#small-business
Small Business
Financial management strategies and tools for small business owners
Embedded Business Lending for Freelancers: How to Compare Offers Before You Borrow
Embedded lending marketplaces like Lili's Lendio integration put loan applications inside your banking dashboard, but the lender—not the platform—sets your terms. A practical framework for freelancers to compare net proceeds, total repayment, factor rates, and payment burden, stress-test a slow month, and record the debt properly before accepting an offer.
Feed Mill Bookkeeping: How to Account for Custom Grinding, Blending, and Ingredient Inventory
A feed mill's books must separate customer-owned grain from mill-owned inventory, record custom-grind fees as service revenue rather than inflated purchases and sales, cost each batch from ingredient lots through COGS, and make shrink and moisture variances visible — this guide walks through the ownership test, four revenue streams, lot-level inventory records, and a 10-step month-end close.
Form 4868 for Sole Proprietors in 2026: More Time to File, Not More Time to Pay
Form 4868 gives a sole proprietor an automatic six-month extension to file Form 1040 and Schedule C — moving the 2025 return deadline from April 15 to October 15, 2026 — but the tax itself was still due in April. How to estimate total liability including self-employment tax, request the extension electronically or through a designated payment, and limit the 5%-per-month failure-to-file penalty.
Form 8822-B Explained: The 60-Day Responsible-Party Update and Business Address Checklist
Form 8822-B updates the IRS record of a business's mailing address, physical location, or responsible party — and the IRS requires responsible-party changes to be reported within 60 days. Learn who counts as the responsible party, how to complete lines 5–9, where to mail the form, and which records to keep.
Greenhouse Grower Cost Accounting: Allocate Space, Heating, Labor, Shrink, and Crop Turns to See Profit per Plant
A cost-accounting framework for greenhouse growers that allocates overhead by square-foot-weeks, splits heating and labor by crop, and tracks shrinkage by cause — so pricing rests on cost per marketable plant, not cost per plant started. Includes a worked example where $240,000 of shared costs over 320,000 square-foot-weeks yields a $0.75 occupancy rate.
Holiday Light Installation Bookkeeping: Make Six Busy Weeks Fund the Whole Year
A holiday light installation business can collect most of its annual cash in six weeks and still run dry by August. This guide builds the bookkeeping system that prevents it — a 12-month cash forecast with three scenarios, job-level costing, customer deposits held as liabilities until earned, an asset register for reusable lights, mileage and labor records, and a daily-weekly-monthly close routine that survives the rush.
IFRS for SMEs Third Edition: What Changes Before 1 January 2027
The IASB's third edition of the IFRS for SMEs Accounting Standard, issued February 2025, takes effect for annual periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027. It rewrites revenue recognition on a simplified IFRS 15 model, moves business combinations to the acquisition method, consolidates financial instruments, adds a dedicated fair value section, and adopts a single control model—while deferring IFRS 16 leases and expected credit losses. This guide covers scope, the key section changes, and a five-step 2026 implementation plan.
Real-Time Settlement and Instant Payment Accounting: How FedNow and ISO 20022 Change Bank Reconciliation
FedNow and the RTP network settle payments 24/7, so a bank balance can change before your books do. How to reconcile instant payments with a five-state payment lifecycle (approved, submitted, accepted, settled, returned), a clearing-account chart-of-accounts pattern, ISO 20022 identifiers worth preserving, and a 30-day rollout plan for small businesses.
Regulation S-P in 2026: The Incident-Response, Customer-Notice, and Recordkeeping Checklist for Small RIAs and Broker-Dealers
The SEC's amended Regulation S-P has applied to smaller covered institutions since June 3, 2026, requiring a written incident-response program, customer notice within 30 days of awareness, and 72-hour service-provider breach escalation. A practical checklist for small RIAs, broker-dealers, and transfer agents covering the notice decision, vendor oversight, disposal rules, and the records that prove each step.
Restricted Cash Under ASC 230: A Practical Guide to Separating Unavailable Funds and Reconciling Cash Flow
Restricted cash is real money you cannot freely spend—lender reserves, escrow, customer deposits. ASC 230 requires the statement of cash flows to reconcile the combined total of cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash, and transfers between restricted and operating accounts are not cash flows. This guide shows small businesses how to identify restrictions, keep them in separate ledger accounts, reconcile releases monthly, and tie the cash-flow statement back to the balance sheet.
SBA VetCert in 2026: How VOSB and SDVOSB Certification Works After the VA Handoff
SBA's VetCert program took over veteran business certification from the VA on January 1, 2023. This guide explains the VOSB vs SDVOSB distinction, the 51% direct ownership and control tests, the documents to prepare before applying through MySBA Certifications, SBA's 30-day average review target, the three-year certification term with a 120-day recertification window, and the bookkeeping records that make an eligibility review easier to pass.
Screen Printing Shop Bookkeeping: Ink and Blank Inventory, Per-Color Pricing, and Rework Reserves for Misprints
How a screen-printing shop tracks blank garments and ink as job-level inventory, prices each additional color as a production change rather than extra ink, and sets a rework reserve from actual misprint history — plus a weekly close routine that ties deposits, job costs, and margins together.