#small-business
Financial management strategies and tools for small business owners
Solo mobile detailers can hit 60-80% gross margins, but only by tracking job-level costs — consumables, water, van depreciation, and labor — categories a generic "Supplies" bucket obscures.
A managed service provider chart of accounts should split recurring MRR, hardware resale, and project/T&M into separate revenue and COGS lines, since blended margins of ~42% can hide 58% recurring services next to 8% hardware resale.
Learn to read P&L and balance sheets to understand your business's profitability and financial position. A practical guide for business owners on why both reports matter and how to use them for smarter decisions.
The IRS needs adequate records per position — ordinary items 6 years from filing, payroll 4, property until disposition plus 6 — and a digital image counts only when indexed, legible, and retrievable.
Sail lofts price a mainsail from cloth yardage, construction method, and hand labor, then collect a deposit months before delivery — treating that deposit as revenue instead of a liability is the most common bookkeeping mistake in the trade.
The SBA's new Made in America Loan Guarantee offers eligible small manufacturers up to $5 million with a 90% federal guarantee and waived fees in FY 2026—the highest guarantee rate ever extended to small manufacturers.
Small importers lose margin points when tariffs hide in inventory costs. Here are 5 accounting strategies to recalculate landed cost, plan inventory properly, separate tariff line items, capitalize duties correctly, and claim refunds—so you can see tariff impact in real time.
Fintechs like Mercury and Rho now offer treasury and sweep accounts yielding 3.7%-5.4% on idle business cash, but treasury balances are typically SIPC-insured up to $500,000 while sweep-network balances stay FDIC-insured — a distinction worth understanding before moving six figures.
Wave Accounting moved automatic bank feeds, collaborator access, and receipt scanning behind its $16-19/month Pro tier on June 1, 2026, leaving legacy free-plan (Starter) users to enter transactions manually or pay to keep those features.
A federal court upheld a $236,000 jury verdict against a black car company for misclassifying drivers as contractors, reaffirming that the economic realities test — not the label on a 1099 agreement — determines worker status.
Courts pierce the corporate veil when owners can't show documented governance — meeting minutes, written resolutions, and clean separation of business and personal funds — so a folder of dated records plus consistent bookkeeping is the practical defense against personal liability.
FTC staff guidance issued in 2024 bars franchisors from using operations manual updates to impose fees not disclosed in the FDD, and by 2026 is reshaping how renewals and transfers get documented — here's how franchisees should audit fees against Item 6.
