#Payroll Company for Very Small Business

[iykons]

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[cerastes]

Legitimately can't stop thinking about the brilliance of Degenbrecher's introduction as a playable character.

We've known Degenbrecher for a long, long time before this event, and even before Break The Ice, actually: Before Arknights even released, Gnosis and Degen can be seen in this pre-launch trailer at 0:14.

Degenbrecher existed for years as this larger-than-life figure shrouded in rumor and fame, with an almost supernatural countenance to her presence in the corner of the narrative she inhabits: The three-time Grand Champion of the Kazimierz Major, the dreaded Black Knight, the peerless warrior, who has the strength of ten knight companies on her shoulders alone. Spoken of in equal parts awe and fear, her stint in the knightly competitions were legendary in how one-sided they were whenever she took to the field, and Platinum even comments that her portraits on the gallery of champions all make it seem like she doesn't even age, adding a supernatural element to her legacy. All we know is that she's currently SilverAsh's bodyguard and no doubt part of why his faction is so formidable, as it would be for anyone who has a one-woman army on their payroll. When we are finally introduced to her formally in the narrative, she's all business, no non-sense, in the middle of her job, and boy howdy is she good at it: We know the kind of juice Rhodes Island Elite Operators have, they are really, really strong, and yet all Sharp can do is stall for time against her, with tacit understanding that no matter how much he tries, he is NOT overcoming her.

There is not a single thing anyone present on Doc's side can do to actually overcome Degenbrecher during Break The Ice, so the very best thing anyone could do was stall her. THAT is the winning move, or at least as close to one. She's that formidable, and then some. We only see her in business mode here, with a small glimpse to her more noble nature in that she is nothing but non-self aggrandizing compliments for Sharp for being able to even fight her, even if there is no chance he can beat her, because most people just take a single swing from her. When Doc's plan succeeds and we reach the climax, she simply sheathes, says "Well played", SA recalls her back to her pokeball, and we are left letting out a sigh of relief that we made it in time.

Then, for some more years after that, that's our impression of her: Unsurmountable. We don't know much more about her other than she is simply not someone you measure up to. This, by itself, isn't particularly unique, both as a concept or in the cast of Arknights, but it leaves you to wonder exactly what is she beyond being Unsurmountable. Who is she, actually?

Then, The Rides to Lake Silbernherze happens, where she is the main character, and after all those years of mystique and grandeur, of guessing and wondering, we finally can see her not as a plot device, but as an actual character: The very first scene is her covered in blood and raw jumping on a moving train for some mysterious purpose. Oh god, oh no, why is she soaked in blood already? Is she already in Terminator mode?

Then, in the best possible payoff of years of mystique and build-up, we learn that Degenbrecher, the person, not the plot device, the person, is fucking hilarious.

She's covered in blood because she stopped by a nearby farm to help farmers deliver a farm animal, which covered her in blood given how messy births are. She apparently didn't have to do this, and just opted to because, well, she was there, they needed help, and she's in a perpetual state of down to clown.

While pursuing possible dangerous elements to Kjerag later, she stops by to talk with tourists and recommend good spots to sightsee and eat before resuming her chase Looney Toons style.

She looks the same in the three champion portraits because she didn’t like the photoshoots so she skipped them. They were just reusing her photo.

She'll have the single most mundane conversations with the simplest people in midst of off-handedly mentioning that she quite enjoys fistfighting avalanches -- in a setting where this is not at all normal or feasible -- just to test herself. Reactions to her saying this vary from "hey is this a bit" to "oh, Degenbrecher, you card, we saw you do that the other day, next time I'll bring my camera".

She's a combination of Bugs Bunny, Sakamoto-kun, and Broly, and her main gimmick is that she's a reasonable, normal ass person in terms of personality sans the more overt feats of power like fistfighting avalanches. She's just Someone, who just happens to be mind-bogglingly strong and skilled with the greatsword and with swordbreakers.

This is doubly hilarious when you compare her to other one-woman armies we know: Nearl's dialogue is entirely composed of flowery promises for a better tomorrow and heroic declarations, Saria has woman pain 9000 and hasn't had a good day in years, Skadi is afflicted with survivor's guilt which in turn lead to a potent-self loathing and rationalizing her mere presence is what causes tragedy to those around her. Degenbrecher, in comparison, is just happy to be here, enjoys a good fight within reason, loves challenging herself, and honestly is quite content with stuff like paperwork or small talk. She's the friend you call to help you move or when your pipe busts or when you need someone to take care of your kid for a few hours if you're going to be late home due to work. And she puts her entire god damn pussy into it, too, you bet your kid is going to have the time of their life if Degenbrecher is on babysitting duty. Degenbrecher chips in for pizza night. Degenbrecher helps you change your flat tire.

The essence of Degenbrecher is that the rest of Terra is going through some really dire, really interesting times, to say the least, but she's on New Game+ just sort of doing side quests, overleveled as hell and with her shit figured out, and she decides to be as funny as possible about it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Meatspace twiddling

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

"Enshittification" isn't just a way of describing the symptoms of platform decay: it's also a theory of the mechanism of decay – the means by which platforms get shittier and shittier until they are a giant pile of shit.

I call that mechanism "twiddling": this is the ability of digital services to alter their business-logic – the prices they charge, the payouts they offer, the particulars of the deal – from instant to instant, for each user, continuously:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Contrary to Big Tech's own boasting about its operations, the tricks that tech firms play to siphon value away from business customers and end-users aren't very sophisticated. They're crude gimmicks, like offering a higher per-hour wage to Uber drivers whom the algorithm judges to be picky about which rides they'll clock in for, and then lowering the wage by small increments as a way of lulling the driver into gradually accepting a permanent lower rate:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

This is a simple trick. The difference is that tech platforms like Uber can play it over and over, and very quickly. There's plenty of wage-stealing scumbag bosses who'd have loved to have shaved pennies off their workers' paychecks, then added a few cents back in if a worker cried foul, then started shaving the pennies again. The thing that stopped those bosses was the bottleneck of payroll clerks, who couldn't make the changes fast enough.

Uber plays crude tricks – like claiming that a driver isn't an employee because the control is mediated through an app – and then piles more crude tricks on top – this algorithmic wage discrimination gambit.

Have you ever watched a shell-game performed very slowly?

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-do-penn-tellers-famous-cups-and-balls-trick-in-12-steps

It's a series of very simple gimmicks, performed very quickly and smoothly. Computers are very quick and very smooth. The quickness of the hand deceives the eye: do crude tricks with superhuman speed and they'll seem sophisticated.

The one bright spot in the Great Enshittening that we're living through is that many firms are not sufficiently digitized to to these crude tricks very quickly. Take grocery stores: they can get up to a lot of the same tricks as Amazon – for example, they can charge suppliers for placement on the most prominent, easiest-to-reach shelves, reorganizing your shopping based on which companies pay the biggest bribes, rather than offering the best products and prices.

But Amazon takes this to a whole different level – beyond simply organizing their product pages based on payola, they do this for search. You ask Amazon, "What's your cheapest batteries?" and it lies to you. If you click the first link in a search-results page, you'll pay 29% more than you would if you got the best product – a product that is, on average, 17 places down on the results page. Amazon makes $38b/year taking bribes to lie to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Amazon can do more than that. Thanks to its digital nature, it can continuously reprice its offerings – indeed, it can simply make up each price displayed on every product at the instant you look at it – based on its surveillance data about you, estimating your willingness to pay. For sellers, Amazon can continuously re-weight the likelihood that a given product will be shown to a customer based on the seller's willingness to discount their products, even to the point where they go out of business:

https://www.businessinsider.com/sadistic-amazon-treated-book-sellers-the-way-a-cheetah-would-pursue-a-sickly-gazelle-2013-10

Twiddling, in other words, lets digital services honeycomb their servers with sneaky wormholes that let them siphon value away from one kind of platform user and give it to another (as when Apple silently began spying on Iphone owners to create profiles for advertisers), or to themselves.

But hard-goods businesses struggle to do this kind of twiddling. Not for lack of desire – but for lack of capacity. Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon Fresh – an online grocery store – can change prices and layout millions of times per day, at effectively zero cost. Jeff Bezos, owner of Whole Foods – a brick-and-mortar grocer – needs a army of teenagers on rollerskates with pricing guns to achieve a fraction of this agility.

So hard-goods businesses are somewhat enshittification-resistant. It's not that their owners are more interested in the welfare of their customers, workers and suppliers – they merely lack the capacity to continuously rejigger the way their business runs.

Well, about that.

Grocers have been experimenting with "electronic shelf labels" in order to do "dynamic pricing" – that means that prices change quickly, in response to circumstances:

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1197958433/dynamic-pricing-grocery-supermarkets

This doesn't have to be bad! As @planetmoney points out, it's a little weird that grocers don't discount milk whose sell-by date is drawing near. That milk is worth less to shoppers, because they have to use it more quickly lest it expire. Instead of marking down the price of perishable goods – day-old lettuce, yesterday's bread, etc – grocers put them on the shelves next to fresher, more valuable products, leading to billions of dollars' worth of food-waste and and unimaginable quantities of methane-producing, planet-cooking landfill.

In Norway, ESLs are pretty well established and – at least according to Planet Money's reporting – they are used exclusively to offer discounts in order to reduce waste. They make everyone better off.

But towards the end of the story, they note that Norway's grocery sector – which alters prices up to 2,000 times per day – has been accused of using ESLs to rig prices, hiking them and blaming them on pandemic supply-chain problems and loose monetary policy. Greedflation, in other words.

Greedflation is rampant in the grocery sector, all around the world. Remember when the price of eggs doubled and they blamed in on bird-flu, even as the CEO of the one company that owns every egg brand you've ever heard of boasted about how he could hike prices and suckers would just pay it?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/23/cant-make-an-omelet/#keep-calm-and-crack-on

In Canada, grocers rigged the price of bread, the most Les-Mis-ass form of corporate crime you can imagine (do you want guillotines, Galen Weston? Because this is how you get guillotines):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_price-fixing_in_Canada

EU grocers – another highly concentrated industry – also collude to rig prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

Which is all to say that while these companies don't have to use the twiddling capabilities that come with ESLs to enshittify their stores, we'd be pretty fucking naive to assume that they won't.

And here's the bad news: US grocers like Whole Foods (owned by Amazon, the company that wrote the enshittification playbook) are already experimenting with ESLs. So is Alberstons/Safeway, the massive, inbred conglomerate that has already demonstrated its passion for using twiddling to fuck over their workers:

https://knock-la.com/vons-fires-delivery-drivers-prop-22-e899ee24ffd0/

Economists love "price discrimination" – where prices change based on circumstance, trying to match the perfect price with the perfect customer. On paper, that sounds plausible: if I need a quart of milk for a recipe I'm making tonight and I get a 50% discount on some about-to-expire 2%, then everyone's better off. I get a discount and the grocer gets some money for milk they'd have to throw away at the end of the day.

But these elegant, self-licking ice-cream cones only emerge if the corporation offering the deal is constrained. Perhaps they're constrained by competition – the fear that you'll go elsewhere. Or perhaps they're constrained by regulation – the fear that they'll be punished if they use twiddling-tech to cheat you.

The grocery sector, dominated by a cartel of massive companies that routinely collude to rip us off, is not constrained by competition. And for years, regulators let them get away with ripping us off (though finally that might be changing):

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/21/us/politics/grocery-prices-pandemic-ftc.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ek0.t2Pr.g4n2usbxEcoa

For neoclassical economists, the answer to all this is "caveat emptor" – let the buyer beware. If you want to make sure that ESLs are only used to offer you discounts and not to gouge prices, all you need to do is note the price of everything you buy, every time you buy it, and triple-check it every time you go back to the grocery store. Just be eternally vigilant!

Thing is, the one thing computers are much better at than humans is vigilance. With ESLs and other twiddling mechanisms, you're a fish on a hook, and the seller is tireless in giving you a little more slack, then a little less, until you finally drop your guard.

Economists desperately want these elegant models to work, but "efficient market hypothesis" is a brain-worm that always turns into apologetics for fraud. Dynamic markets sound like a good idea, but they are catnip for cheaters. "Just be eternally vigilant" is miserable advice, and no way to live your life:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

In his brilliant novel Spook Country, @GreatDismal describes augmented reality as "cyberspace everting" – that is, turning inside-out:

https://memex.craphound.com/2007/07/31/william-gibsons-spook-country/

The extrusion of twiddling technology from digital platforms into the physical world isn't cyberspace everting so much as it is cyberspace prolapsing.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

[gatitties]

Hello!!! Can I ask you something?

I wanted to ask for a super cute Scenario or headcanons, where in One Piece's AU, Shanks is a businessman who has a very good salary and is married to YN who is a super kind and attentive housewife who treats Shanks like a king, because he always is working and always getting very tired from work and still pleases YN with gifts and taking her out on days off, they don't necessarily have kids, that's you decision

shanks wants his wife to be the happiest wife in the world!!!

─Shanks x wife!reader

─Summary: it doesn't seem like you can get a second of rest, but your husband surprises you with some gifts.

─Warnings: modernAU

this is so cute hjhsajh 😳

You narrowed your eyes as you saw the vase slightly further to the right, moving it a couple of centimeters so that it was exactly in the right spot, in the same place you put it every day after doing a big cleaning of the house.

You sat on the neat couch, scanning the living room for anything still missing out of place, smiling at your good work, although the smile soon disappeared when a slight back pain broke your good mood bubble, the pain had intensified lately since Shanks had some meetings in his personal study, so you did your best to make everything as organized and clean as usual.

It was a bit sad since he spent many hours busy, although he always made up for it on the weekends when he had his days off, however the company had to resolve some issues regarding some clients and employees, collections, payroll, settlements… there were always months filled with a lot of work and you both ended up so exhausted that you didn't even have a single moment to talk for days.

Today seemed like it was going to be one of those days where you were waiting with a glass of wine, eating dinner alone in the kitchen, you knew that if Shanks hadn't arrived by a certain time, you shouldn't make dinner for two, and you were about to get to cook, you only managed to cut a couple of onions when you screamed when you felt a strong arm lift you slightly from the ground, your shock faded when you felt the redhead's presence.

"I thought you wouldn't come today."

"Surprise!"

He joined his lips with yours sweetly, when he put you back on the ground, he left for a second to return with a small bouquet of roses and a wrapped box, you frowned strangely at the detail, Shanks was not a person who usually did gifts like that, yes, he would buy you things, but he would just arrive and give it to you unwrapped or he would just ask you if you want that thing directly.

"What is this? Oh don't tell me I forgot about our anniversary or-"

Your worried tone and nervousness for having forgotten some important date was cut by the man's lips, who left a trail of short kisses all over your face, making you laugh like a fool in love, he smiled at this.

"No, I'm the most likely to forget that kind of thing love, it's just a gift! Can't I spoil you a little? I know how much it costs to maintain a home, plus your sore muscles..."

He took your hands in his, rubbing circles with his thumb on your knuckles, you melted under his touch, pulling him to your body to sink into a comfortable embrace, you breathed in his scent slowly, burying your face in his shoulder, he let you hold the position. As long as you needed, Shanks didn't care if you spent hours hugging him, he would enjoy every second of contact. You pulled away a couple of minutes later, turning your attention now to the box he had left on the kitchen counter earlier next to the roses, curious about its contents, he urged you to open it, even he seeming more excited than you by the gift.

"Oh… how did you know this was what I wanted? I don't remember telling you about it yet."

Although both you and Shanks used to share certain things that you needed or would like to have for possible birthday, anniversary or Christmas gifts… you still hadn't had the opportunity to tell him that this was what you were thinking of buying as a self-gift for your next birthday.

"A husband's intuition never fails, and look, there are more things!"

Looking at the bottom of the box you pulled out two stiff papers that seemed to be hidden, a silly smile decorating your lips as you read them.

"Spa and massage session for two?"

He raised and lowered his eyebrows with a mischievous smile, you laughed, hitting his shoulder, hugging him again as a way of thanking him, you felt a little bad for not having a gift for him right now, since you weren't the only one who needed a break from time to time from work, but you made a mental note to look for something that he might like.

[fuck-customers]

There's one lead who is generally very nice and easy to get along with and I mostly like working with her.

Except for one thing.

One day, she was making small talk and asked me how long I'd been working there and I told her 5 years. Ever since hearing that, she has decided that I have been here too long to not be a lead and is pushing for me to become a lead. She says she's told our store manager to promote me, but I'm not sure if she actually did or not.

Which is sweet in theory....except I have absolutely no interest in becoming a lead.

1. The lead position is not a full-time position, so I'd nearly double my workload for the same amount of hours, maybe 4 hour more a week. (Our schedule shows all of the employees hours, so I can clearly see what the leads are being scheduled and I've personally confirmed with multiple leads that they're not getting extra hours that aren't on the schedule)

2. The responsibilities of leads include nearly all of a store manager's responsibilities, with the exception of hiring/firing employees and giving raises or anything to do with payroll. (However, I've seen past managers make leads interview potential new hires and report back to the store manager about how good of a fit the new hire would be. So in some cases, a lead would also have to do some store manager exclusive work without the extra pay. Which sounds illegal to me.)

3. Every day, there's time slots where 1 lead is scheduled as the only manager, so when some Karen demands to see a manager, they have to stop their extensive list of tasks to get screamed at by a Karen, which brings me to my next point:

4.. Leads only get paid $2 more per hour than regular employees, which combined with the lack of hours and all of the responsibilities they have, it is not worth it to me. I understand it would look good on a resume, but not good enough.

I've explained all of these reasons to this lead at some point- admittedly, I don't have the time at work to go into this much detail, but I've definitely given her the highlights and I know I've repeatedly told her that I actually would accept a promotion to lead/manager if it was a guaranteed full-time position, but I absolutely won't do all of the above-mentioned tasks for the same hours I'm currently getting.

Also...why bother? Our company is likely going out of business soon. It would be like becoming a manager at Bl0ckbuster a month before shutting down. Who cares?

Posted by admin Rodney

[koseigu]

“go on. don’t let me distract you.” hands on sukuna’s thighs, hooking over the waistband of his pants. moments later, the only warning he gets is the warmth of breath fanning over him before he’s buried to the hilt in suguru’s throat.

son of a bitch.

it's the end of the year, a final look at budgets and inventory after the holiday season, tracking all sorts of expenses from rent to payroll and everything in between. sukuna likes to do it all himself first, not trusting anyone else with the behind-the-scenes of it all much like he doesn't really trust anyone with the front-end of the business either.

suguru is an exception. uraume too. the brat, if he's not sneaking pastries for him and his boyfriend.

point is, he keeps the circle small because anything else is an unnecessary distraction from his very focused pursuit of a thing he enjoys beyond compare—good food, good drink, good company. his clientele is as diverse as the menu and that doesn't happen without his particular brand of determination.

not saying he isn't interested in fun. the drugs and the smoking and the drinking and the aforementioned suguru are testament to that.

"fuck," he drops his pen, instead choosing to press his hand against the back of geto's head to keep him in place while his hips twitch and then rock eagerly into the heat of his mouth. "it's a little hard not to be distracted when you act like this, sweetheart."

@gravesung

[myobsessionsspace]

Learning More About The Music Industry and Understanding Who Calls The Shots.

There has been quite a bit of discourse in relation to the individual rollouts of the members and their solo endeavours.

BTS gave us an as open and honest intimate conversation as they could within the limits of still being mindful of company and personal business. They told us then and time and time again since then what they wanted to do/show.

Since the festa 2022 dinner what they talked about coming out since then is all but nearly done, j-hope, Jin, RM, JIMIN and SUGA have all released solo projects, showed different genres, different sides of themselves, made video game OST, interned at their favourite video game company, guested on several variety shows, worked with huge global artists, promoted home and abroad, headlined festivals, intimate performances, performed in galleries, performed and won domestic music shows, Disney documentaries and a solo tour!

Jungkook is now at the beginning of his solo promotions as the second to last member of the seven to delve into his solo career.

The members from what they spoke about during the festa 2022 dinner have seemingly achieved what they intended to.

I'm not writing to take any individual member's 'side'.

Some members have been vocal in what exactly they have had their hands in, how happy they felt with their involvement in the creative, marketing & promotional aspects of their solo endeavours.

However the discourse has been building among ARMY in regards to the different ways promotion, marketing, and the perceived level of autonomy/control each member has in their solo career and the perceived level of input/support from their company and members.

I'm not going to talk about those perceptions, I'm not going to highlight the differences in each members solo activities, solo output.

I want to bring back, a tiny bit, the reality of the music industry.

BTS Made Hybe!

No question, when BTS joined Big Hit it was a very small, relatively new company. I've spoke about this in a previous post.

Big Hit, before the introduction of Hybe, housed solo artist Lee Hyun, relatively new group TomorrowxTogether and BTS.

After the general public were introduced to Hybe and til date, several companies have joined the Hybe family, such as Pledis, Adora and others.

We would think that BTS would pretty much run the company alongside their Chairman

However that is not the case and not only that, BTS are now NOT Hybe's main and sole focus.

Some things that I have kept seeing brought up a lot is 'global vision', 'accelerate global operations' and 'formula for global success.'

It is *my* understanding that one of the current goals for Hybe is to be able to replicate BTS' UNPRECIDENTED global success again and again, with current artists under Hybe and new artists. This includes the members as solo artists as well.

Whilst ARMY know the names of each of the members and refer to them personally more often than not, we only know the artists we are allowed to know.

We don't know them as employees and that is what they are under Hybe, employees of an entertainment company.

But BTS are Shareholders!

Though the members are shareholders, in comparison to other shareholders, it is still a token stake in the company at best, less than 1.5% stake in the WHOLE company for bangtan as a whole (if equally split by 7 members it’s 0.2%, that’s the rough hypothetical amount of ‘leverage’ each member has!)

The company still has thousands of nameless, faceless (to ARMY) employees under their payroll, the company still have thousands of nameless, faceless people who are invested in the financial wellbeing of the company, and they will not and do not want to be dependant solely on BTS and ARMY.

Their main concerns and considerations will never be to BTS or ARMY but to what guarantees them money longterm and with the least risk. The company’s unspoken but widely understood goal *in my opinion* is to be significantly less dependent on BTS in particular and any one group thereafter. They aim to prove it’s the company that gives success, not any one group or one member that gives the company success. They don’t want their signees to have power over them, they want to tilt the scales back so it is the company that has power over the signees as it has been historically UNTIL BTS.

When we feel disgruntled with a lot of the product that we get from the members, we need to remember we are seeing the END RESULT.

There is a long line and different processes it goes through before it gets to ARMY & the general public. Who has they final say, who allows what, who pushes what, how much does the company allow the individuals to have control over and when do they tighten the leash?

Ultimately it would start from the top and as much as we would want it to be and believe it deserved, its not BTS at the top of the pyramid, but these two and others.

[nobossinc]

CASH FLOW: The Bloodline of Business

See Into Your Financial Future

In the dynamic world of entrepreneurship, success hinges not only on brilliant ideas and strategic planning but also on mastering the art of cash flow management. Cash flow, often referred to as the lifeblood of a business, is the movement of money in and out of your business, and understanding its importance is paramount for new entrepreneurs.

The Importance of Cash Flow

Cash flow is the heartbeat of your business, fueling its daily operations, growth initiatives, and long-term sustainability. Here's why it's crucial for new entrepreneurs:

Survival and Stability: Positive cash flow ensures your business can cover its day-to-day expenses, such as rent, utilities, payroll, and inventory. Without sufficient cash flow, even the most promising ventures can falter and fail.

Opportunity and Growth: Healthy cash flow provides the flexibility to seize opportunities for expansion, innovation, and investment. Whether it's launching new products, entering new markets, or scaling operations, a robust cash flow empowers entrepreneurs to pursue growth with confidence.

Identify potential cash flow problems early on.

Make better business decisions.

Attract investors and lenders.

Debt Management: Effective cash flow management helps entrepreneurs avoid excessive reliance on debt to finance their operations. By maintaining positive cash flow, businesses can reduce interest expenses, improve creditworthiness, and mitigate financial risk.

Risk Mitigation: Anticipating and managing cash flow fluctuations allows entrepreneurs to identify and address potential risks before they escalate into crises. By maintaining a buffer of cash reserves, businesses can weather unexpected challenges and maintain financial stability.

 The History and Complexity of Cash Flow Statements

In 1987, the Financial Accounting Standards Board mandated that firms provide cash flow statements. Following this, in 1992, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) issued International Accounting Standard 7 (IAS 7), titled Cash Flow Statement, which took effect in 1994, requiring firms to provide cash flow statements.

Two primary methods exist for calculating cash flow: the direct method and the indirect method. The Direct Cash Flow Method involves totaling all cash payments and receipts, including payments to suppliers, receipts from customers, and salary disbursements. This method is simpler, particularly suited for very small businesses operating on a cash basis accounting method.

However, most companies utilize the accrual basis accounting method, where revenue is recognized upon earning rather than upon receipt. This distinction leads to a disparity between net income and actual cash flow. Consequently, certain items, such as accounts receivable (AR), inventory, taxes payable, salaries, and prepaid insurance, necessitate reevaluation when calculating cash flow from operations. For many new entrepreneurs, navigating these intricacies can be challenging.

New entrepreneurs may find that traditional Cash Flow Statements are not immediately beneficial to their business endeavors, and are better left for their accounting software to generate and for an Accountant to review. Instead, their efforts are best directed towards the daily activities of the business: documenting transactions, monitoring cash flow, and making informed decisions in real-time. By prioritizing day-to-day cash flow management, entrepreneurs can sustain financial stability and swiftly respond to changes in their business environment. It's more valuable for them to gain a thorough understanding of the inflows and outflows of cash within their business operations.

What affects cash flow the most?

Typically, sales and revenue affect cash flow the most, though this can vary from business to business. An increase in sales generally contributes positively to cash flow, while a decline can hinder cash flow. 

Additionally, expense management can make a huge difference in a company’s cash flow as it directly impacts the amount of cash retained. The timing of payments also plays a crucial role — even profitable businesses can face cash flow issues if it doesn’t manage the timing of receiving payments and settling financial obligations like debts and payroll.

What causes a lack of cash flow?

Declines in sales or revenue, high expenses, and slow-paying customers can cause a lack of cash flow. Ineffective financial management or a lack of planning can also contribute to cash flow shortages, which is why adopting technology to help you track expenses is crucial for business.

A Groundbreaking Tool for Tracking Cash Flow:

Because cash flow management is imperative for business success, NOBOSS has a more practical and efficient approach to handling finances on a day-to-day basis: the Cash Requirements report.

This innovative tool provides entrepreneurs with real-time insights into their cash needs, allowing them to anticipate, plan, and manage financial resources with precision and agility.

By leveraging the Cash Requirements report, entrepreneurs can stay ahead of cash flow challenges, make informed decisions, and optimize their business operations for sustained growth and profitability.

Managing Cash Flow with the Cash Requirement Report

With Cash Requirements report, managing cash flow becomes not just a necessity, but a strategic advantage in navigating the complexities of entrepreneurship.

For new entrepreneurs, mastering cash flow management requires a proactive approach and a solid understanding of key principles.

Here's how the Cash Requirements Report identify and manage cash flow effectively:

Track Cash Flow: Update and diligently tracking your cash inflows and outflows on a regular basis.

Forecast Cash Flow: The beauty of this report is that you can see into your financial future!  Develop cash flow projections to anticipate future income and expenses based on historical data, market trends, and business objectives. This forward-looking approach allows you to plan ahead and make informed decisions.

Manage Accounts Receivable: Accelerate your cash flow by invoicing promptly and following up on overdue payments. Implement clear payment terms, offer incentives for early payment, and consider using online payment platforms to streamline the billing process.

Control Expenses: Evaluate your business expenses regularly and identify areas where costs can be reduced or optimized. Negotiate favorable terms with suppliers, scrutinize discretionary spending, and prioritize investments that yield the highest return on investment.

Build Cash Reserves: Establish a buffer of cash reserves to cushion against unexpected expenses, seasonal fluctuations, and economic downturns. Aim to maintain a healthy cash balance that covers at least three to six months' worth of operating expenses.

Monitor and Adjust: Continuously monitor your cash flow performance and adjust your strategies as needed. Stay proactive in addressing cash flow challenges, seizing opportunities for improvement, and adapting to changes in the business environment.

 These six essential steps to identifying and managing cash flow are seamlessly integrated into the functionality of the Cash Requirements report. This powerful tool empowers new entrepreneurs with the same level of financial insight and leverage enjoyed by big businesses.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Cash flow management is a fundamental skill that every entrepreneur must master to build a resilient and thriving business. By recognizing the importance of cash flow, implementing proactive strategies, and staying vigilant in monitoring and managing cash flow, new entrepreneurs can navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship with confidence and unlock the full potential of their ventures. Remember, cash flow isn't just about survival—it's about laying the foundation for long-term success and prosperity.

[pettyrevenge-base]

Deny Me a Raise Because You Want to Steal My Husband? Enjoy Unemployment!

Many moons ago (think early 2000s) I worked for a small tech company in the midwest. I started out as a customer service rep. My husband also worked there in a higher level position in a different department.

There was an office manager there who did not like me at ALL when I got hired. She originally was a billing rep, and got moved to the office manager position when the original one who hired me quit. As an added note, her brother also worked there in the same department as my husband.

I was pretty much a model employee. My stats were great, I was always on time, and customer feedback surveys were always glowing when I was on shift. However, it seemed like she had it out for me, because she was always trying to find something to nitpick about my performance. I divulged all this to my husband, and he admitted that prior to us getting together and before I was hired, she had expressed interest in dating him but he rejected her.

I complained to the owner, but he pretty much just shrugged it off, because she had been there forever and he didn't want to rock the boat.

Come performance review time and she gave me a terrible review, and a tiny raise, along the lines of everyone else on the team getting 50 cents to a dollar per hour raise, and she gave me a nickel.

About 6 months later, there was a big shake up in the company, and the general manager and two higher level people from my husband's department left to work at another company who did the same type of business. Shortly there after, a couple big accounts my boss was pursuing ended up going to the other company. Thinking that perhaps information about the accounts he was trying to land was leaked to the other company, he sent a couple people home (with pay) for two days while he investigated, including the office manager who hated me.

On day two, he met with the team and confirmed that there was no leak, so he would be bringing the workers back in.

Queue petty revenge. I had found the office manager's blog some time ago, and she had been posting frequent updates since the shakeup. When she was sent home, she posted multiple updates about the situation, including how she figured the owner would screw up payroll, not pay taxes, and get in trouble with the IRS. She also posted some pretty derogatory things about the owner. She did make a feeble attempt to keep it anonymous by spelling everyone's names backwards and making up a fake name for the company, but it was very clear it was her and our company she was talking about.

After the team meeting, I asked to meet with my boss alone and showed him all the posts. He dug in and found even more damning stuff she had written, including how she couldn't stand me and wanted to get me fired (I hadn't even seen that post until then!).

I couldn't contain my shit-eating grin when she returned to the office, only to be told to pack up her stuff and go.

Within a year I had a big pay bump and a promotion to management, and I assume she is off somewhere making people miserable.

Source: reddit.com/r/pettyrevenge

[thebookkeepersrus-blogs]

Bookkeeping Mistakes Made By Small Businesses: How To Avoid Them

Small and Medium-sized businesses are eager to grow, but they often miss the fundamentals like understanding the value of Bookkeeping which may undermine business procedures.

Accounting is often overlooked by business owners who consider it easy. Incorrect accounting and bookkeeping processes may adversely impact any company’s finances. Recurring bookkeeping errors can actually bankrupt your business.

Bookkeeping Mistakes

Keeping financial records is a very important part of running a business, big or small. Bookkeeping that is accurate and well-organized makes sure that your financial records are up-to-date and precise, which helps you make good decisions and compliance with legal policies.

There are however some mistakes that small businesses often make with their books. Here are some of these mistakes.

Failure To Keep Records

Some small businesses fail to keep accurate financial records, which can lead to confusion and errors. Record-keeping is an essential process in organizing your financial records. Adopt best practices and create a system for organizing and storing your financial documents. These relevant documents may include invoices, receipts, and bank statements. It is helpful to consider using accounting software to automate the process and centralize everything.

Irregular Reconciling of Accounts

Failure to reconcile your bank and credit card accounts on a regular basis can lead to inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Reconciliation entails matching your financial records with your bank and credit card statements. Reconcile your accounts on a regular basis and resolve any discrepancies quickly to avoid problems.

Combining Personal and Business-Related Finances

It is critical to separate your personal and business finances by avoiding using personal accounts for business transactions. This can complicate bookkeeping and make it difficult to accurately track expenses and income. You must establish a separate business bank account and use it solely for business transactions.

Inconsistent Categorization

It is critical to properly categorize your income and expenses for accurate financial reporting. Refrain from inconsistent or ambiguous categorization, as it can make evaluating of your company’s financial health a lot more difficult. It will be helpful to create a chart of accounts with distinct categories that correspond to your field of business and use it regularly.

Neglecting Cash Transactions

Small businesses often transact in cash, which can be overlooked easily and not properly recorded. To ensure that cash transactions are accurately accounted for, use cash registers, petty cash logs, or digital tools. Better yet, set up a system for keeping track of and documenting all cash transactions, including sales and expenses. 

Failure To Keep Track of Receivables and Payables

Failure to maintain track of unpaid invoices (accounts receivable) and bills to be paid (accounts payable) might jeopardize your cash flow and client-vendor relationships. Use accounting software with invoicing and payment tracking features to implement a structured strategy for monitoring and following up on both receivables and payables.

Mishandling Payroll 

Payroll can be complicated, and mistakes can have legal and financial ramifications. Keep up with advances in payroll requirements, calculate wages and taxes accurately, and make timely payments to employees and tax authorities. To ensure accuracy and compliance, consider adopting efficient payroll software or you can also outsource payroll duties. 

Failure To Keep Backup of Records

Financial records might be lost because of corrupted data, hardware failure, or other unanticipated factors. Back up your financial data on a regular basis and keep it secure. Cloud accounting software can back up your data automatically to add an extra degree of security. 

Neglect To Track and Remit Sales Taxes

If your company is obligated to collect sales taxes, it is critical that you track and remit them appropriately. Understand your sales tax duties, register with the proper tax authorities, and maintain accurate sales and tax collection records. To simplify the process, consider employing seamless sales tax automation software.

Doing-It-Yourself

This is a critical error that can have serious consequences for your company. Because bookkeeping is a complex process, it is best to seek professional help from a bookkeeper or accountant to set up and review your bookkeeping system on a regular basis. They can assist you in avoiding mistakes, providing financial insights, and ensuring tax compliance.

You can reduce the likelihood of these frequent errors and retain accurate financial records for your small business by being proactive and following appropriate bookkeeping practices with the help of expert bookkeepers and record-keepers.

How to Avoid Bookkeeping Errors

To avoid bookkeeping errors some proactive steps must be taken by small business owners. This may include familiarizing yourself with basic bookkeeping principles and practices to help you navigate your financial records effectively and make informed decisions. 

This can be further established by using a good bookkeeping system coupled with reliable accounting software. As a business owner, it is important to invest in a reputable accounting software solution that suits the needs of your business and reduces errors. 

In addition, it is important to reconcile accounts regularly to ensure your financial records match financial statements to help identify discrepancies and errors promptly.

Keep meticulous records by maintaining detailed records of all financial transactions and accept that it is always best to seek professional assistance from reliable bookkeepers and record-keepers who specializes in small business finances. 

By implementing these practices, small business owners can reduce the likelihood of committing bookkeeping errors while maintaining accurate financial records. 

The Bottomline

When you own a company, you put yourself in a position to take advantage of many different possibilities, including the chance to learn from your errors. When it comes to making mistakes, the key to success is to steer clear of those that are readily apparent and cut down on others as much as you possibly can. Remember that good bookkeeping and record-keeping practices contribute to informed decision-making and long-term business success.

Consider this list seriously and implement its suggestion so you will be well on your way to running your business in profitable ways and expanding it in all ways possible.

There is more that you can achieve with the most reliable team of professional bookkeepers and record-keepers. Visit us now and get started!

[mariacallous]

When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed on March 10, Garry Tan, president and CEO of startup incubator Y Combinator, called SVB’s failure “an extinction level event for startups” that “will set startups and innovation back by 10 years or more.” People have been quick to point out how quickly the cadre of small-government, libertarian tech bros has come calling for government intervention in the form of a bailout when it’s their money on the line.

Late yesterday, the US government announced that SVB depositors will regain access to all their money, thanks to the Federal Deposit Insurance Company's backstop funded by member banks. Yet the shock to the tech ecosystem and its elite may still bring down a reckoning for many who believe it’s got nothing to do with them.

SVB’s 40,000 customers are mostly tech companies—the bank provided services to around half of US startups—but those tech companies are tattooed into the fabric of daily lives across the US and beyond. The power of the West Coast tech industry means that most digital lives are rarely more than a single degree of separation away from a startup banking with SVB.

The bank's customers may now be getting their money back but the services SVB once provided are gone. That void and the shock of last week may cause—or force—startups and their investors to drastically change how they manage their money and businesses, with effects far beyond Silicon Valley.

Most immediately, the many startups who depended on SVB have workers far from the bank’s home turf. “These companies and people are not just in Silicon Valley,” says Sarah Kunst, managing director of Cleo Capital, a San Francisco firm that invests in early-stage startups.

Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham said yesterday that the incubator’s companies banking with SVB have more than a quarter of a million employers, around a third of whom are based outside California. If they and other SVB customers suffer cash crunches or cut back expansion plans, rent payments in many parts of the world may be delayed and staff may no longer buy coffees and lunches at the corner deli. Cautious about the future, businesses may withhold new hires, and staff who remain may respond in kind, cutting local spending or delaying home purchases or renovation work.

The second- and third-order impacts of startups hitting financial trouble or just slowing down could be more pernicious. “When you say: ‘Oh, I don’t care about Silicon Valley,’ yes, that might sound fine. But the reality is very few of us are Luddites,” Kunst says. “Imagine you wake up and go to unlock your door, and because they’re a tech company banking with SVB who can no longer make payroll, your app isn’t working and you’re struggling to unlock your door.” Perhaps you try a rideshare company or want to hop on a pay-by-the-hour electric scooter, but can’t because their payment system is provided by an SVB client who now can’t operate.

Some people affected by the bank’s collapse will be in much more precarious situations than some of the monied investors and tech insiders tweeting through the crisis. California lawmaker Scott Wiener, a member of the state’s senate, tweeted over the weekend that an unnamed payroll processing company based in San Francisco whose customers employ “tens of thousands” of workers had banked with SVB. The average salary of those workers is around $48,000, he said, and they work in businesses including pizza places, taco joints, and bike shops. “It’s not just a tech thing,” he said.

The collapse of SVB could become a painful lesson in how the sector dubbed “tech” is much broader than many realize. “Every tech company is a normal business that has suppliers who provide things,” says Dom Hallas, executive director of the Coalition for a Digital Economy, which represents startups in the UK, “They’re not all whizzy companies with names that have no vowels in them.”

On March 12, SVB’s UK subsidiary was bought by HSBC, another banking group, in a private sale brokered by the government.

SVB’s failure will also have longer-term impacts beyond the next few weeks and months. The collapse of the leading specialist in providing financial services to tech companies could make it harder for the next generation of startups to find what they need to build their business. And after witnessing the herd-like, Twitter-fueled rush to pull money out of SVB, other banks may be cautious toward tech out of fear of experiencing the same problems SVB faced.

There is also concern that as in past financial crises, problems at one bank help expose or even trigger more at others. An SVB executive reached by WIRED yesterday, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to speak for the company, acknowledged failures at the bank but urged lawmakers to take a wider view of the situation. “An institution like ours is integral to the tech economy,” the executive says. “The biggest message is for our politicians to realize this could be a contagion if it trickles to regional banks. It’s small tech. It’s not big tech that are our clients.”

Startups need bank accounts and other services to secure investment from venture capitalists and put it to work. New financial friction for the sector could become a brake on future tech development. Government funding of technologies such as GPS has helped the tech sector, but “the vast majority of consumer technology funding isn’t coming from governments and universities in America,” says Kunst of Cleo Capital. “It’s coming from the private sector, and the private sector is going to be hamstrung in the ability to raise and deploy that money.”

The tech sector is known for its boundless—sometimes irrational—optimism, and some caught in the crisis hope that good may come from it. Kunst hopes other banks will step in to pick up SVB’s customers and become more engaged with the startup scene. “I think you’re going to see more and more bigger banks of all sizes getting excited about having tech customers,” she says, giving startups more options than they had before. To get to that point, however, we have to get through the next few days and weeks—which could be trickier than expected.

[plbizconsulting]

Take Benefits from the Service of Expert Accountants

The future of the small business is unquestionably in outsourcing. Outsourcing is still the best way to cut costs, whether it is done offline or online. Outsourcing can be used for a wide variety of tasks. Every company out there has an accounting department, but that has not stopped accounting from being outsourced. Any size of organization can now take advantage of convenient Corporate Services In Singapore.

You may be beginning to question how exactly these accountants help businesses. Secure servers allow you to transfer sensitive information over the internet without worrying about being a victim of identity theft or other forms of online fraud. Both public and private businesses can take use of these timely and precise online accounting services.

Large teams of qualified and accredited accountants usually offer these services from a central location. This means that within a team, there might be a wide variety of accounting expertise. Some are Corporate Secretarial Services who are tasked with managing the financial records of businesses both large and small. Management accountants are another type of financial expert who keep tabs on a business's revenue and expenditures

. There is also a specialized group of people called internal auditors who check the work of external auditors. Their job is to scrutinize your financial records for signs of wrongdoing, such as fraud or misuse of company funds. You can also outsource your accounting needs to qualified and experienced Corporate Secretarial Singapore.

You can find accountants online for whatever service you would need, including filing tax returns, managing payroll, handling accounts payable and receivable, and conducting audits. Your reluctance to trust complete strangers with your sensitive financial data may be stopping you from using online Accounting Services In Singapore.

Many entrepreneurs worry about this very thing. Online accounting services that may be trusted are, however, supplied by individuals who respect their clients' right to anonymity. You should ask your preferred contractor about their policies on internet privacy before hiring Corporate Secretary In Singapore. The infrastructure of online bookkeeping services is straightforward. The client is required to make duplicates of their book collection. So, the supplier will expect that you employ a bookkeeper to compile and maintain these records.

The contractor's shared fax can receive copies directly. Scans could be sent or uploaded to a secure server owned by your remote worker. When you hire certain Singapore Accounting Firm, the company may ask you for the login credentials to the online accounting software you prefer to use.

Creating a variety of financial reports is as easy as logging in and uploading the necessary source materials. When establishing a contract with an online accounting services provider, it is highly recommended that you familiarize yourself with the system they employ. You'll quickly learn that not all companies offer the same pricing. While many businesses lean toward hourly pricing, others offer flat rates. You should check the prices of several different outsourced internet accounting firms to avoid being taken advantage 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Picks and Shovels Chapter One (Part 2)

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

This week, I'm serializing the first chapter of my next novel, Picks and Shovels, a standalone Martin Hench novel that drops on Feb 15:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

The book is up for presale on a Kickstarter that features the whole series as print books (with the option of personalized inscriptions), DRM-free ebooks, and a DRM-free audiobook read by Wil Wheaton:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification

It's a story of how the first seeds of enshittification were planted in Silicon Valley, just as the first PCs were being born.

Here's part one:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/09/the-reverend-sirs/#fidelity-computing

And now, onto part two!

Rivka Goldman was the only woman in Sales Group One, this being the group that serviced and supported synagogues and their worshippers. She’d traveled all around the country, sitting down with men who owned garment factories, grocery stores, jewelry stores, delis, and other small businesses, training their “girls” in the use of the Fidelity system. It could handle business correspondence, company books, payroll, and other functions that used to be handled by four or five “girls”—who could all be replaced with just one.

Rivka was the only woman, and often it wasn’t she who made the sale, because the men who owned these businesses talked to other men. It was her male colleagues in Sales Group One who closed those sales and pocketed the commissions, but Rivka never complained.

“She was very good at it,” the rabbi told me. “She had a knack for computers, and for explaining them. The girls she trained, they learned. When they had troubles, they wanted to talk to her.”

Sister Maria-Eva Fernandez led a very large, all-woman team that ran mostly autonomously within Sales Group Two, a group that exclusively serviced parochial schools across the U.S., with a few customers in Central America. She was a product of these schools—she’d graduated from Christ the King in Denver and gone straight from there into the order, doing some student teaching before finding her way to Fidelity Computing via an internal talent search that filtered down to the convent from the archdiocese.

Like Rivka, Sister Maria-Eva was a natural: she could patiently train school administrators, their secretaries, department heads, and even individual teachers on the use of the Fidelity system. A couple of schools—fat with money from wealthy patrons—had bought entire classrooms’ worth of machines, creating programming labs for ambitious high-schoolers, and they were universally a success.

“We valued her, we praised her, we sent her to the national sales conference to lead workshops and share her expertise,” Father Marek said. “She was a star.” He spat the word.

Elizabeth Amelia Shepard Taylor didn’t have to go on a mission, but there was never any question but that she would. Her family had been prominent in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for over a century, and, as the eldest of eleven kids, she had a familial duty to set an example.

She had hoped for a posting in Asia—she’d studied Cantonese and Japanese in high school—but instead she drew San Jose, California. She staffed the Mission House, helping the boys who knocked on doors all day, serving as den mother, big sister, and the object of innumerable crushes.

She’d found a women’s computing club via a notice at the local library and had taken turns with four other women—two her age, and two retirees—prodding at a pair of Commodore PET computers, learning BASIC. Her letters home to her family were filled with the excitement of discovery and mastery, the esoteric world of assembly language that she’d dived into with the help of books and magazines from the library.

When her father heard that Fidelity was recruiting, he wrote her a letter. The same day she’d received it, she’d written a letter to Fidelity Computing Ltd., typing it up on the used ZX80 she’d bought at a swap meet (“for the Mission House”). It arrived at Fidelity in a #10 envelope, three neatly printed pages with the rough edges of fanfold paper that had had its perforations separated. The last page was all code examples.

She was promised a job by return post, starting the day she finished her mission, and she never ended up going back to Salt Lake City—just got a Caltrain train to the Daly City station and met with a Bishop Clarke’s personal assistant, a young man named John Garn who had done his mission in Taipei and chatted with her the whole way to the office in Taiwanese, which she laboriously parsed into Cantonese.

“She whipped Sales Group Three into a powerhouse,” Bishop Clarke said, with a sad shake of his head. “We went from last to first in under a year. Outsold the other two divisions combined, and we were on track to doubling this year.”

The three women had met at the annual sales conference, a huge event that took over the Fort Mason Center for a long weekend. Most of the event was segregated by sales group, but there were plenary sessions, mixers, and keynote addresses from leading sales staff that helped diffuse the winningest tactics across the whole business.

“We think they met in a women’s interfaith prayer circle,” Rabbi Finkel said. Father Marek made another of his disgusted grunts, which were his principal contributions to the conversation. Rabbi Finkel inclined his head a little in the priest’s direction and said, “Not everyone agreed that they were a good idea at first, but the girls loved them, and they created bonds of comity that served them well.”

“We don’t have a lot of turnover,” Rabbi Finkel said. “People like working here. They do well, and they do good. People from our faith communities sometimes feel like the future is passing them by, like their religion is an anchor around their necks, keeping them stuck in the past. A job here is a way to be faithful and modern, without sacrificing your faith.”

The bishop nodded. “When they turned in their resignation notices, of course we took notice. As Rabbi Finkel says, we just don’t get a lot of turnover. And of course, these three girls were special to us. So we took notice. I met with Elizabeth myself and asked her if there was anything wrong, and she refused to discuss it. I asked her what she did want to discuss and she went off on these wild tangents, not making any sense. I wrote a letter to her father, but I never heard back.”

“Rivka is a good girl,” the rabbi said. “She told me that she still loved God and wanted to live a pious, modest life, but that she had ‘differences’ with the teachings. I asked her about these ‘differences,’ but that was all she could say: ‘differences, differences.’ What’s a difference? She wants to uncover her hair? Eat a cheeseburger? Pray with men? She wouldn��t say.”

Father Marek cleared his throat, made a face, glared. “When Sister Maria-Eva ignored my memo asking her to come see me, I called her Mother Superior and that’s when I discovered that she’d left the order. Left the order! Of course, I assumed there was a man involved, but that wasn’t it, not according to her Mother Superior. She had taken new orders with a . . . fringe sect. It seemed she was lost to us.”

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/10/smoke-filled-room-where-it-happens/#computing-freedom

[customaccountingcpa]

Why Every Business Needs a Small Business Accountant

Another significant problem that has to do with the small business is money management. If accounting records are not kept, expensing, taxes, and compliance can quickly become a big headache. That’s where a small business accountant can come in handy. As a team of professional CPAs at Custom Accounting CPA, our focus is on innovative approaches to solving business’s cash woes and minimizing their taxes.

The Role of a Small Business Accountant

A small business accountant is not just an individual who specializes in simple quantitative computation. Here’s how they can help:

Bookkeeping & Financial Tracking: Retaining well-recorded income and expenses are very crucial to the efficient running of an organization.

Tax Preparation & Compliance: Pain free and you can’t lose with professional tax filing services.

Budgeting & Financial Planning: Overview of emerging strategies with professional financial forecasts.

Payroll Management: Pay employees promptly and also provide ways that will help to meet all the payroll and tax requirements.

Why Choose Custom Accounting CPA?

At Custom Accounting CPA, we identify with families of start-ups since they are familiar with the associated problems. Enable you manage your business effectively, our team offers specific financial solutions. Be it a consultation on the execution of a taxation plan, record keeping services, or the development of a financial forecast, we are prepared to help.

Get Expert Accounting Support Today

The pressures of running a business are enormous, but mastering personal finance doesn’t have to be. Outsource your accounting problems to Custom Accounting CPA and leave the business of growing your company to us. Call us today to find out how our accounting services would benefit your business.

[al-khazrajiaudit]

Finding the Right Accounting Firm in Abu Dhabi: Why Transparent Pricing MattersHiring an accounting firm in Abu Dhabi is a must for businesses that want to streamline financial management, ensure tax compliance, and make informed decisions. However, one of the biggest concerns business owners face is the lack of transparency in accounting fees. Many firms have hidden charges, unclear pricing structures, or unexpected costs, making it difficult for businesses to budget effectively.

In this blog, we will discuss why transparent pricing is important when selecting an accounting firm in Abu Dhabi and how you can ensure you are getting the best value for your investment.

Why Businesses Struggle with Accounting Fees in Abu Dhabi

1️⃣ Unclear Pricing Structures

Many Abu Dhabi accounting firms do not give an estimation of cost prior to commencing work. The client might be given a base quote and is later surprised by the charges for services such as VAT filing, financial reporting, or tax consultations.

2️⃣ Hidden Charges & Extra Fees

Some companies give very low introductory rates, but bookkeeping, audit support, or tax filing is charged extra. It may surprise businesses, particularly SMEs and startups, with significant unplanned expenses.

3️⃣ Price Plans Without Specific Customization

Businesses have varying accounting requirements. However, some companies sell one-size-fits-all packages that do not consider the size of the company, industry, or complexity of finance involved. As such, businesses end up overpaying for services that they do not require.

How a Transparent Accounting Firm in Abu Dhabi Benefits Your Business

✅ Clear & Upfront Pricing

A good accounting firm in Abu Dhabi should provide a detailed breakdown of costs before signing a contract. This includes fees for:

Monthly bookkeeping

VAT registration & filing

Payroll processing

Financial statement preparation

Tax consultation & compliance services

✅ No Hidden Charges

A good firm should be very clear about the additional costs to prevent surprise expenses at a later stage. This ensures businesses can effectively budget.

✅ Customized Accounting Packages

The top accounting firms in Abu Dhabi provide personalized pricing plans based on the requirements of the business. For instance,

Small business & startups: Simple bookkeeping & tax compliance

Medium-sized business: Financial reporting & VAT services

Large corporation: Auditing & CFO advisory

✅ Better Financial Planning & Budgeting

Clear pricing will allow the business to have an efficient use of funds to ensure they receive high-quality accounting services without unnecessary expenses.

How to Select the Best Accounting Firm in Abu Dhabi

Ask for a Transparent Pricing Plan – Ensure the firm provides a clear service list with upfront pricing.

Look for Fixed-Fee Packages – Avoid firms that charge per hour as costs can escalate quickly.

Check for Customization Options – The firm should offer plans that match your specific accounting needs.

Read Customer Reviews – Look for feedback from existing clients to gauge the firm’s transparency and reliability.

Schedule a Consultation – Discuss pricing in detail and clarify any additional charges before committing.

Conclusion

Choosing the right accounting firm in Abu Dhabi is important for your business's financial health. Transparent pricing ensures you get the services you need without hidden costs or surprises. Whether you are a startup, SME, or large enterprise, working with a firm that values honesty, clarity, and fair pricing can help you stay compliant and financially secure.

If you’re looking for a trusted accounting firm in Abu Dhabi that offers fair pricing, expert financial advice, and complete transparency, make sure to do your research and choose wisely.

[uhlenbrockcpa]

The CPA’s Role in Business Succession Planning: Ensuring a Smooth Transition

Business succession planning is a very crucial process ensuring an easy handover of ownership and management by the business owner, who intends to retire, sell, or leave the company. The Certified Public accountants are always indispensable in the process because of their expertise in making the transfer process smooth and successful.

Financial Analysis and Business Valuation

A CPA's biggest role in succession planning would be a comprehensive financial analysis and accurate business valuation. These will assess the company's assets, liabilities, income streams, and market position to ascertain the true worth of the company. It is only by making an objective value that a fair sale price could be set, a buy-sell agreement could be negotiated or intra-family transfers facilitated. The CPAs have the analytical skills and experience to carry out these valuations effectively so that all parties can clearly understand the financial standing of the business.

Tax Planning and Compliance

Significant tax consequences, such as gift taxes, estate taxes, and capital gains taxes, are linked to succession events. By properly developing strategies targeted at the least liability and favorable financial outcomes of succession, certified public accountants navigate the maze of these complications. The CPA may maximize the financial benefits of succession planning and assure that it meets legal requirements by being up to date on the latest tax laws and regulations.

Beyond number-crunching, CPAs act as strategic advisors in the succession planning process. This process of determining who the potential successor is-whether a family member, an internal employee, or an external buyer-also involves CPAs measuring the financial feasibility of each possibility. CPAs assist in structuring the terms of the transition and drafting buy-sell agreements as well as setting up financing arrangements. With that kind of knowledge about the financial dynamics of a business, they can present insights that would make the succession plan align with long-term business goals.

Maintaining Business Continuity

With the help of a CPA, a succession plan well-developed ensures continuity. Stakeholder confidence is preserved and the company legacy is not threatened. Change in leadership can actually reduce the risks attached to it if CPAs take a proactive approach toward probable financial and operational challenges. Maintenance of the morale of the employees, loyalty of the customers, and relationships with suppliers become possible with foresight.

At Uhlenbrock CPA, business services are made up of bookkeeping, small business accounting, payroll, tax planning, and representation in the IRS audit. As we are furnished with tax preparation and planning service knowledge, we consider the total spectrum of what our clients earn and invest in to provide them with solutions for their business succession plan.

This completes the role a CPA plays in a business succession plan, making it smooth and successful. Their skills in financial analysis, tax planning and strategic advisory services lay a solid foundation for future business success.