Outside of hiring an experienced bookkeeper to keep track of your expenses and monitor areas where you might be bleeding cash, there are several other ways you can keep your expenses in check. And you don’t need an accounting degree to put these strategies into practice.

With this in mind, here are five cost-cutting measures that can help your company stay in the black.

1. Encourage Remote Work

During the pandemic, telecommuting and remote work became the norm rather than the exception. And even now that the shutdowns are over, many companies are choosing to keep a large number of their workers at home or adopt a hybrid approach, allowing employees to work both from home and in the office.

We get it—there are plenty of reasons to put off estate planning, and as business owners ourselves, we truly understand the common excuses for why you probably haven’t created your estate plan yet. But we also know what to do about it, so you don’t leave the people you love at risk. Read on for the top three excuses to avoid estate planning, and what you can do to overcome those excuses and do the right thing for the people you love now.

1. I don’t have enough time.

When running a company, it can be a serious challenge just to get all of your most-pressing daily tasks done on time. This is especially true in today’s fast paced business environment, where you move from one task, one meeting, one email, one phone call, one text to the next—and before you know it… a year has gone by, and then another, and it just keeps going.

That said, coming up with the right name for your company involves a number of critical legal issues. After all, your name is among your company’s most valuable assets, and as such, it deserves the proper protections available under intellectual property law. 

First and foremost, you’ll want to trademark your company name, which can be done by  registering your business name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). However, registering a trademark with the USPTO can be a lengthy and complex process, especially if you aren’t familiar with intellectual property law. 

With this in mind, while you should always work with an experienced business lawyer like us, your local Family Business Lawyer™ to officially register any trademark, here are four of the top issues to consider when choosing and trademarking your company name.

In fact, studies show that today up to 80% of the value of a typical business is IP. And as of 2020, more than 84%—$19 trillion—of the S&P 500’s market cap is represented by intangible assets like IP.

Despite the critical importance of these assets, even the largest corporations aren’t always properly valuing or protecting their IP.

“Very few companies recognize the value of their intellectual property, nor have they secured an IP strategy that mirrors their long-term corporate strategy in order to maximize this value,” said Brian Hinman, Chief Innovation Officer at Aon and Head of EMEA for Aon’s Intellectual Property Solutions.

And while many of the pandemic-inspired programs and tax breaks have already ended or will end soon, a few of these programs still stand to impact your taxes in 2021.

The good news is that even though many of these programs are ending, the impact on the overall taxes paid by most small businesses is not expected to be all that significant. Moreover, in some cases, business owners can still apply retroactively for certain pandemic-related benefits they might have missed out on when the tax breaks were first offered. 

With this in mind, here we’ll cover a few of the tax breaks left over from the pandemic-inspired programs that are still available to businesses in 2021. We’ll also outline some of the most valuable deductions and credits that are available to tax savvy business owners every year. 

While setting up a business entity like a limited liability company (LLC) or corporation can protect your personal assets from liabilities incurred by your business, it won’t protect your business assets—that’s where business insurance comes in. 

You can’t protect your business 100% from every single threat, but you can greatly improve your chances of surviving by having the proper insurance coverage in place. That said, there are many types of business insurance out there, and some policies can be extraordinarily expensive, so it’s critical to know the specific risks your company faces and what types of insurance will best cover those risks.

Albeit statistics consistently show that running out of money is one of the main reasons new businesses go under.

Trying to run a business without carefully managing your cash flow is like fighting a rising tide: sooner or later, you’re going to find yourself underwater. If your business generates healthy revenue, you can still experience the occasional cash crunch—which is especially true during your first few years of operation.

To avoid joining the ranks of bankrupt startups, get smart about boosting your cash flow by implementing these five strategies.

1. Get Professional Support

To save money, many new business owners try to manage their books on their own, but this is a significant mistake. Managing cash flow is too time-consuming, complex, and critical to your company’s survival for you to fit it in with all of your other responsibilities. In fact, the very first team member you hire should be a professional bookkeeper/financial manager.

Relocating your residence from one state to another requires that you complete several tasks, such as changing your mailing address, utilities, insurance policies, and possibly banks. Moving a business is much more complicated, and it may be difficult to determine what to do first. The steps needed for a successful move vary depending on your business structure.  

Sole Proprietorships 

One of the main advantages of forming a business as a sole proprietorship is that you do not have to comply with the formalities and requirements necessary for most other business structures. What you need to do to move your business will depend on the requirements of both your old state and the new state; however, there are certain steps you must always take. First, notify your clients and vendors about the move. Depending on the terms of your contracts, you may be required to provide a certain number of days’ notice. In the absence of any contractual notice requirements, a conservative approach of providing three months’ notice will allow your vendors and clients to prepare and accommodate the new location. If you will no longer be working with certain clients or vendors, thank them for the relationship and stay in touch.  

An effective handbook can set expectations for new hires, outline company policies, simplify onboarding, as well as enhance training and enforcement. Ultimately, your handbook ensures that your team is not only aware of your rules and policies, but also the federal and state laws governing their employment.

You can use your employee handbook to introduce your team to your company and its culture, explaining what’s expected of them—and what they can expect from you. Though it should never take the place of employment agreements, your employee handbook can provide you with an extra layer of legal protection if an employee ever decides to take you to court.

Indeed, the more thought you put into your exit plan ahead of time, the smoother things will be when one of you finally does move on. Formally documenting your exit strategy is done with what’s called a buy-sell agreement. A buy-sell agreement outlines exactly what would happen to the business in the event an owner leaves the company for any number of reasons, or when one of the owners die or becomes incapacitated.

Getting Clear On The What Ifs

When creating your buy-sell agreement, you need to consider all the ways you might potentially exit the business, and then outline what will happen to your ownership interests in each of those scenarios. For example, what would happen if you decide to retire and sell your stake in the company? Would you be able to sell to an outside party, or must you first give your partner the option to buy you out?