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Congress coughs up cash for small business loans
posted by Happy Business Guy @ 10:45 PM
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Added incentives for banks to make Small Business Administration-backed loans will continue through the end of March, thanks to a fresh funding infusion authorized by Congress as part of Tuesday’s bill extending unemployment benefits.
Since early last year, the SBA has waived its fees and offered banks guarantees of up to 90% on the small business loans the agency backs. Created as part of the Recovery Act, the deal sweeteners helped SBA-backed lending rebound from its near collapse in late 2008, in the wake of the financial crisis.
Find banks in your city that have recently made small business loans. More
Congress initially authorized the incentives to continue through September of this year, but the measures proved so popular that their funding was quickly exhausted. The SBA has been relying since late November on temporary extensions to keep the incentives running. They will issue you a business check already written out for your use.
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Nigerian prince still wants your money
posted by Mr. Peachtree user @ 9:29 PM
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Internet fraud cases surged by 22% in 2009, and financial losses doubled compared to the year before as scammers took advantage of Americans rendered desperate by the recession.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crime Complaint Center said it received 336,655 complaints in 2009 with losses totaling $559.7 million. This is a substantial increase from 275,284 complaints in 2008, when the losses totaled $265 million.
Dire financial straits have made Americans more vulnerable to big-ticket scams, said John Kane, manager of research for the Internal Crime Complaint Center.
“A certain level of desperation might sink in, and you might take that leap, where you wouldn’t before,” he said. “We’ve seen an increase in the number of complaints with fraud with a high price tag attached to them.”
Also, he said that scammers are becoming savvier, stealing identities on social networking sites and propositioning your online friends for money.
“We’re seeing that the criminals are using new and diverse tactics to reach out to people,” Kane said. “They’ll take over your account and then use your identity to ask money from friends for an emergency. Instead of coming from a stranger, it’s coming from someone who is supposedly your friend.”
He said the FBI has cracked down on fraudulent activity through auction sites such as eBay, but fraudsters have quickly moved on and been “setting up shop” on other popular Web sites, such as Craigslist. Dont give out any of your personal or business checks information as it will be a bad result.
We all have shopping cart problems, but when to fix it is the question.
posted by Mr. Peachtree user @ 9:05 PM
Monday, March 8, 2010
When your running a retail store, alot of things can happen. What if you lost some good employees, but gained new employees that wasn’t that good of a worker. You could see an impact on your sales and it will hit your checkbooks. What about if it was your online store? You have had the same company helping you for years then they started to lack customer service, and tech support, and alot of downtime’s then what?
Yes, you can find an new company to help your business that is more reliable. Same thing when its business checks that the company you’ve ordered from has changed. The company i use for business checks, hasn’t changed, and actually has gotten better in a lot of ways. Its a risk with any store. Just do what you can and monitor all aspects of your business.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The end of more than two years of job losses can’t come soon enough for most Americans.
But with all the attention given to the number of jobs on U.S. payrolls and the unemployment rate, it’s easy to miss one important sign of improvement in the job market: paychecks have started to get bigger.
Despite the millions of people who have lost jobs during the past year, there are signs that personal income is increasing. Even a small gain in income is significant. If consumers have more money in their pocket, that can help to boost consumer spending and create the demand that will prompt a resumption of hiring.
“At the end of the day, we need income so people can spend money,” said Sung Won Sohn, economics professor at Cal State University Channel Islands. “It is a sign that things are beginning to improve.” (Business checks used for payroll is even showing this)
Keeping your online store going does require alot of work. You have to monitor the site daily, and or get a company that can ping your site and make sure its on line. If it goes down, you’ll be able to receive a notification email/cell phone that its down. By adding or removing products can be alot of work as well. Making sure the site is backed up daily is very important. If your store goes down often you’ll be loosing customers.
Keeping customers coming back is very important. They dont mind upgrades, just so they can find what they want, and check out. If your store is very slow, or is down, your loosing money. When a customer is ordering business checks, they want to find the product and get in/and out, not wait on the site.
Its really easy to design your own business check. You can use your logo to the left of your business address, or have it part of the address. Then you can lighten it, so it will create a watermark on to the check, and the stubs. Having the color logo really enhances the look of your business check, and adds professionalism into it.
Order Business checks can be customized to have no lines, or lines onto the check. Another option is whether it has one or two signature lines. Dont forget you can select from 16 styles/colors to enhance your business checks. You can even have a custom quote, or “VOID AFTER 90 DAYS” imprinted onto the check. One very important thing is this. Check with your bank and see if the endorsing on the back needs to be your name, or the company name. If you do it wrong, it can cause a lot of problems, or the bank could reject it.
Adding more security to protect your investment is always an good idea. What if you didn’t have insurance? What if you didn’t have a security system installed? OOOpppss….that’s a bad idea. If you have a security system installed, it will help to prevent someone from stealing your stuff. Having insurance is always another good option, in-case of a fire, or weather related incident.
Having security is on your business checks is also important that accounts sometimes don’t think about. Some of the basic business checks security features are:
- Padlock Icon
- VOID pantograph
- Micro-print
- Security Screen
- Artificial Watermark
Those things help to make sure your business runs efficiently
(Fortune Small Business) — A while ago I needed to hire an accounts payable person for my picture-framing business. We put an ad in the paper and received a good number of applications. One candidate jumped out from the pile: He had exactly the right background, and it didn’t hurt that he asked for a slightly lower salary than we were planning on paying.
After a successful interview we moved to the reference check. We called his previous employer, who was now retired, and left a message on his answering machine. He returned the call promptly and said all the right words: on time, conscientious, honest, reliable, easy to work with. Making sure your accounts payable dept is using the payroll checking account is very important as well. If they use the wrong account, it wont be good. Quickbook checks are easy to find anywhere.
So far, so good! Unfortunately, there were no other references because our candidate had worked for this guy for years and his only employer before then was out of business. But his background check and drug test came back clear, so we offered him the job. He readily accepted. He even asked if he could familiarize himself with our financial-software manual in advance so he could hit the ground running.
What’s it going to take for long-term Treasury yields to climb again?
posted by Happy Business Guy @ 11:36 PM
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — What’s it going to take for long-term Treasury yields to climb again?
Most experts believe that the rate on the 10-Year Treasury is likely to climb above 4% by the end of the year.
If the economy shows more signs of steady, albeit unspectacular, growth, it makes sense for bond investors to start focusing more on inflation concerns. That should mean a sell-off in long-term bonds and corresponding rise in their yields. (Bond prices and rates move in opposite directions.)
In addition, foreign investors appear to be growing increasingly wary of how much debt the U.S. has accumulated in order to pay for stimulus and various bailout programs. That should also, in theory, put upward pressure on rates. If they increase the percentage, then alot more business checks will be written to help our economy.
“Rates are going to drift higher over the course of the year for two reasons. The Treasury has massive financing needs because of the deficit and the economy is continuing to improve,” said David Joy, chief market strategist with RiverSource Investments, a money management firm based in Minneapolis.
Is your website business protected?
posted by Happy Business Guy @ 10:19 PM
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Is your website business protected? You should be able to answer, YES it is. Do you have the SSL on your check out where your customers inters their credit card? Should be able to say yes, because its required, or you could be fined. Some of the things you can look for that makes a business on line liget is, look for the SSL, are they Authorize.net authorized, how long have they been in business? Or you can even call the business and they can show you on the site.
By placing orders online, for online cheap business checks, you need to make sure your business is protected against hackers, and or someone that wants to hurt your business. Always update your security features, and how you accept credit card. Allot of companies accept debit/credit cards over the phone, but its not recommend because it will open the business up for liability and security reasons. What if the other person writes it down and uses it against you.