According to the Security and Exchange Commission a Small Business is... For SEC purposes, small businesses are defined as domestic companies with revenues of under $25 million, and not investment companies. Subsidiaries of larger companies do not qualify as small businesses

while The Small Business Association says... There are many definitions of a small business. In general, any business with revenue under $500,000 per year will qualify, but many larger agricultural and commercial businesses may also apply.

And many Business Schools and Authorities to Find a Small Business... as a business with a small number of employees. The legal definition of "small" often varies by country and industry, but is generally under 100 employees. These businesses are normally privately owned corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships

For those of us who own and operate a small business or dream of having their own business in the future, small business is much more than those definitions.

The small business is:

1. A place where dreams can come true

2. Somewhere that allows us to control our own destiny

3. Encourages its owner to be creative

4. A first challenges that people with a career in a cubicle, could never imagine

5. Is the place an entrepreneur goes to work because they want to, not because they have to

6. The small business is the jobs growth engine of the country. 80% of the new jobs are created by small business.

7. Offers an entrepreneur the opportunity to build something greater than themselves

There seems to be something inside some of us that continues to drive us to be our own boss and control our success. The need to be creative will continue to drive budding entrepreneurs to leave the office cubicle behind and strike out on their own

Though many people are saying that real estate has started with its downward slide it surely doesn’t mean that it has become a bad investment. It is still profitable to invest in properties but all you have to do is keep your greed and fear aside to get a good deal. These two evils cause people to overestimate the worth of their properties but they forgot that this also means that this will make them undervalue it on its way down in the market scenario.

The housing revenues may be sliding down but if you are able to hang on to your property, it is possible to find an upturn too. This can turn your negative cash flow into positive. Presently, places like Los Angeles and Washington D.C. are experiencing tight situations. This is not only causing the rents to be driven up the profit ladder but also making the owners more choosy in terms of whom they rent the place to, observes Robert Bruss.

You can also look for a renter interested in a lease which provides the option to buy the property as well. This works well with people looking for a high quality tenant and also the chance to sell off their property. What happens here is that the renter seals on a price at which he can buy the property with an additional monthly payment or deposit. Here they treat the property like they have bought it from you and if they actually do it, after a couple of years or so, you end up saving yourself the hassle of putting it up on the market with a sales commission. So , see what suits your budget and your needs and go invest.

It’s just so impossible to imagine a life without electricity or electronic goods. Electronic goods have become such intrinsic part of our lives that we have started taking them for granted. Would not life be such an improbability without refrigerators, water heaters, iron, coffee maker, dryers, air conditioners and dish washers?!

Though these items are easily available on high streets, yet owing to several factors, purchasing them always proves to be a harrowing experience. The electronic goods market in UK has reached such a crescendo that a customer is spoilt for choice and gets all confused before settling down with a product from one of the merchants. Best option available in such a scenario is to go in for various e-shops and cash back portals that helps its customers make as informed a choice as possible.

These portals let you compare electronic goods price and finally helps you buy cheap electronic goods of best quality by top merchants. What would be better than getting all top line electronic goods merchants at a single platform offering best deals and goods at discounted prices. What more, cash back portals even provide you huge cash backs for shopping through them.

Online shops selling cheap electronic goods are minting money like never before. What could be better than buying a top brand hair straightener for yourself at a discounted price, earning huge cash backs and getting it delivered at your doorstep for free!! You don’t even move out of your house, your need is fulfilled and your task is done to perfection. Buy electronic goods online, there’s no way you would them find them cheaper anywhere.

As a company grows and expands into new markets, it may be necessary to establish branches with some degree of autonomy in order to provide a better service to clients. The degree of autonomy granted to the managers of such branches by the head office and the accounting records maintained by these branches, differ considerably from one enterprise to the next.

The accounting system used to record branch transactions can also vary considerably from the centralised accounting system, where processing is done entirely by head office, to a basically decentralised accounting system, where most of the processing of the branch transactions is done by the branch itself. In other cases the accounting function can be shared, some of the data may be collected and processed by the branch while, other information is maintained by the head office. Whatever system is chosen, it must be designed to satisfy management's needs.

If the branch is big enough it may have a complete accounting system independent of that of the head office. These two extremes are referred to as situations where (1) branch accounts are kept by head office and (2) the branch keeps its own accounting books. In practise, accounting for branches usually falls somewhere between these extremes.

The decision as to whether a branch should do its own accounting is based on the extent of its transactions, its distance from head office, the degree of control that can or must be exercised, the ability and independence of the branch personnel and security considerations. The chief criterion, however, is always efficiency.

Where an organisation has branches, two types of entity can be distinguished. First, the undertaking can be considered as a separate entity. The financial result and position of the undertaking as a whole is the combined result and position of the head office and its branches.

It is important to distinguish between internal accounting transactions, that is, transactions between branches and between branches and the head office and external accounting transactions, that is, transactions with third parties. Internal transactions are eliminated in the combined financial statements of the enterprise as a whole, that is, the head office and its branches. If this is not done, there will be a duplication of the results of these transactions. Recording the internal transactions between branches and between each branch and head office is, however, essential for obtaining a complete accounting picture of the operating result of each branch. Therefore, mutual or internal purchases and inter-branch sales are recorded separately from external transactions.

A motor car manufacturer, for instance, buys steel, rubber, aluminium, plastic, etc, that is used to manufacture motor vehicles that are sold to dealers (the trading concern). These dealers, in turn, sell vehicles to the customer.

From an accounting point of view the activities of manufacturing and trading enterprises are very similar, especially their administration, sales and financing activities. Therefore, the accounting principles and most of the procedures can be applied to both manufacturing and trading concerns. The main difference between the two is their method of cost accumulation and cost determination for (1) inventory valuation and (2) the calculation of the cost of goods sold. The difference arises from the fact that trading enterprises buy completed goods, while manufacturers make the goods sold by dealers.

The 'accounting cost of goods manufactured' item in the manufacturing enterprise therefore corresponds to the 'accounting cost of good purchased' item in the trading enterprise. In both cases these amounts represent the cost of finished goods available for sale. The trading enterprise, having purchased its goods in a 'finished' form, experiences little difficulty in determining their cost. The manufacturing enterprise, on the other hand, has to account for the cost of converting the raw materials into finished goods (also know as manufacturing costs).

In converting the raw materials into finished products, the manufacturer makes use of labour, machinery and equipment and also incurs other manufacturing costs such as power consumption, maintenance of machinery, etc. All these costs must be added to the cost of the raw materials to determine the cost of manufactured goods for any period.

Therefore, the accounting records of a manufacturing enterprise must be extended to make provision for recording the various additional costs peculiar to manufacturers.

The three most important elements of manufacturing costs are material, labour and manufacturing overheads. In accounting costing terminology, material and labour costs together are known as primary costs, while the accounting term conversion costs represents the combination of labour and general manufacturing costs.

By virtue of the nature of a manufacturing enterprise's activities, it will require more accounting ledger accounts than a trading enterprise. The ledger must provide for aspects such as machinery and equipment, inventory, raw materials, work-in-progress, finished goods, etc. It is necessary to devote special attention to the various inventory accounts.

At any given time, a manufacturer will have different types of inventory on hand: material inventory ready for use in the manufacturing process; partially completed products still in the process of being manufactured; and finished goods that must be dispatched to dealers. Inventory accounting records and different accounting inventory accounts must be kept in order to determine the costs of each type of inventory at the end of a financial period. All three inventory accounts are asset accounts and are usually kept according to a perpetual accounting inventory system. At the same time they are control accounts supported by the appropriate subsidiary records

If you're thinking of becoming a medical biller for a medical billing company, there are some things that you might want to know about some common problems before you decide to take the job. This is a very stressful career choice and if you don't know what you're getting yourself into, you could end up regretting it for the rest of your life. What follows are just some of the common problems and there are a lot more.

One of the biggest problems you're going to run into as a medical biller is patient complaints. You have to understand something. These people are usually very poor and need to have their medical bills paid by the carrier. When things don't go right and they're not reimbursed for their prescription or whatever right away, the first thing they are going to do is call you and complain. And this goes on all day in addition to your regular billing duties of trying to get the bills out.

And what about those duties, when you actually get the chance to do them? The medical billing software that is absolutely perfect and problem free hasn't been invented yet. You are going to run into problems with corrupted data, programs that don't work, modems that stop functioning when trying to submit a claim electronically, down phone lines and a number of other technical problems. Your computer will become your worst enemy at the worst time.

And what about dealing with the insurance carriers? This is probably the worst part of the whole job because unless you're dealing with private insurance, where they have to care about their customers or they lose them, you're dealing with government agencies who just don't care. So if you have a disputed claim and what to get it paid fast, you've got a long wait until that claim is adjudicated. Sometimes it can be months before it is settled. This makes for a very unhappy patient, which in turn makes for a very unhappy worker when those calls start coming in.

And then there is all the legal red tape. The medical billing industry in the United States is one of the most regulated. You can't turn around without running into some kind of regulation that hinders the work that you do. Keeping track of all the different forms that go along with these regulations is a nightmare. Better have a checklist near your desk of all the forms and when you'll need them because there is no way to keep all that stuff in your head.

And if all that isn't enough, you have to deal with the company you work for. They are in the business of medical billing to make money and that means doing your job quickly. It's now how good you do it but how fast. In other words, quantity of quality. It's the number of claims you process, period. This is a very stressful way to work, especially when you have so many outside factors slowing you up.

So if you're thinking about getting into the medical billing field, you might want to reflect on some of these problems first.

Everybody has their own point of view on every subject. In this world, our point of view, at least in our minds, is the right one. Well, that is no different in the world of medical billing. The patients think they should be paid for the claims, the medical billing companies want the patients to get paid for their claims so they can make their money and certainly the doctors want the patients to get paid for their claims or they'll go to another doctor. But what about the insurance carriers? It seems that they are the last people who want to pay claims. Well, this is for a very good reason. While everybody else is getting paid, the insurance carriers are paying out.

Sure, these carriers also get a monthly premium from somewhere, whether it be from us poor workers if they are a government agency or from the patients themselves if they are a private insurance company. But the truth is, especially with government run agencies, the money coming in is far less than the money going out. That is why the United States Medicare and Medicaid programs are in such trouble and in danger of going broke. Medical costs are skyrocketing because doctors are charging more and more for services, but the common worker doesn't make enough to put into the fund to make up for these increases.

As for private insurance companies, they have an even bigger problem. Whereas the government agencies can work at a loss because they're non-profit, the private insurance companies have to show a profit to their stockholders. Otherwise, the company goes out of business. This makes it so that they are even more reluctant to pay out claims. This however, is a real catch 22. See, the people they are paying the claims to are the people who are providing them with their income in the form of insurance premiums. So if they're not being paid, they're going to take their business elsewhere. Talk about a no win situation for a private insurance company. That's why so many of them have gone out of business over the last 30 years. Even the big giant Prudential has had its problems.

Because of these concerns, the insurance carriers have to be very careful about paying out claims. They have to research each one carefully to make sure the claim itself is legit. This will ultimately slow up the process, which is what medical billing companies and patients end up complaining about. But the truth is, there are a lot of bogus claims out there and if these insurance carriers paid out on all of them, they'd be broke sooner than you can say "I've fallen and I can't get up". So it is understandable that these insurance carriers run their businesses the way they do.

In the many previous installments of medical billing that we have been through, we have discussed just about everything there is to discuss about medical billing software, such as what it can do, how to find problems and how to use it. But one thing we haven't covered, which is probably the most important thing of all, is how to choose your medical billing software. There are many brands out there. So how do you know which is the best one for your needs? Hopefully, after reading this installment, you'll have a decent idea of how to pick out your medical billing software if you haven't already done so.

The first thing you have to do is look at the size of your company and your computer setup. This is important for several reasons.

For starters, not all software packages run on all platforms. So if you're running a network on Mac computers, don't buy a software package that is made for Windows platforms. If you're running a peer to peer network, don't buy a software package that specifically says that it is for star based networks or similar client server networks.

As for the size of your network, if you have a company of 100 users, don't buy a software package that is limited to 50 user licenses. Conversely, if you only have five users in your company, it is wasteful to buy a software package that is specifically designed for companies with hundreds of users. You won't need all that power.

The next thing you have to look at is what your actual billing needs are. If you are a DME billing company, you're not going to have need for software that also does dental claims. You'll be paying for functionality that you don't need. Conversely, if you plan to bill all kinds of medical claims, then you better make sure that you get a software package that is going to handle all those claims. Adding on to a package at a later date is not always an easy thing to do.

The next thing that you want to look at is what extras the software company is going to provide for you, such as forms. Forms are a very big part of medical billing and there are a ton of them. If the software company will also provide you these forms at a reduced cost, then it might be worth it to go with them even if the software is not 100% what you're looking for, as long as it is close enough. Conversely, if another company will offer you forms and the one you're looking at won't, it may be wiser to go with the other company, if the software is at least close enough to what you want.

The next thing you need to look at is price and what you can afford. If your perfect software is way above your means, especially if you're a small company, then you might want to go for something that is a step down. You don't need all the bells and whistles to do this job.

Finally, you need to look at the support record of the company. Find out if there have been any complaints against them. You can do this through the BBB.

What is accounting?

A simple definition is the recording of financial or money transactions. Not all transactions need to be recorded. Mostly, only business transactions are recorded, personal transactions are rarely recorded by individuals.

For example, you purchase a book for $10. You give the book seller $10; you receive the book & a receipt for $10. More often than not you throw the receipt away; you only want to read the book. The book seller however is operating a business so the transaction will be recorded.

The book seller will record the $10 as a cash sale and at the end of the day will total all of the book cash sales. That is easy, count the money in the till less the float amount at the start of the day and you have the total sales for the day. The book seller now has a problem, how many books were sold, what books were sold and was there a profit for the day?

Does it matter? It does if the book seller wishes to continue the business. This is where the accounting system or process begins to be a little more complicated.

The book seller now has to figure out a few things. How many books were sold is relatively easy, 45 transactions for the day so 45 books sold today. All at $10, unlikely, so the book seller needs an accounting system to record or show this information. This accounting system should show what books were sold, at what price and how many were sold.

The book seller needs this information because tomorrow there will be more sales. If there were 10 books titled "Book 1" today and four were sold then tomorrow there will only be six on the shelf. If four more are sold tomorrow, there will be two left for the day after tomorrow. If customers come into the book shop to buy "Book 1" and it is not available they will go somewhere else to get it.

It may take a week to receive more books after an order is made.

So the accounting system must show the book seller when more books need to be ordered not just how many were sold and at what price. In the example "Book 1" the book seller will need more books arriving tomorrow or early the day after so no book sale is lost. The new book order would have needed to be made a week ago for there to be no loss of book sales.

How much did the book seller pay for the books? That information also needs to be available to show whether a profit is being made. The simple transaction of one $10 sale is not so simple for the book seller.

Accounting is far more than the simple recording of a financial transaction. Accounting needs to be able to provide more information than the financial amount of the transaction alone.

A better definition would be accounting is the process of recording all aspects of the money transaction from a financial, physical and non-financial informational point.

Mind you not all transactions are completely money so even the better definition is not complete when it comes to a definition of accounting. Accounting involves so many different areas of business that any definition given is always going to be open to debate, especially amongst accountants.