#small-business
Financial management strategies and tools for small business owners
FinCEN moved the investment adviser AML rule's effective date from January 1, 2026 to January 1, 2028, covering roughly 20,000 SEC-registered advisers and exempt reporting advisers. Here's what the rule requires — SARs at $5,000, CTRs above $10,000, travel-rule recordkeeping at $3,000 — and a 24-month plan to build the program before the deadline.
Whether shipping is taxable depends on the destination state, the taxability of the items, who billed the delivery, and whether the customer could avoid the charge. This guide covers the five questions that control the answer, the main state-rule patterns in New York, Texas, California, Florida, Illinois, and North Carolina, how to allocate delivery charges on mixed taxable and exempt orders, and a monthly checklist for defensible shipping-tax records.
In 2026, the 0% federal long-term capital gains rate applies up to $49,450 of taxable income for single filers and $98,900 for joint filers. This guide shows small business owners how to forecast taxable income, size a year-end gain harvest with the stacking rule, and avoid the basis, holding-period, and estimated-tax mistakes that turn a 0% plan into a tax bill.
Set least-privilege access, human approval gates on money movement, and an audit trail that links each action to its evidence before an AI assistant creates financial drafts, changes records, or touches a payment workflow.
Amazon limits most non-media product titles to 75 characters and adds a 125-character Item Highlights field. This workflow shows sellers how to inventory the catalog, decide what stays in the title, log every edit, and reconcile listing changes to SKU-level books.
A show-level bookkeeping system for comedy clubs — separate ticket, drink-minimum, and food revenue, settle performers from a written door-split formula, hold sales tax and tips as liabilities, and defer private-event deposits until the show is delivered.
Classify an employee advance as a wage payment, business-expense advance, or personal loan before the cash leaves the bank, route it through one Assets:Employee-Advances clearing account, and reconcile the open balance every pay run so it never becomes hidden compensation.
The EU Platform Work Directive (2024/2831) must become national law in all member states by December 2, 2026, creating a rebuttable presumption that platform workers are employees. US businesses hiring EU-based freelancers through digital platforms face reclassification risk, algorithmic transparency duties, and new data-processing bans — this guide covers the six pillars, a 10-month compliance playbook, and the bookkeeping changes to make now.
A feed store guide to costing bulk feed and bagged SKUs at delivered cost—allocating inbound freight, choosing FIFO or weighted average, counting bulk bins to expose shrink, and reconciling the inventory subledger monthly.
A step-by-step readiness guide for cost-reimbursement contractors—how to build a traceable chart of accounts, run labor charging as a daily control, calculate indirect rates, and produce an invoice package reproducible from your books, with a 60-day plan.
Guatemala's 2026 Régimen de Pequeño Contribuyente ceiling is Q500,285 in gross invoiced sales. This guide shows freelancers and small shops how to track year-to-date invoices, reconcile every payment channel, and forecast a regime change before crossing the line.
In a mailbox store or CMRA, record prepaid mailbox rent as deferred revenue and customer postage as a liability until it is spent, reconcile the customer-balance subledger to the general ledger monthly, and set retention rules from USPS and IRS requirements.
