The IRS utilizes a few different tax ID numbers beyond just the social security number. An important one for those in business is known as an employer identification number, or EIN. Any partnerships, corporations or S-corporations must have an EIN, but those who have a sole proprietorship or LLC have a choice in some circumstances. It is important to know when a sole proprietor, LLC or individual requires an EIN to ensure tax compliance.

Businesses

There are a few key factors that determine whether a sole proprietor or LLC requires an EIN. The most important is whether you have employees. As soon as your company retains employees, you must have an EIN, even if you do not meet any of the other criteria. Other situations that require an EIN include:

• An LLC with multiple members
• A sole proprietor in bankruptcy
• An LLC choosing to be taxed as a corporation or S-corporation
• A business selling certain items, including alcohol and firearms
• Paying excise tax or employment tax
• Paying independent contractors more than $600 per year

Sole proprietors who change their business structure will need to get an EIN. Businesses that are sold or inherited often need to have an EIN as well. As stated before, partnerships and corporations, even if they work in the non-profit sphere, must have an EIN.

Individuals

Although EINs are generally for businesses, there are some instances in which an individual might need to get one. An example is an individual that hires household workers. These might be considered employees, so you would need to have an EIN for tax purposes. Estates and trusts might also need to have an EIN rather than another type of tax ID in order to perform banking activities and pay taxes.

If you decide that you need an EIN, you can visit this page for an EIN application. If you are wondering how to get an EIN in Colorado or another state, then contact IRS-EIN-Tax-ID Filing Service to learn more about the process.

When it comes to freelancing or becoming self-employed, the pros and cons of working for yourself will be argued over ad nauseam. There are real downsides, including the prevalence of stress amongst freelancers. However, for some, the argument is settled by one factor above all else: the idea of working for an employer vs. working for clients. Some people might not see the difference, so we’re going to go into the indisputable reasons that having a client base is much better than having a boss.

Pic by missavanna

You can set your own terms

When you decide to offer your services out to the market, you get to set the price. There will undoubtedly be clients who want to try and find some wiggle room or get you to provide extra services, but it’s up to you at the end of the day.

They don’t have all the power

Employers and clients both pay you. Legally, they are obligated to. But employers are a lot more likely to flaunt those obligations, even unintentionally, in little ways that end up costing you. When you’re paid late, it could mean you have to spend using credit, in which case you end up losing more money in the end. To anyone caught in that cycle, finding a personal attorney for wage theft is an easy recommendation. Late invoice payments are a concern for some freelancers/self-employed business owners, but the client doesn’t have all the power in that relationship. The contract does, and it’s riskier for them to try to ignore it than to simply eat the costs.

You can say no

If a client tries to take control of how much you get paid and which services you offer or they have failed to pay on time in the past? You can simply say no to them. You might be hesitant to say no to a client in your early days, but don’t just think of it as turning down money. Think of it as not choosing to spend your time on a less profitable income source that gives you more trouble. Other clients will come.

It’s your methodology

Similarly, clients can’t tell you how to work, where to work, how to dress or make any of the other demands that employers can. You should try to work in a way that makes sure you deliver what you promise, but how exactly you get to that conclusion is up to you.

It’s all about value

To clients, you aren’t just another employee. You are a professional service provider, so long as you get your branding right. In real terms, that means you are genuinely more likely to feel more valued by a client than by the average employer.

Freelancers and the self-employed have to consider the wants and needs of their clients seriously at all times. However, they are not beholden to them. If you want to guarantee yourself fair relationships with a little more power on your side, you’re a lot more likely to get with clients than employers.

As a freelancer, you will live and die based on whether or not you can win new clients. You might think this is just a matter of showing a brilliant portfolio of previous work while also making sure that previous clients sing your praises, typically by delivering an excellent level of service. But actually, there are certain things that can impact whether or not you win a potential client. These factors can come into play whether you are communicating by email, on the phone or in person. Let’s look at a few and make sure you are not losing the interest of a potential client due to a weird mistake.

Exerting The Right Pressure

Pic Source

The handshake is synonymous with making a business deal or forming a new partnership. But it’s also the way you greet a potential new client, and it does matter. Your handshake has to exert the right amount of pressure because people can tell a lot about someone by the way they shake hands. Or at least, they think they can, and that’s what matters. It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, their perception will change based on how you hold their hand. You need to apply marginal pressure as this shows confidence and don’t hold for too long because this is a key sign you lack people skills. When you are shaking their hand, do keep eye contact as this demonstrates authority.

Smile Like You Mean It

Pic Source

You do need to make sure that you aren’t too serious through a meeting with a potential new client. Remember, they need to feel completely comfortable and relaxed. At the end of the meeting, you need them to go away knowing without a doubt that you are the right person to handle their project. So smile, tell a joke and make them feel at ease before breaking into the plan for the project that they are offering you.

Keeping Up Appearances

Pic Source

Appearances do matter, and they can even be a distraction. You might have chipped your tooth. This can suggest that you can’t afford to have it fixed or that you don’t care about little details. Use an emergency dentist to get an issue like this fixed before the meeting to avoid this negative perception. It’s just one example of how appearance matters.

The Right Return Time

<
Pic Source

If you’re being contacted by a potential client online, you need to think about the amount of time you take to return the email or phone call. You might leave it for a while, thinking this shows that you are busy with lots of clients. It could also show that you are overstretched and don’t have the resources needed. As such, you should leave it a day and perhaps even set up an automated email response alerting the client you will be in touch within 24 hours. This shows a great level of professionalism and also gives the air of a successful business.

We hope you take these details into consideration the next time you’re trying to grab valuable new client. If you do, we’re sure the endeavor will be a great success.

Picture Source

The hardest part of making your business successful isn’t pulling in sales but managing all aspects of operations so that everything stays in one piece. If you were entrepreneurial enough to create a business with an innovative product or service to sell to the market then you’re likely already skilled (or becoming more skilled) at bringing in profits, but that isn’t enough to keep your company successful.

You need to think about your future plans for the company in terms of growth, how to invest your finances to ensure continued success, new projects that consumers want, keeping employees on track, and so much more. It’s difficult to keep on top of everything as the boss because being an innovative leader isn’t enough. You also need to be a smart and sensible leader. Here are some ways in which you can achieve that goal through better management of your business.

Organize your finances

Money keeps the wheel of business turning. As mentioned in the introduction, however, making profits isn’t enough. You’re doing something well right now and that’s great but you need to think about things in the long-term. The market never stands still. What works well today may not work well tomorrow. If you want to keep making money then you need to invest your profits into improving your business so that it can grow to meet increased demand. Shying away from spending your company’s money on improvements is riskier because you run the risk of getting left behind and losing your current traction. Of course, you need to learn how to budget so as to organize your business’ expenditures. You need to be sure that you make smart investments and never spend beyond your company’s means.

Still, if you’re really struggling to get your business’ financial affairs in order then it can’t hurt to get some help. You could hire a professional to dish out advice but that’s a cost that’ll add another financial burden to the list. And understanding how to look after your money might not be the problem; putting your knowledge to the test and actually organizing your business’ accounts might be the real problem. You could do some research into the best robo-advisors on the market as these automatic digital platforms can use algorithms to assess your company’s financial data and offer smart advice. Technology can even help to automatically invest for you. The point is that you might be intelligent enough to understand smart financial methods but not have the time to oversee and assess every last piece of data by yourself.

Support your workforce
At the end of the day, your business won’t run smoothly if your employees aren’t organized. You might have a clear and focused mindset when it comes to running your company but that isn’t enough if your workers are on different pages when it comes to projects and the general objectives of your business. It’s important to hold frequent meetings so as to ensure that the whole team knows what is expected of them and where they fit into the business’ overall plan.

You should also aim to reduce the time employees spend on menial tasks because this will mean they can focus on the work that really matters to the company. As mentioned earlier, automated software is the way to go when it comes to administrative processes. Why waste a human being’s time on something a computer can do? You might even want to look into a virtual receptionist or a virtual call center so that customer service can be handled off-site.

(Image Source)

In the past, business owners would usually have to decide what they wanted to sell or do long before they ever got started. Having a physical store restricted people to a company which would change as little as possible, making the most out of signage and other purchases which had to be made. Of course, though, nowadays, this sort of issue doesn’t exist, as the Internet makes it a lot easier for a company to adapt. To help you out with this, this post will be showing you how to start selling on trend.

Researching: The biggest part of this job will be the research you do at the very beginning. Thankfully, you don’t have to predict the future, as other people will notice trends long before you have to. Instead, you just have to know where to look to find the next big thing. Websites like eBay have their own trending pages which can be followed. Along with this, though, websites like Instagram and Pinterest can be great for finding the most popular items at any given time.

Sourcing Goods: Once you have an idea of what you’d like to sell you can start to think about where you’re going to get it from. There are loads of wholesale retailers out there, and you can buy pretty much anything you’d like in bulk. In the case of e cigarettes, for example, websites like E Liquid UK have loads of options for you to choose from. With the amount you can make from products like this, your bulk purchase will often be very good value. Of course, though, you should always do some number crunching to make sure you’re getting a good deal.

Making The Right Listings: With your products in hand, you’ll be ready to start the process of putting them on the web. As your business will be adapting with the times, it won’t be worth building a website, as it will have to change too much. Instead, websites like eBay enable you to sell without a dedicated site behind you. This will always cost a little bit of money. But, unlike other platforms, eBay always has a huge population of active customers.

Into The Future: Finally, it’s time to think about the future of your company. As time moves on, the trends you’ve bought into might drop off in popularity, and it will be time to move onto something a little bit different. At this point, you can start the whole cycle again, using the first attempt to teach you as much as possible. The old products which you’re no longer going to be selling can be reduced in price and sold as soon as possible to make room for the new.

Hopefully, this post will inspire you to start working harder on the time you put into your online business. Not a lot of people realize how easy it can be to appeal to customers. But, by simply providing something they like, you can start to make a huge amount of money.

Running a business isn’t an easy thing to do, I think many of us can agree on that. There is always so much to think about when it comes to the day to day management of your business and staff that sometimes things that matter can become less of a priority to you, and one of those is business security. But yet, in any office, you have technology that has a value. Many businesses have stock that has a huge value and not to mention some of the damage that can be done digitally, so why wouldn’t it be a focus of yours?

That being said it can be easy to be distracted by other aspects of your company, and with that in mind, I thought it would be an ideal time to share with you some of the ways you can ensure your business is fully secure moving forward.

Sourced

Are you covered from digital theft?

Much of what is important to a business is stored digitally these days through hard drives and smart devices, and so this means that all businesses are at risk of theft digitally. In a nutshell, this means that someone hacking into your servers and gaining all aspects of your business. From personal information and records to bank details of your business and even personal information of customers. Being hacked is not something you want to happen, so it’s always a good idea to ensure that all hard drives and technology aspects of your business have some form of protection placed on them. It’s also a good idea to only keep the information that you need and regularly audit to ensure that other sensitive information won’t be put at risk.

Is your premises secure?

Not only do you need to think about your business security digitally, but you also need to think about the offices and business premises that you have. A good security alarm these days can now be linked to local police departments so that if something were to happen the authorities would be notified straight away. Other aspects of physical security could be surveillance cameras, or even hiring someone to keep watch during out of hours.

What about sensitive information?

Most businesses have some form of sensitive data, that could be customer information and payment details, or that of members of staff when it comes to HR records, payroll and employment details. It is vital to keep this information safe and secure, and so it might be worth having some form of extra security placed on those records. Sometimes people can use services to verify your customer’s identity through visual and verified documents, and the same could be done for members of staff. For example, there could be visual checks placed on sensitive information of customers or staff, and only verified people can access it at any time. This could also protect you from rogue staff members trying to sabotage your business.

Sourced

The use of strong passwords

It may sound very basic, but when was the last time you changed your password? Some people can be guilty of using the same password for a multitude of things or worse still not changing them for a number of years. This puts your business at risk so it is always advisable to regularly change passwords and encourage staff to do the same.

Create a social media policy for your business

Social media is a great tool for business, but it could also put your business in jeopardy. This is when it is advisable to have a social media policy for your staff members, for example, not mentioning company practices or sensitive information that only certain people are privy to. You may also want to put in a clause in regards to slander from disgruntled ex-staff members.

Have some form of signing in and out book

Many businesses have a lot of people coming and going, but do you really know who is entering your business on a day to day basis. This is when a signing in book could be a real simple feature to add to your business and could help in regards to security. Knowing who has been in your business and subsequently left can help you keep track.

Is there anything else your employees could do?

Finally, your employees can also be responsible for the security of your business but ensuring their desks are tidy and that records and sensitive information are locked away. If you have people locking up on your behalf then ensure that they follow certain procedures.

I hope that some of these tips help you to increase the security of your business.