software — now face real antitrust and disclosure compliance risk, not just large landlords.

Mike Thrift

antitrustcompliancelegal

July 10, 20269 min read

Amazon's 2026 FBA Fee Overhaul: What the New Aged-Inventory and Low-Stock Fees Mean for Your Margins

Amazon's 2026 FBA fee changes start the aged-inventory surcharge at 181 days instead of 271, add a steeper tier for stock over 12 months old, and raise the low-inventory-level fee threshold from 28 to 35 days of forecasted supply — now enforced per FNSKU variation. Here's who pays most, how to estimate your exposure, and why these fees belong as separate expense lines in your books.

Mike Thrift

amazone-commerceinventory

July 10, 202610 min read

B2B "Buy Now, Pay Later": How Net-Terms Financing Lets Small Suppliers Offer Credit Without Eating the Risk

B2B Buy Now, Pay Later platforms pay suppliers upfront on Net 30/60/90 invoices and take on non-recourse collection risk, with transaction volume around $14 billion in 2023 forecast to grow at over 25% annually through 2030.

Mike Thrift

fintechcash-flowaccounts-receivable

July 10, 20268 min read

What Botkeeper's Sudden Shutdown Teaches Every Small Business About Trusting an AI Bookkeeping Vendor

Botkeeper, an AI bookkeeping platform that raised nearly $90 million over 11 years, shut down within weeks after losing 30-40% of its revenue when major accounting-firm clients consolidated, leaving hundreds of firms to scramble for replacement bookkeeping infrastructure and export data before access was cut off.

Mike Thrift

aiaccounting-softwaresmall-business

July 10, 20268 min read

Building Business Credit From Zero: The D-U-N-S, Net-30, and SBSS Playbook

Building business credit from zero follows a fixed sequence — form an LLC, get an EIN, obtain a D-U-N-S number, open vendor accounts that report to bureaus, then add a business credit card — with PAYDEX and FICO SBSS scores following naturally from on-time payment history.

Mike Thrift

creditsmall-businessentrepreneurship

July 10, 202610 min read

Business Divorce: How Partner Buyout Valuation and Deadlock Actually Work

Roughly 54% of business partnerships dissolve within five years and about 70% of small business owners never signed a buy-sell agreement, leaving price, timeline, and process to be fought over from a blank page once partners can no longer agree.

Mike Thrift

partnershipsbusiness-structurellc

July 10, 20267 min read

California Just Started Taxing SaaS: What Software Sellers Need to Know Before January 1, 2027

California's SB 122, signed June 29, 2026, extends sales and use tax (7.25% state rate plus local add-ons) to prewritten software and SaaS starting January 1, 2027. Custom software and cloud infrastructure like AWS stay exempt; sellers over 5 million dollars in digital receipts shift collection to purchasers. Here is what's taxable, how billing-address sourcing works, and a compliance checklist.

Mike Thrift

sales-taxsaascalifornia

July 10, 20269 min read

California's SB 68 Allergen Disclosure Law: A July 2026 Compliance Checklist for Restaurant Chains

California's SB 68 (the ADDE Act) requires restaurant chains with 20+ locations and at least one California site to disclose the nine major food allergens on every menu format starting July 1, 2026, with civil liability rather than regulatory fines as the primary enforcement risk.

Mike Thrift

restaurantcompliancelegal

July 10, 20266 min read

Can You Trust ChatGPT With Your Small Business Taxes? What a 2026 Head-to-Head AI Test Found

NerdWallet's 2026 test of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity found all three chatbots nearly aced IRS exam-style tax questions but made costly errors on personalized advice — misstating the standard deduction by nearly $3,000, claiming an ineligible EV credit, and recommending the wrong filing state — showing AI is reliable for factual lookups but not for case-specific tax decisions.

Mike Thrift

aitaxtax-preparation

July 10, 20269 min read

Cat Cafe Accounting: Why Admission, Coffee, and Adoption Fees Need Separate Revenue Lines

Cat cafes run three distinct revenue streams — lounge admission, food and beverage, and pass-through pet adoption fees — that need separate accounting treatment because admission is often non-taxable, F&B is taxable, and adoption fees legally belong to the rescue partner as a liability, not cafe revenue.

Mike Thrift

bookkeepingaccounting-basicssmall-business

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