When it comes to crafting a refund policy, being a business owner means that you can establish your own rules so long they are communicated to your customer clearly in advance of their purchase.

A good refund policy reduces conflict and ambiguity by outlining the procedures and terms under which a return/refund can occur. In doing so, it improves customer service. Your employees will appreciate having a documented policy they can share with customers, and your customers will be able to accurately assess the risk of making their purchase ahead of time. Furthermore, your credit card or shopping cart company will most likely require one to maintain PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance. It’s always a good, fair business practice to establish and publish a thorough refund policy.

Here are some of the components you’ll want to address in your refund policy:

Eligible Items for Return: Which items can be returned and which can’t? Some products can’t be returned safely after opening (such as food products). You might still honor a refund of money or credit, even if the item can’t be returned or re-sold.

Condition of Items: You may want to stipulate that returns can only be made if the items are in a condition to be re-sold. This could mean that to qualify for a refund, the customer also needs to include their item’s packaging when they initiate their return.

Return Time Window:  Your business model and industry will often dictate the length of time that is appropriate for a customer to initiate a return. Common time limits range from 7 to 30 days, and during the holidays, many retailers even extend their return windows to 90 days. 

Shipping Requirements: If shipping is required to return an item, you’ll want to ensure your refund policy addresses which party will be responsible for shipping fees, how returns should be packaged, and what mail carrier is authorized for the return.

Processing Time: When can customers expect to receive their refund? Managing customer expectations surrounding refund turnaround is also something you may want to address with your refund policy. 

Cash vs. Credit: If a return qualifies for a refund, how will the money be returned to the customer? Via the payment method used, cash, a mailed check, or store credit only?

Processing Procedures: Will customers need to fill out a form or request refund approval? What instructions do you need to provide them for proper return requests and processing?

Fees: Will there be a re-stocking fee, cancellation fee, return processing fee, or any other fee that reduces the refund amount?

Answering the above questions is the first step to drafting your company’s refund policy. You might be tempted to establish a “no returns, no refunds” policy, which could be the right thing for your business, depending on many factors. On the opposite spectrum is the “no questions asked” policy, which could increase sales in the long term by lowering the risk for your shoppers. (Nordstrom, for example, is well-known for its generous return policy). Keep in mind: your refund policy is a chance to build trust with your customer, and a rigid policy could result in lost sales or repeat customers. 

Once you have thoughtfully considered the topics outlined above, you can begin drafting your written policy. It may also be a good idea to have your lawyer review the policy prior to publishing. Once the policy is finalized, post it on your website and in checkout areas of your store.

Next, make sure you have a smooth process in place to handle returns on a timely basis. Most brick-and-mortar stores have a separate checkout area or customer service desk to process returns to avoid slowing down the regular check-out lines. Employees should be trained to speak with the customers appropriately, accept the returned items back into inventory for resale or return to vendor, and use the cash register or point of sale system to process the returns. A well-trained employee can even create opportunities to convert a return into an exchange for a similar item that better suits the customer’s needs.

With an increase in customers will always come an increase in likelihood that there will be a customer who requests a refund. However, with a clear, fair, and well-documented refund policy, your business can be prepared to handle any return.

Entrepreneurs often excel at running their day-to-day businesses and swiftly meeting their customers’ needs. But often, those same business owners who are great at meeting their clients’ needs have a hard time meeting internal deadlines and achieving long-term goals, despite their best intentions. Enter: self-accountability, or the act of maintaining commitments you make to yourself and accepting responsibility for the outcomes of your actions. It’s the difference between getting something done and a wistful, “I’ll get to that next week” mindset.

 This article will outline a few ways you can stretch your self-accountability muscle.

Setting Goals and Deadlines

We all have projects we’d like to work on but haven’t gotten around to for various reasons. The issue could be that your goal isn’t SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) enough, causing uncertainty about how to start. Eliminating ambiguity around your goals can often unveil the path to achieving them.

Once your goal is SMART, start by making a timeline of tasks and milestones that you would like to be held accountable for, marking your calendar for each milestone and the project’s end date. By displaying your list of milestone dates prominently, you might find that carving out time to work toward them becomes a more practical and intentional process. 

Connect with Your Purpose

Take some time to analyze why completing a project is important to you. How would completing it connect with your business purpose, mission, vision, and values? Document your “why” and display it prominently next to your milestone list to help you stay focused.

State Your Goals Publicly

Communicate your goals publicly with peers, friends, or co-workers. For many entrepreneurs, this is when their commitment to achieving their goals feels real. “There’s no turning back now,” you might find yourself thinking.

It’s a big step to put yourself out there, and as we’ve mentioned, many entrepreneurs find it easier to be accountable to others than to themselves. If this is something you experience, announcing your commitment can be a great way to establish self-accountability. By making your intentions public, you’re taking responsibility for the results of your actions (or inactions). It may feel scary to do so, but it works!

Consider an Accountability Partner

Some people do very well by partnering with a peer or trusted business person. This could be a mentor, a paid coach, an advisory board, a mastermind group of people, a nonprofit group, a co-working group, a peer, a vendor, an incubator, or an investor. While a friend might seem like the best place to start, consider going further outside your comfort zone.

Tell your accountability partner to push you and to be candid. They may need your explicit permission if it’s an informal arrangement. Set regular meetings to help you maintain your progress and report on your milestones. Allow your partner to point out mistakes or opportunities for improvement, and acknowledge them yourself. Make course corrections as soon as they’re necessary and use your partner as a sounding board.

Remember, this process won’t work if you aren’t honest with both yourself and your partner. Notice when you’re procrastinating and dig deep to discover why. Often, it can be a lack of resources or time, but this cause is usually coupled with a mindset issue, like uncertainty about where to start or a fear of failure that needs to be illuminated.

Celebrate

Celebrate every milestone you achieve, big and small. Reward yourself appropriately! Even if a project seems small, if it’s one you’ve put off for months or even years, completing it is worth celebrating, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed of the time it took you to reach completion. A celebratory mindset reinforces positive behavior and creates enthusiasm and momentum.

Self-accountability makes the functions of your business run better, plain simple. You can apply these ideas to projects, entire departments, and even your personal life goals.

Accountability can make a tremendous difference in achieving the success you want, so try out one of the approaches we outlined above, and know that we’re cheering you on every step of the way.

Securing a business loan can be an exciting step in the growth of your business. But did you know that loans typically require a specific process to be properly recorded in your accounting system? Not to worry; your loan statement will provide the information needed by your accountant to get the loan booked properly.

To start, you’ll need to locate the following pieces of information about your loan:

• Total amount borrowed
• Date of loan
• Date of the first payment
• Payment amount
• Term of loan
• Number of payments
• Interest rate

The full amount of your loan should be recorded as a liability on your business’s balance sheet. The offset is either an increase to cash or the recording of new assets like a car, truck, or building.

Each payment you make contains two components: interest and principal. Interest is an expense and is recorded in the Other Expenses section of your profit and loss statement. It will reduce your profit. Principal is the amount you pay toward paying off the loan. It reduces the liability account where the loan is recorded. While Principal does not affect your profit, it does improve your liquidity with each payment you make.

The interest and principal amounts won’t be the same for each payment. Earlier loan payments consist of higher interest and lower principal amounts. As you reach the end of paying off your loan, the interest portion becomes smaller and the principal larger. An amortization schedule shows you the exact amount of interest and principal for each payment. You or your accountant can create a loan amortization schedule in Excel.

Each time you make a payment, cash is reduced for the entire payment amount. The offset is split between interest expense and your loan liability, using the amounts in the amortization schedule. When you code your loan payment, you can use the amortization schedule to get the correct amounts for both of those accounts.

In a simple service business with no assets except cash, your cash balance can mimic your profit level. However, when you introduce loans and new, non-cash assets with depreciation expenses, that won’t be the case. You might wonder why you have no cash and more profits, or vice versa. This is why it’s a good idea to understand how these transactions affect your Balance Sheet and Income Statement as well as your business’s overall financial health.

At year-end, your accountant can make correcting entries if needed between the loan balance and interest expense. 

If you failed to make payments or made them late, your accountant can make those allocations as well using manual journal entries.

Often, when you get a loan, you’re also acquiring some type of asset, such as a car or land and building. This asset should be recorded on your books correctly as well. You should have some type of closing statement or purchase contract that has the details for your accountant. Your Accountant will also compute and record the correct amount of depreciation for the asset type.

Your accountant can speak with you in more detail about your specific situation and better explain the interplay between cash and profits. We use the Statement of Cash Flows to reconcile profits to cash. Want to learn more about that financial report? Reach out to New Business Directions.

Incidents of cybercrime have been problematic for a long time, but since the onset of the pandemic, we’ve seen these incidents increase not only in frequency but in elaboration, too. Unfortunately, phishers and hackers have become more adept at successfully targeting small and midsize businesses with their efforts. 

Previously, we’ve addressed how you can improve the security of your online accounts. However, if your organization’s reputation depends on maintaining the security and privacy of customer records, then this insurance is a must. In today’s climate, it’s no longer a matter of “if” but “when” your private business information could be breached, and to what extent. However, with the right precautions in place, you could reduce–and possibly even eliminate–such risk.

Finding the Right Insurance

The best place to start is your current insurance agent or a general insurance broker that you trust. Cybercrime policies are separate policies that cover specific acts, and you will need to read the policy carefully to determine exactly what you are protected from. You should also distinguish between personal and business policies; you may want both.

In a business policy, some of the items you’ll want to consider protection against include:

• Data breach
• Ransomware attack
• Spoofing and identity theft
• Wire fraud
• Civil fines
• Lawsuits
• Costs of notification, reputation repair, forensics and data restoration, credit monitoring, and other potential damages

A good policy will cover some or all of these costs:

• Business interruption costs
• Data breach costs
• Extortion costs
• Crisis management and public relations costs
• Data recovery costs
• Computer replacement costs
• The cost of reputational harm

Like any other insurance, you will need to complete an application to obtain a quote. Some of the standard questions you’ll be required to answer include:

• Type of products and services sold in the business
• Type of electronic data stored on your computer systems
• Whether laptops are password-protected
• Whether you have written network security and privacy policies in place
• Whether you have physical security procedures in place
• Whether you have the most current software and processes to keep it upgraded
• Whether you have backups
• Whether you monitor unauthorized attempts to access systems
• Whether you are in compliance with PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act), and GLBA (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act)
• Whether you have a written document retention and destruction plan in place
• Whether you have encryption enabled
• Whether third parties are involved in data handling
• Whether you have a process to check copyrights of materials you use
• Whether you have a risk management education program for employees
• Your current insurance policies
• Whether you’ve had a breach in recent years
• Whether you’ve had any lawsuits or claims in this area
• Whether you use a firewall
• Whether you use anti-virus protection
• Whether you have an employee/third party off-boarding process that terminates access to computers and data

As you can see, the application process itself is an excellent way to “cross your Ts and dot your Is” when it comes to putting safeguards in place for your business. And, of course, your premium will likely be less expensive when you have these precautions and systems in place. It goes without saying that your premium will be less expensive if you get insurance before you are attacked so that you have a clean application.

A key aspect of owning a business is managing enterprise risk effectively. A cybercrime policy will go a long way toward protecting your hard-earned investment and offer you peace of mind, knowing that your business is protected.

There’s more to being financially resilient than simply saving enough money for a rainy day. One aspect of being financially responsible is maintaining good financial records – and making sure the people who will need access to your records, like family members or key business partners, know where to find them if something happens to you. Here are some ideas for your consideration.

Systems and lists

You’re probably managing your accounting through a digital platform like QuickBooks, but what about other tools that supplement your needs? Do you have a chart of your accounting tech stack and ecosystem? What about Excel worksheets that supplement your use of QuickBooks? Is it clear where these can all be accessed? Do your loved ones know how to find these items if something happens to you?

Now that so many things are digitized, it’s not as easy for others to access the intel required to run your business in your absence. Digitization is a critical advancement in business management, but it does make things a bit trickier for your representatives to step in. For example, your financial records might be in a dozen different places on your computer or the cloud. Being organized and planning for a smooth financial future for your loved ones means making a list of instructions on how to access all of your financially-related digital assets. Keep in mind, this information is highly sensitive and should not be shared until it’s absolutely necessary.

Your list might include:

1. Contact information for your accountant, who will likely have access to your cloud-based accounting software.
2. A list of banks you do business with.
3. A list of credit cards that need to be paid monthly.
4. List of government-related accounts, such as social security and IRS.gov.
5. List of regular monthly bills, such as utility, credit cards, and rent, plus their associated email accounts.
6. Details of regular monthly income received.
7. Where to find financial files on your computer or cloud, such as tax returns, bank statements, and real estate closing documents.

A password management system like LastPass can help you share sensitive and critical data securely and even at a moment’s notice. We can’t stress enough how important it is to keep this information private and secure, and under no circumstance do we recommend sharing this information before it’s necessary.

Backups

If your computer crashes, will you be able to recover your financial files? Taking periodic backups will prevent a loss of records. In the IT world, there’s a common saying that “two is one and one is none.” This means that if you only have one backup file and it fails, you’re left with nothing. Having two backup systems ensures that the data is still preserved even in the event of one failure.

What to keep in case of an audit

You hope it will never happen, but if it does, are you prepared for an audit with the IRS or a state agency? Do you know what records to keep and for how many years?

Financial confidence

Having good documentation, sharing financial knowledge and goals with the right people, and making a backup plan will boost your financial confidence. You will be more prepared than most households when it comes to financial safety.

How financially resilient do you feel? Take into consideration the above ideas to help you stay one step ahead.

The past few years have seen significant kinks in the supply chain due to several reasons: inconsistent buyer behavior, source material scarcity, government shutdowns, and worker shortages, to name a few. What can a business owner do to protect their businesses from shortages that result in revenue loss? Let’s take a look at a few ideas.

Source New Suppliers

Being dependent upon only one supplier for a critical item is risky. Increase your options by finding new suppliers to use as backups or alternates whenever you can. While it’s admirable to buy local, it’s not always possible. Expanding your network will provide you with a lot more flexibility, even if you have to pay a bit extra at times.

Understand Your Timeline

How accurate is your prediction of lead time? Are you providing enough time for ordering and delivery before you need the part in-house? Timelines have changed a lot in the last year. Spend some time reviewing and recalculating lead time if you need to.

Fine-Tune Forecasting

Get skilled at forecasting so that you can anticipate and prevent inventory shortages before they occur. We can help you set up spreadsheets and generate dashboard reports so you’ll have better information for decision-making in this area of your business.

Develop Relationships

The more dependent your business is on a particular supplier, the more you want to develop that relationship. Adding that personal touch might not help you get your orders faster, but when troubleshooting is needed, you’ll enjoy the extra help that a personal relationship can provide.

Increase Communication and Collaboration

Increase communication with your suppliers so they can manage their own timelines and supply chains. Provide them with accurate forecasts and let them know how they can better meet your present and future needs. Remember, it’s within their best interests to serve you as best they can, too.

Audit Inventory Records Frequently

If your inventory balances are only adjusted once a year, inaccurate inventory numbers will likely cause problems. Instead, find ways to take inventory more often or, at the very least, increase the accuracy of inventory balances. The savings will be worth it; you’ll have fewer unexpected out-of-stock or back-order situations that could cost not only a loss in sales but customer loyalty.

Proactively Manage Shipping 

There may be times when paying rush charges on shipping is justified. Actively managing shipping and in-transit items will help you keep a handle on this. When possible, line up alternate shipping methods in the event that one method becomes unreliable. Alternate shipping methods are especially advised with overseas shipments where more can go wrong.

Create a Supply Chain Task Force

If supply chain issues are critical in your business and have cost you profits in the past, it might be time to create a dedicated team to manage and prevent crises. Consider putting together a group of employees who can be responsible for strengthening your supply chain.

Try these ideas to smooth out supply chain woes in your business.

Most large businesses have developed mission, vision, and values statements to help guide them and inform stakeholders about the company’s strategic direction. Going through this strategic exercise is a wonderful idea for even the smallest business as well.

A company’s mission statement lists its core purpose and desired impact for employees, customers, owners, and other stakeholders. A vision statement defines what the company wants to be. A values statement describes what the company stands for.

It’s a perfect activity for business owners to answer and remember why they built the business in the first place. It also serves to correct and re-align the trajectory of the business.

Mission Statement

Start by asking what impact you want your business to have on the outside world. Here are some mission statement examples that are frequently quoted:

• Harley-Davidson: More than building machines, we stand for the timeless pursuit of adventure. Freedom for the soul.
• Disney: The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company.
• Nike: Nike exists to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. Our purpose is to move the world forward through the power of sport – breaking barriers and building community to change the game for all. *If you have a body, you are an athlete.

Notice how each one is short and simple to understand. They focus more on the big-picture benefits they bring to customers and less on how they will get there.

To write your own mission statement, ask yourself what your business’s purpose is and how you will impact your customers’ lives with your products and services.

Vision Statement

A vision statement is big, bold, and futuristic. What do you want your company to be?

Here are a few examples:

• Harley-Davidson: Building our legend and leading our industry through innovation, evolution, and emotion
• Deloitte: We aspire to be the Standard of Excellence, the first choice of the most sought-after clients and talent.
• Amazon: Amazon strives to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, Earth’s best employer, and Earth’s safest place to work.

What do you want your company to become?  That’s your vision statement.

Values Statements

Values statements are typically a set of adjectives or statements that answer what the company stands for. They can be in the form of leadership principles, core values, or a similar format. These days, they often include values on environmental, social, climate, global, human rights, diversity and inclusion, sustainability, and many other current issues. They can take the form of additional strategic statements on each one of these issues.

Sample values statements can be found in the company’s annual report as well as the About or Company section of their website.

Here are some examples:

• Harley-Davidson Principles:
  • Communication – Communicate with purpose, structure, facts and inspiration
  • Agility – Accelerate, innovate and thrive in a rapidly changing environment
  • Impact – Focus on impact, not process, and be outcome driven
  • Simplicity – Pursue the simplest path to achieve each outcome
  • Speed – Don’t let perfection get in the way of process and pace
  • Culture – Be fair, honest, positive and creative. Strive to win and have fun.
  • Courage -Take risks and go against the norm
  • Judgment -Think strategically and make informed decisions
  • Focus – Focus on a short list of meaningful opportunities that build desirability
  • Lean – Maximize impact with limited resources

• Coca-Cola Behaviors We Focus on:
  • Curious
  • Empowered
  • Inclusive
  • Agile

• Merck Values:
  • Patients first
  • Respect for people
  • Ethics and integrity
  • Innovation and scientific excellence

Your mission, vision, and values statements will help you communicate the qualities of your business. It can help in hiring to see if a candidate’s individual values align with the core corporate values, and with customer acquisition when prospects see what your company is about. It can also help you remember your roots and why you work so hard every day.

We’d love to hear from you when you write up your mission, vision, and values statements.

When growing a business, it’s essential to consider every available opportunity to increase automation. Doing so frees up valuable time and, as a result, can increase profitability. One key area to increase profitability is accounts receivable. Collecting money from customers is a key function in any business, and the more automated this process is, the better. When collecting payments online, options are becoming increasingly available. Here are a few examples of what these methods might look like.

Your Website

You might initially assume that your website is the perfect place to collect payments from customers, but there’s one reason this might not always be the case: security. A typical website is not as secure as it needs to be to collect credit card information from customers. Almost always, you’ll need an additional application to obtain that security. Many web-building platforms allow you to connect to these apps seamlessly, but you can also implement a workaround if necessary. For example, you can direct customers to your website for payment and provide a link to a secure site (a shopping cart with a payment gateway) via a hyperlinked button. In both cases, you’re utilizing the necessary security protocols to protect you and your customers.

A Payment App

A payment system needs to handle three functions:

1. A shopping cart feature, in which an item is priced and can be added to a basket
2. A checkout page, where billing information and credit card information can be collected
3. A behind-the-scenes settlement function, where the money is taken from the customer, held in a merchant account, and then sent to your business

You need shopping cart software to handle the function in the first step. Standard retail solutions include Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento, to name a few. But these won’t, by themselves, get you paid; they simply process the transaction in a secure environment.

The second step requires a payment gateway application. The most common stand-alone gateway is Authorize.net, and you would typically connect this to your shopping cart.

Your merchant account handles the third step, and sometimes, a separate processor is involved, too. From your merchant account, which is connected to your gateway, you typically get a reconciliation of the daily settlements that hit your bank account. You would also handle customer complaints and disputes with them.

Luckily, credit card companies like Stripe and Square have combined the second and third steps into their platforms in recent years. These platforms act as the gateway, the processor, and the merchant account for a streamlined process. Some vendors go a step further and combine all three functions into one vendor. PayPal is the quintessential example. Additionally, by using WooCommerce and WooCommerce Payments together, you can accomplish the goal of achieving an all-in-one solution.

Getting Paid in Service Businesses

A shopping cart is standard for online retail businesses, but what about service-based businesses? Service businesses that charge in advance can use a shopping cart just like retail.

If a service business bills its customers after the fact, the payment setup is connected to invoice distribution instead of a shopping cart. In this case, you would need to determine which solutions work with your specific billing system and if you’ll need an add-on application to extend your billing system’s capabilities. For example, QuickBooks users can sign up for QuickBooks payments which links your invoice to the customer payment to the bank deposit.

When the invoice is sent to the customer, it will include a payment link the customer can use to pay. These service business payment solutions are fairly industry-specific; for example, you might have noticed that medical offices often use different solutions than beauty care businesses.

Different Choices

When selecting a payment system for your business, you might think that credit card fees are the most important factor to consider. While that’s important, there are some additional considerations to keep in mind:

1. Strive to understand exactly what each apps’ capabilities are.
2. Applying for a merchant account is just like applying for a loan. In the past decade, this process has become highly streamlined.
3. Make sure the system allows you to pull the reports you need, like settlement details, refunds (full and partial) and void processing, failed payments and retries, and dispute resolution.
4. Establish processes to handle all of the items mentioned above.
5. Make sure the app you’re choosing can handle the type of billing you need it to, including cart items, recurring payments, after-the-fact invoicing, sales tax, and shipping parameters.
6. Find out how long it takes for payments to move from collection to bank deposit; this can range from 1-6 days, depending on the provider.
7. Watch for a high failure rate on customer transactions. If this is the case, it could be that the gateway and merchant account are rejecting perfectly good business because the merchant account’s acceptance rules are stringent. This can happen with merchant accounts tied directly to banks, and the best thing to do is avoid them and look for a different option.
8. Expect any new provider to hold the first few days of transactions for longer than usual. This is a temporary safety measure and should clear up quickly without action required on your part.

Adding an online payment system is a smart business decision and can save accounting time once you choose the best payment system for your specific needs.

While there are hundreds of accounting reports that can help you gain better insight into the financial health of your business, one of the most popular – but also most underutilized – is the variance report. A variance report helps you compare your actual performance with a past or expected performance. It makes crystal clear how far you’re straying from where you want to be and can therefore make it easier to course-correct earlier. 

Variance to Prior Periods

A standard variance report that almost anyone can generate compares current period results to prior period results. For example, you can generate an income statement with six columns:

1. Current month activity, such as March 1 to March 31, 2022
2. The same period of the prior year, such as March 1 to March 31, 2021
3. The variance between both months (column A minus column B)
4. Year-to-date activity, such as January 1 to March 31, 2022
5. Prior-year-to-date activity, such as January 1 to March 31, 2021
6. Year-to-date difference or variance (column D minus column E)

The variance allows you to see, at a glance, whether your sales or expenses have increased compared to last year. Seeing monthly variances is especially important if the business experiences seasonal fluctuations.

You can take your reporting one step further to explain the variances in an accounting process called account analysis. Take a look at the components of each number to see what caused the variance. Then, record your explanation in a notes section of your variance report.

You may not want to spend management time on the minor variances. To avoid this, a good financial dashboard, or simply an Excel spreadsheet, can help you color-code the balances that are more than 10 percent (or any percent you feel is material) off track.

Variance to Plan or Budget

You can also develop a variance report that compares current period results to the revenue and profit plan. Here, you would generate an income statement with these six columns:

1. Current month actual activity, such as March 1 to March 31, 2022
2. Revenue/Expense plan for the same period above
3. Month difference or variance or (over)/under (B minus A)
4. Year-to-date actual activity, such as January 1 to March 31, 2022
5. Year-to-date revenue/expense plan, such as January 1 to March 31, 2021
6. Year-to-date difference or variance or (over)/under (E minus D)

Do the same thing above, color-coding and explaining the variances using account analysis. How did your plan details differ from what actually happened? If it’s better, can you do more? If it’s worse, how can you get back on track? Performing a timely variance analysis helps you find either a) available opportunities to exploit for profit, or b) ways to get back on track faster so you don’t lose as much.

Of course, with revenue/expense plan versus actual variance reports, you do have to create the the plan first! If you’re not already receiving variance reports, would like help creating a revenue/expense and profit plan, or would simply like to set up a session to better understand variances, please feel free to reach out any time.

Is your business having trouble attracting and retaining team members amidst the Great Resignation? It’s not the only one. So far during the pandemic, the U.S. alone has seen over 33 million resignations take place. Anthony Klotz, the organizational psychologist and professor at Texas A&M University who coined the phrase “Great Resignation,” remarked that for workers, “It’s not just about getting another job, or leaving the workforce, it’s about taking control of your work and personal life, and making a big decision – resigning – to accomplish that. This is a moment of empowerment for workers, one that will continue well into [2022].”

A convergence of issues has created one of the greatest talent shortages in our lifetimes. With Baby Boomers retiring in large numbers, pandemic- and opioid-related deaths, low wages, limited or nonexistent access to child care, tighter immigration policies, and professionals reevaluating their life choices and priorities, it’s no wonder so many businesses are having trouble finding workers.

The good news is that small business owners can still implement strategies to retain and attract a strong team. Below, we outline four creative suggestions to consider:

1. Allow your employees the space to be human

American workers are demanding more from their employers, and leading businesses are listening and delivering. Beyond the usual benefit package of 401K, health insurance, vacation, and PTO, you may want to add on one or more meaningful perks like the five we’ve outlined below, which can improve work-life balance: 

1. Flex hours – consider keeping “core hours” that your team should be online or in the office for, but give them the flexibility to work at a time when they’re most productive, or have the greatest availability of time, outside of that window.
2. Work-from-home days – A hybrid work model is no longer the exception; more and more, it’s becoming the norm. Many people enjoy working from home, citing reasons like fewer distractions, greater comfort, and the ability to schedule home appointments without having to use precious PTO. 
3. Pet insurance – According to the ASPCA, pets cost their owners $700 to $1,100 on average each year. Pet insurance can be a great way to add value to employee compansiation packages while also demonstrating that you care about the things that are precious to your employees. 
4. Extra PTO – There’s a radical new movement happening in the workplace: unlimited vacation time. With this policy in place, your business is bound to stand out amongst competitors for top talent.
5. Child care – any way to make child care easier on caregivers is a plus. Childcare providers like KinderCare can help you establish an employer-sponsored child care policy. Watch your employees’ shoulders relax in real time when they hear about this one.

2. Make “fun” a vital part of your workplace

It’s a known fact that employees will stay in a role, even if they’re not thrilled about the work, so long as they feel supported by their managers and teammates. As the leader, it’s your job to set the tone at the top and establish a spirit of camaraderie. Consider bringing in breakfast once a week, scheduling a creative team-building exercise like an escape room, learn a new (non-work-related) skill together, or celebrating birthdays, workplace anniversaries, and employee wins. 

Other perks to think about are holiday gifts, bonuses, free dry cleaning, free car washes, and employee discounts. An unexpected moment that surprises and delights can go a long way.

3. Embrace technology

Employees will always benefit from a better tool for the job, and your bottom line will, too. Ask around to see where employees think processes could gain more efficiency or use a more robust software. They likely have a better handle on what will improve their workplace experience, so check in with your team once or twice a year to make sure they have the infrastructure they need.

4. Apply marketing techniques to hiring

Instead of posting a simple job ad, consider creating a marketing campaign to attract ideal employees. Make sure your social media is up to date and mirrors the culture of your organization. Create a job interview process that’s interesting and enthusiastic. You’re definitely competing for talent, so find ways to connect with your candidates and make them feel welcome and excited.

While the talent shortage isn’t going away just yet, there are still strategies you can implement to keep the talent you have and secure additional talent. More than ever, people are looking for two things: work that feels meaningful and companies that see them as human beings–not just workers.