Your Year-End Business Health Check

Your Year-End Business Health Check

by | Dec 27, 2017 | Business planning, Financial planning, Hawkinson Muchnick & Associates PC

Just like people, businesses need yearly checkups. Follow these seven suggestions and take some time this December to do a year-end business health check!

Business owners and managers spend most of their time monitoring operations and dealing with everyday problems. But just as an annual checkup from your doctor helps monitor and manage your personal health, an annual checkup can do the same for your business.

Here are seven checkup tasks that you should make time to do every year. These are important for your long-term business health and personal success:

  1. Review your business insurance coverage. Don’t just automatically write a check to renew your insurance policies when they come due. Instead, you should sit down with your insurance agent every year. Review your business operations, focusing on any changes. Discuss types of risk that could arise. And ask about new developments in business insurance.
  2. Look at your business tax strategy. Consider adjusting taxable earnings for the year, perhaps by accelerating expenses or delaying income at year-end. If you’re a cash-basis taxpayer, you could boost 2017 deductions by declaring and paying bonuses in December rather than in early January. Also, you may be able to defer invoices or make early purchases to reduce your 2017 tax bill.
  3. Survey your customers. An annual customer satisfaction survey is a great way to assess performance, get insight on potential new products or services and to let your customers know how much you value their business.
  4. Determine your marketing effectiveness. Are your current methods and channels working well, or are you simply doing what you’ve always done?
  5. Update succession planning for your business. Review your succession planning annually. You should have a specific plan for each key manager position, including yourself. Be prepared for a short-term absence or a permanent vacancy. Your plan may include promoting from within or recruiting externally.
  6. Review your business banking relationships. Every year you should go over your cash balances and banking relationships with your controller, CFO or accountant. Then meet with your banker. Ask about new products or services that could help your company. Address any service concerns or problems you might have had.  And look for ways to boost interest earned and improve cash flow.
  7. Update your personal estate planning (if needed). If you’re a business owner, your company is likely to be a significant part of your estate. Your company, your personal circumstances and the tax laws are continually changing. You should take time each year to make sure your plans are current.

If you are serious about improving your business, consider a yearly assessment of your operation. Contact our office today to learn more about how you can put your business in the best tax position possible for 2018.

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Hawkinson Muchnick & Associates PC

How to Make Employee Reviews Easier and More Productive

How to Make Employee Reviews Easier and More Productive

by | Nov 17, 2017 | Business planning, Education

It’s the time of year when you may be scheduling employee reviews. The employee knows he or she will hear about the good and the bad, and the supervisor will finally have to discuss those issues he or she has been avoiding all year. Usually both parties fudge a little and are glad that it’s over for another year. It’s another chance for open communication and feedback lost.

Don’t miss out on an opportunity to connect with your employees. Instead, try these tips:

Hold occasional employee check-ins. To improve the process, consider holding performance appraisals more frequently, perhaps even quarterly. This can help make the appraisal less of a “special event” and more of a routine exchange of information. It also means your feedback is more directly related to your employee’s recent performance, rather than coming months later.

Give timely feedback. If an employee does something wrong, or something good, tell him or her immediately. Point out the problem, make sure the employee acknowledges it, and make clear what you expect in the future. And if it’s something good, the employee will appreciate receiving a pat on the back. With immediate feedback, there should never be any surprises at review time.

Create an employee review summary. At the end of every appraisal, summarize the discussion and put the highlights in writing. Make sure your employee gets a copy. Before the next appraisal, ask your employee to review the copy and prepare his thoughts on his most recent performance. Ask him to present his opinions to start the discussion. If there are areas needing improvement, agree on an action plan and put that in writing too. And that might be a two-way street. It could involve your providing training or taking actions to support the employee, so make sure you’re living up to the agreement.

Don’t limit the appraisal to a scorecard on the employee’s achievements. If appropriate, use it to discuss career planning, cross-training or job enrichment. Solicit ideas from the employee. These techniques can help turn a judgmental meeting into a constructive exchange of ideas.

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