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Is Taking a Small Business Loan Worth It?

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Small Business Financing| Is Taking a Small Business Loan Worth ItThe word ‘loan’ doesn’t have a nice ring to it in any sense. Whenever we talk and hear about loans, it usually points towards difficult times and thorny situations. However, business loans can’t be seen through a singular point of view. One has to apply context to commercial loans because oftentimes they are actually tied with business opportunities.

Whenever any entrepreneur starts mulling over the idea of taking a small business loan, he/she has to deal with a wide range of different opinions and suggestions. Some people strongly advocate against loans. By sharing gloomy and sometimes scary anecdotes, they try their best to deter a person from taking business loans.

Then there are people who act as the cheerleaders of loan companies. They only know the benefits of business loans and how they have turned around the fate of many ventures. Lastly, there is a group that takes a cautionary approach. They give an objective overview of taking business loans.

We will recommend you to listen to the last group. It is important to get a precautious take when you are thinking about getting a small business loan i.e. factor in all the upsides and downsides before making the final decision.
Here, we are going to discuss the instances when business loans can be beneficial or detrimental. Go through them and make a decision that suits best your unique business needs.

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Instances When It’s Profitable to Take a Business Loan

There are certainly many valid reasons where getting a loan actually helps in growing the business further. Let’s look at all such instances.

Physical Expansion Becomes Imminent

When you don’t have any further space to set up any new cubicle or when you have don’t enough area to accommodate all your customers— these instances actually indicate two things:

  • Your business is booming
  • You need more physical space

However, experiencing business growth doesn’t mean you have enough capital to take on physical expansion. We all know that the commercial real estate market always remains bullish and it’s not easy to get the required space at the desired location with your existing purchasing power.

In such cases, where a business is growing and requires more physical space for streamlined commercials operations, it is better to go for business loans. Persisting with the same congested business premises amid continuous business growth can prove to be counterproductive. You will certainly pay back the loaned money in a few months or years. However, the business growth that you are going to accommodate through physical expansion will pay you dividends for decades.

For Better Credit Prospects

If you have the vision to turn your SME into a large-scale commercial operation, then you are definitely aware of the line of credits and how important they are for the sustenance of big companies. However, it should be kept in mind that financial institutions don’t just dole out lines of credit to everyone.

A business with no lending and credit history can’t apply for a line of credit. There should be an impressive credit record to your business’s name. This can be built by taking smaller business loans and then making on-time regular payments. Besides building a good credit profile, taking small business loans on a regular basis also ensures that you don’t find yourself in a capital drought at any given moment.

Lastly, constantly working through smaller loans also results in building a good affiliation with any specific lender or lending company. This again helps when you apply for bigger loans and line of credits.

For Buying Equipment and Inventory

It’s a no brainer to file for a small business loan when you have to get any equipment or any other business inventory. These tangible items run your business and you can’t ignore them just because you don’t have the required capital at the moment. Let’s try to understand the profitability of a business loan in this context through an example.

Let’s suppose that you need two workstations worth $2,000 for a project that can bring in $3,000 in profits. But at the moment, you don’t have enough money to allocate $2,000 for this purchase. So, what you should do? Pass on the opportunity or take a small business loan to get the required equipment? We would recommend you to go to the latter option.

In the above-mentioned example, even securing a loan on a high interest rate (e.g. 25%) will generate a profit of $500. Moreover, the addition of two workstations to your business assets is a permanent gain that you are going to get. In short, it’s a win-win situation. This is the reason why taking loans for primary equipment and inventory rarely go wrong.

Instances When It’s Risky to Take a Business Loan

There are some instances where you should give a second thought on taking business loans.

If Cash Inflow Is Already Really Thin

Going in debt when your cash inflow is already flickering might not be a good option. Making debt repayments is not easy when you have very limited cash to play with. Any aggravated scenario can also lead to collateral, which is the worst possible thing that can happen to your business. In any tricky situation, it is better to first consult business loan experts. The advice of experts working at this company can come in really handy when you are in two minds regarding applying for a loan amid receding cash inflow.

With a Low Credit Score

For whatever reason, if your business now stands with low credit score, this it might not be a good idea to make things by acquiring a high-interest loan. Low credit score makes it less lucrative for lenders to offer loan offers. So, they compensate for it by increasing the interest rate. Before applying for a small business loan, it would be better if you first work on your business reputation and credit score.

The above discussion makes it clear that applying for small business loans for the right reasons pay dividends. Moreover, it is important to have good business reputations if you are going to incorporate borrowing in your business model.

5 Technical Considerations When Starting Your Business

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StrategyDriven Business Startup Article | Entrepreneurship | 5 Technical Considerations When Starting Your BusinessIf you’re starting your own business and you don’t know what technical aspects you need to consider then don’t worry, you have definitely come to the right place. There are so many different technical considerations you need to think about before starting your business, working out whether or not you need to hire help in advance. Whilst it may take a chunk out of your start-up budget, you can relax knowing you’re not going to run into any problems. With that in mind, here are 5 technical considerations to think about when starting your own business:

Do You Have A Website Up And Running?

One of the most important parts of owning a business is ensuring you have a website up and running. Although it doesn’t equal success for every business, most business owners have found that creating a website has increased their visibility ten-fold. Whilst you can set up a site on your own, often it’s better to hire both a designer and a developer who can help you put together the best possible solution. For tips and tricks when it comes to hiring a website team, you can visit this site here.

Do You Need To Consider Hosting And Servers?

Although this may sound a little too technical, you need to think about both hosting and servers, especially if you have a large business. If you have a business that has the scope to grow, you may want to consider hosting your site, your data and your systems on your own server. If that’s the case, you can visit Linux VPS for more details.

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Have You Thought About Email Addresses Across The Business?

If you’re going to be hiring a team of people when you start your business, everyone is going to need their own personal email address. Whilst this may seem unimportant to begin with, it’s important you have this set up from the start to avoid any breaches of data. Alternatively, if you want to have a variety of different inboxes depending on the enquiry, you will need to have separate email addresses for each inbox. For more information when it comes to setting up several email addresses at once, you can visit this site here.

Have You Considered Security And Protection?

When it comes to technology within your business it is important you’re doing everything you can to protect your data and your IT systems. Whether this means downloading antivirus and malware software or taking precautions when it comes to GDPR, you need to be sure your business is technologically safe.

Are You Going To Be Using Social Media?

Finally, are you going to be using social media within your business? Whilst this may not be considered a form of technology to some, using social media to grow your business requires a lot of knowledge when it comes to tech. Whether it’s setting up your accounts, building a following or using ads to reach new customers – you need to have a certain level of skill in order to use social media for business.

Are you starting a business soon? What technical considerations do you need to think about before you get started? Let me know in the comments section below.

Working Out Your New Business on a Shoestring Budget

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Starting a New Business| Working Out Your New Business on a Shoestring BudgetThe internet has streamlined everything in our life—this is a clichéd statement that gets repeated in what we read, hear and see. We often quote this statement ourselves. However, is it absolutely true? For instance, many people believe that starting out a new business is as difficult as it was, say, 20 years ago. They maintain that working out on a shoestring budget is still a tricky rope to tread no matter if you are online or offline.

We can’t deny that steering through the formative phase of a business with limited monetary resources is no mean feat irrespective of the day and age. However, it is also true that the internet helps in any such endeavor. Even if doesn’t ease it out completely, it surely reduces the difficulty level of starting out a business from scratch and on a shoestring budget.

In this article, we are going to discuss how one can work out their business dream with limited resources and how the internet can come in handy in this regard.

Making and Pitching Business Plan Online

If you are on to capital collection for your startup, then you definitely need to create a business plan to reach out to investors. Taking a conventional route with the creation and pitching a business plan is itself a costly affair. You might have to hire a specialist to make you a business plan. After that, you have to bring that plan to the tables of people that matter. It’s obvious that this approach needs both your time and money.

You can do both planning and pitching online without spending a buck. And if you don’t sure about the free business templates, you can get fully professional business plan services at a minimal cost. Similarly, you can pitch your idea through the internet. The business plans you will find on the internet are so self-explanatory that the investors will know if they need to call you to have a one-on-one meeting.

In short, you can save a considerable amount of resources on making and proposing your business plan if you are using the internet rightly.

Start out as an LLC

There are different business categories in the legal framework that are assigned to every new business. We would recommend you to choose the LLC (Limited Liability Company) categorization for your business. To begin with, being LLC is the most advantageous option for any new and small business from many legal and operational aspects.

Moreover, you don’t need to allocate a big chunk of money to complete the registration of your business as an LLC. You can do it yourself online without spending more than $100 dollars for registering anywhere in the US. Lastly, you don’t need any legal aid while filing the online LLC forms, which means you are saving yet another cost.

Even if you have the dream to make your business a C-corporation, we would suggest you start out as LLC. You can shift to your preferred classification anytime you want. Forming LLC will not just save you cost, but it also involves fewer risks.

Secure Intellectual Property

Today, when startups are mushrooming at a very quick rate, it has become really important for any new entrepreneur to secure its intellectual property at the earliest. Amidst all the informational proliferation all the time, you can’t keep your business plan and trademark under the cover for long. It’s also possible that someone else will come up with the same plan as you and have it formally patented while you are still mulling over it.

In short, the better business sense suggests that one should register their intellectual property at the onset. If you don’t have enough money at the start to hire costly experts to do this on your behalf, don’t just sleep on it for any other time. The US Patent and Trademark Office now offers its services online. From trademarks to patents and copyrights, you can register every piece of intellectual property online for a few hundred bucks.

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Arrangement of Office Space

No matter how virtualized our lifestyle gets, we still need to operate through physical spaces. Even if you are planning on to start out an online business, you will need to have some physical space to operate from. Getting a full-fledged office in commercial zones seems like an insurmountable task when you don’t have enough money to work with.

One way to steer out of this tricky spot is to go for virtual office space services where you and your team can remotely work without needing any physical space or desk. However, this idea can’t work for all business plans, particularly not for the ones where you have to meet clients in person and call meetings. In such cases, the need for physical office spaces becomes inevitable. The internet can also come in handy to find physical office spaces.

There are entrepreneur outreach programs and incubators that offer physical office spaces, conference rooms and other business amenities at the fraction of the price of the main real estate market. You can start your journey to find office space from here.

Make the Most of Cloud Computing and Pay-as-you-go Software Subscriptions

This is where the internet helps budding businesses like a guardian. With Google providing so much free online storage and Amazon providing web services at exceedingly marked down prices, you don’t need to invest heavily on you digital and software infrastructure initially.

Make the Most of Social Media

This is another domain where the internet provides some unmatched benefits. For instance, you can save the entire cost of your marketing if you are using social media the way it should be. With search engine optimized curation of content for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you can reach out to your target market without spending a single cent.
Obviously, not every business plan can execute in the same manner. It has its own peculiarities. Nevertheless, the points that we have discussed here will surely help in working on any business idea with strained budgets.

Legal Issues You Can’t Afford to Ignore When Starting Your Business

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Legal Issues|Legal Issues You Can't Afford to Ignore When Starting Your BusinessStarting a business can be a daunting task. There are so many things to consider, and you want to ensure that everything is taken care of before you get started. One thing that often gets overlooked is legal issues.

Legal concerns can be hard to navigate, and not understanding your rights could lead to major financial losses down the road. In this blog post, you’ll learn some of the most common legal issues businesses face when starting up and their solutions!

Have a Business Name

If you don’t have a business name, it can be difficult to get bank accounts or file your LLC. You need both the entity and its operation name for this step!

Register Your Business

You also want to register with the IRS as soon as possible to comply with any tax laws. The faster you do this, the less likely you are to run into any legal issues.

Signing Employment Agreements

If you plan on hiring employees, it is important that they sign an employment agreement before starting work. Also, make sure not to discriminate in your company’s hiring policies!

On the other hand, it’s essential to have multiple Labor Law Posters within the office to actively educate your employees on the rules and regulations.

Have a Lawyer

It is advisable that every business have a lawyer to create their operating agreements because this sets up the rules for how the company will run.

Legal Operations Every Business Needs

It is vital to understand the legal issues and protections you need when starting a business. There are numerous laws for taxes, labor, environmental protection, zoning, and many more that may not be obvious but can impact your business significantly if you don’t take care of them upfront.

Some essential items include incorporation and registration, trademarking (trademarking can also take care of website domain name registration), intellectual property, licensing to conduct business, and others. Apart from these, an organization also has to deal with commercial loans, construction and permanent real estate loans, equipment leasing matters, and more. As it’s mentioned here http://www.trippscott.com/practice-areas/creditors-rights-bankruptcy;  having a lawyer by your side can help you deal with these issues efficiently.

Incorporate Your Company

Incorporating your company will protect it from creditors and other debts after bankruptcy or dissolution. However, it’s important to note that a sole proprietorship is not an incorporated entity which means if you do not incorporate, then the risks are higher.

Labor law

If you have employees, it is essential to consider labor law which states that an employer must pay minimum wage and overtime as appropriate for hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek. It’s also mandatory by law to put together and maintain a set of workplace rules.

Other laws may apply depending on the type of business.

Know Your Location

It’s important to know the zoning for your business location. Some areas may not allow certain types of businesses or could be subject to other limitations that you should consider when deciding on a space.

Trademarks

Trademarks can protect against infringement and also serve as an indicator in interstate commerce, which is why it’s so important that you trademark your business name and domain.

License

A license is required to operate various businesses in the U.S., including selling alcohol, using toxic materials, or handling animals. Licenses may be granted by federal agencies like the FDA but also at the state level for certain activities as well.

The number one thing you can do before starting a business is to gather the necessary legal documents and understand what’s required. This will help you save time, money, and headaches in the future.

To make sure that you don’t get in trouble with the law, take a look at this list of legal issues to watch out for when starting your business. Do some research into what these things are and how they can affect your company, so you know what to be on guard for. Don’t let ignorance or lack of information put you and your business in jeopardy!

How to Build Your First Balance Sheet as a Startup?

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Balance Sheet|How to Build Your First Balance Sheet as a Startup?If there is one area of your startup that requires maximum attention to detail, it is the financial aspect. No successful business attained the height it has reached by neglecting the details of its financial activity.

Having a detailed financial system in place helps to increase transparency and accountability within the business environment. It also helps to know whether there is a loss or profit and the reasons for such. Most importantly, a detailed report of your startup’s financial activity over a definite period will come in handy when reaching out to investors.

One of three documents that your startup has to draw up every year is its balance sheet. Here, we shall be examining a balance sheet, what it includes, and how to build your first as a startup. Let’s start with what a balance sheet is and what it should include.

A balance sheet is an accounting document where both the credit and debit sides are balanced.

What Should Be On A Startup Balance Sheet

A balance sheet is a comprehensive financial document that examines all the assets, liabilities, and shareholder’s equity that belongs to a startup and how they were used within a financial period.

It provides an analysis of credits and debits and what every penny was used to achieve. If carefully drafted, it is expected that both ends of the balance sheet, which are the debit and credit sides, should be balanced after every calculation has been made.

From the above, you can see that there are three main components of a startup’s balance sheet, and they include:

Assets

Assets here can be current or non-current assets, and they include everything that the startup owns within a given period. Assets can be tangible, which refers to those assets that can be seen and touched like properties.

A startup can also have intangible assets that you cannot feel or touch, like goodwill. Every business should identify its assets and why these assets were obtained.

Liabilities

While assets are those things a company owns, liabilities are those things a company owes. Liabilities can also be current or non-current liabilities. Startups need to know what they have as assets and what their liabilities include.

Shareholder’s equity

Shareholder’s equity refers to what is left when a company has paid off its liabilities. It is the remainder of assets after liabilities have been settled.

A well-drafted balance sheet should have these three concepts captured accurately in it.

When A Balance Sheet Is Not Balanced

The whole essence of a balance sheet is that the debit and credit sides should be balanced at the end of every calculation. However, there are instances where after all the entries, the balance sheet won’t be balanced.

You may notice an imbalance after every entry has been inputted, and you are wondering what is the cause.

Some of the factors that can be responsible for a balance sheet not being balanced include:

  • Incorrect or incomplete data
  • Wrongly entered details
  • Mistakes in exchange rates
  • Mistakes in inventory
  • Wrong calculations

After imputing the details, review the sheet again.

Building Your First Balance Sheet as a Startup

As a business owner, you don’t have to wait until you own a big business before building your balance sheet. Immediately after your startup launches, you should start putting steps in place to draw up a balance sheet.

Your first balance sheet may not be as perfect as subsequent ones. It is possible that, in the end, the balance sheet may not be balanced. Instead of getting worried, you can review it to check if any of the factors listed above are responsible for why it isn’t balanced.

To build a perfect first balance sheet as a startup, here are some vital steps to follow:

Set a report date and range

A balance sheet is not an indefinite document. Like every other accounting document, it is expected to cover a specific range. So, your first step to building a balance sheet for your startup is to set a report date and range.

Conventionally, a balance sheet is to be drawn up every year. However, some businesses have chosen to make theirs after every quarter or the first half of the year. Regardless of which of these options you are going for, setting a report date and range is necessary.

A good example of this is to have a balance sheet from 1st January 2021 to 30th June 2021.

Identify your assets and liabilities

After you have set a report date and range, the next step is to identify your assets and liabilities. It is impossible to build a balance sheet when you don’t have a comprehensive idea of what you own and owe.

Determine your shareholder’s equity

As earlier pointed out, your shareholder’s equity is what is left after you just have subtracted what you owe from what you own. If you can successfully identify your assets and liabilities, determining your shareholder’s equity will become easy.
Worthy of note is assets and liabilities identified, and shareholder’s equity determined must be within the range fixed when starting this process.

Carefully enter the details

All the steps that have been discussed above are geared towards ensuring you have the correct statistics. With all these statistics at your disposal, the next step is to enter the details into the sheet. In doing this, you have to ensure they are correctly entered.

Pay attention to all the data to be sure they are complete and reflect the current state of the startup. Avoid mistakes in exchange rates and inventories.

Conclusion

The process of building your first balance sheet as a startup is not as complicated as you might have thought it to be. Provided you understand a balance sheet, the purpose it serves and can follow through on the steps provided above, you can create one in no time.

However, where it appears that after several trials, you’re not getting the right results, you can seek the guidance of a financial expert to guide you through the process. You can also surf the internet for more information from professionals on building a balance sheet.

References
CFI: What is a Financial System?
HBS: HOW TO PREPARE A BALANCE SHEET: 5 STEPS FOR BEGINNERS
Wallstreet Mojo: Difference Between Current and Non-Current Assets
Dummies: Current and Noncurrent Liabilities on the Balance Sheet
Chron: How to Review an Unbalanced Balance Sheet

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