#small-business
Financial management strategies and tools for small business owners
Pour cost is beverage COGS divided by beverage revenue — target 15-20% on spirits, 20-25% on draft, and 25-35% on wine by the glass. This guide covers how to compute usage and variance weekly, why a half-barrel keg yields about 112 pints instead of the theoretical 124, and how to split revenue, COGS, comps, and keg deposits so the leak is visible in the ledger.
Regulation CC makes the first $275 of a check deposit available the next business day and most ordinary checks by the second, but six documented exceptions — including deposits above $6,725 — let a bank hold the balance until the seventh business day. Here are the schedules, the written-notice rights, and how to plan payroll around them.
A small landlord's walkthrough of the Housing Choice Voucher program — the lease-up sequence, the HAP contract you sign with the PHA, NSPIRE pass/fail inspections, how the payment standard and the tenant's roughly 30 percent income share split one rent into two payments, and what screening and source-of-income laws still allow.
Shift4 folded the $250-per-device Annual Program Fee and the $325-per-device Regulatory Assurance Fee (capped at $975) into one roughly $2,000 Annual Service and Maintenance Fee starting with August 2026 statements. Here is how to reconstruct your baseline, dispute it within the 30-day window, price the exit before switching, and book the charge as merchant account fees accrued at about $167 a month.
A proposed federal rule would let employers offer fertility coverage as a standalone excepted benefit — like dental or vision — capped at a combined $120,000 lifetime maximum per participant and covered beneficiaries, for plan years beginning on or after January 1, 2027. Here is how the fully insured and self-funded options differ on the books, and the ledger accounts, payroll deduction codes and accumulator reports to set up before the first enrollment.
A tortilleria's masa cost per dozen moves about 5 cents when yield shifts 10 percent — the entire profit on a wholesale dozen. How to cost masa by measured yield, split retail and wholesale revenue and COGS, book presses and ovens under Section 179 or 7-year MACRS, and track the five KPIs that expose a losing route before the bank does.
An accrual-basis employer can deduct year-end bonuses in the year earned only if employees actually receive the money within 2½ months after year-end — March 15 for calendar-year businesses. The deduction also requires a liability fixed by December 31 under the all-events test, and it fails for bonuses owed to related parties under Section 267 regardless of payment timing.
Alabama's two-month grocery tax holiday ended June 30, 2026, and the 2% state tax on food resumed July 1 — with city and county food taxes never having paused. This is the register-by-register POS checklist and month-end bookkeeping routine that keeps the straddle-period July return tying out, covering cutoff transactions, prepared-food classification, SNAP tender confusion, and the uncollected-tax exposure retailers owe themselves.
Ten US states run container-deposit programs with deposits from 5 to 25 cents, and retailers must ring them as a separate line, take back empties of brands they sell, and book them as a liability rather than revenue — while handling fees of roughly 1 to 5 cents per container are the only part that is income.
On October 1, 2026, British Columbia applies 7% PST to accounting, architectural, engineering, security, and non-residential real estate services — with engineering taxed on only 30% of the fee (2.1% effective). Here is who must register, how the paid-vs-provided transition rules treat September and October billing, which exemptions need documentation, and the chart-of-accounts setup that keeps the liability separate.
California SB 351 took effect January 1, 2026, barring private equity and management companies from controlling clinical decisions at medical and dental practices. Because the violations it targets — percentage-of-collections management fees, clinician payroll in the MSO, patient revenue landing outside the PC — are all visible in the general ledger, compliance is largely a bookkeeping project. Here are seven ledger fixes to make now.
California's advisory pure premium rate for workers' compensation rose 6.6% to $1.65 per $100 of payroll on September 1, 2026 — the second consecutive annual increase after a decade of declines. Here is how the benchmark actually reaches your bill, how to estimate the impact from your own payroll, and five levers — classification checks, clean audits, X-mod management, shopping the renewal, and monthly accruals — that keep the increase small.
