The Benefits Of Outsourcing Your Bookkeeping
Bookkeeping is a necessary evil of any small business, and you have enough to worry about as a small business owner besides that unenviable task. You simply run out of day when trying to perform bookkeeping duties as well as running the business itself. To preserve your sanity and valuable time, outsourcing your bookkeeping is probably the way to go.
Outsourcing your bookkeeping saves both your valuable time and money. Granted, keeping records yourself allows for control of the operation, but you would be better served to let someone else crunch the numbers. A professional bookkeeper undoubtedly has more experience and training than you and can therefore perform the task more quickly and efficiently. Outsourcing your bookkeeping provides you with the time you need to concentrate on generating revenue. Also, whether you care to admit it or not, you are likely to commit errors that are costly and time-consuming. No one is there to check your work ,either. Your time is better spent on the core business than on cleaning up mistakes. You are better off outsourcing to someone who won’t make the mistakes at all.
There are other ways in which outsourcing your bookkeeping saves you money. As the owner of a small business, you won’t experience as many transactions as larger businesses. Hiring a full-time bookkeeper to record the relatively low amount of transactions would prove rather costly. A bookkeeper on the payroll not only earns a salary, but he or she is entitled to a retirement plan, insurance and benefits, and workers compensation. These are concerns not always readily thought of, and it doesn’t take much pondering to see how quickly it all adds up. When all is said and done, it is quite possible that you could break even or even take a loss. Allow the company you outsource your bookkeeping to provide these perks.
When outsourcing your bookkeeping, look for flexibility. Find a service that will meet with you to determine exactly what services you will require. Your business will certainly need different levels of service than others, so look for a service that allows you to customize what it is you want done. Also decide about how many invoices, deposits, and checks you will be processing each month in order to determine a reasonable fee. The fees that bookkeeping outsourcers charge are usually competitive and almost always much cheaper than employing a full-time bookkeeper.
As a small business owner, you definitely wish for more time to dedicate to the core of your business. Outsourcing your bookkeeping offers you the chance to do it. More time equals more money and less stress. What small business owner doesn’t want that?
Store Coupons And More: Easy Ideas To Cut Grocery Costs
If you are like a lot of people the last few years, your savings account has been getting smaller by the week. Maybe it’s gone. If so, it’s time to start to improve your buying habits. You’ve probably been diligent at picking out that favorite gas station where you can save a few cents a gallon. But really how much is this keeping in your wallet or pocketbook at the end of the day? Every fill up maybe saves you a buck? If you focused that effort on something as simple as your monthly grocery purchase, you could save a hundred times that amount. Each month.
Let’s examine some of the simple ways to cut the costs of your monthly grocery bill.
1. The most obvious place to start is with the Sunday newspaper. While it’s not the Holy Grail of grocery coupons, just whipping out the scissors and cutting out a few of those coupons will easily save you more than a few pennies a gallon you get at the gas station. Look for store coupons that you can combine with the manufacturer’s coupons to double your savings. Just 5-10 minutes here could save you $10-$20 dollars.
2. Your next place to save is by hitting the web for bargains. Log on to a search engine and search the actual names of products you are interested in saving on. Frequently, the products will have coupons on their own sites that are printable. And, if you’re not particularly choosy about a brand, search for the general product type. You might find a couple of manufacturers competing online and have an available promo for you.
3. We’ve already mentioned the horde of coupons you can find in the paper, but few people realize you can also get many of these same type of printable coupons right off your computer. Search your favorite search engine for something like “printable store coupons” and multiple sites will pop up. There are many paid member sites, but you can find plenty that offer free coupons ready to print from your computer in just a couple minutes. With a little effort here and just a few minutes, you can come up with another $10-$20 or more in savings.
4. Meal planning is particularly important. Where you often get burned at the cash register (especially at large warehouse stores like a Sam’s Club or a Costco) is on those impulse buys. Those several items that you weren’t planning on buying that somehow slipped into your shopping cart end up draining your wallet or purse. Stick to the meal plan.
5. If you’re like a lot of people, you’ve got a yard and some space you aren’t using. Maybe you’ve even got an automatic watering system already. Why not set aside a few square yards for vegetables and herbs? Quality veggies from water you are already probably using on that space can cut your grocery bill. Instead of buying those expensive vine-ripened tomatoes, now you’ve grown them yourself right in your backyard.
With a simple game plan and some good habits, you can trim that monthly food bill considerably. At the end of the month, how much time did you really spend? One or two hours? And if you’re able to save $50 or $100 dollars, wasn’t that time well spent?
Medical Claims Billing – Choosing The Optimal Pricing Agreement
Medical billing services offer multiple choices for practitioners to pay for their services. Each practice has varying requirements and the appropriate selection for you is dependent on the volume, type, and value of claims. Following is a list of the billing options available to health care offices, with their pros and cons.
1. Percentage based fee
This is the most frequent type of billing option offered by medical billing services. You pay a percentage of the net collections or of the gross claims submitted to the covering agency. Percentage rates range widely (4%-16%) as they are calculated on the type of services provided, claim value and monthly average number of claims. Percentage based agreements are suitable for most healthcare practices, especially if you turn over the whole process to the medical billing service . This method of charging provides motivation to the billing service to submit and follow up claims rigorously – a great advantage for the client. The one disadvantage of percentage based fee is that the billing service could possibly pay less attention to smaller claims as the small sums do not justify the aggressive follow up required to collect. A good alternative is to pay a slightly higher percentage for the smaller claims to make them worth the effort.
2. Flat fee per claim
You pay a predetermined rate for every submitted claim. The fee could range from $1 to $8 depending on the service. This option works well for medical practices that see high value but low number of claims or claims that are hard to collect (as from a particular insurer). The drawback of this arrangement is that the billing service does not have much motivation to follow up the claims aggressively. You should accept this option only if you include follow up in the agreement and make the payment after the claim has been collected.
3. Hybrid Billing
Hybrid billing is a great alternative to get the best of both percentage and flat fee service. In a hybrid agreement, pricing terms are defined based on the kind of claim and the insurance carriers. This form of billing arrangement is appropriate for any hospital that sees a wide range of claim values and a moderate to high volume of claims. This also helps health care practices comply with the flat fee regulations set for Medicaid and Medicare claims in a few states. The percentage-based fee is used to pay for private insurance claims. The major downside of hybrid billing is that it introduces billing complexity into practices that do not have a large volume of claims.
Before deciding on the price structure you want with the medical billing service, assess your claims volume, value of claims, and the type of payers. Ask the billing company to forecast results based on your volume, amount of claims and payers so that you can estimate the amount you would pay under every type of billing contract. Think in terms of the future growth of your practice before you choose the best possible payment agreement. There is a medical billing service out there for every kind of practice; you just need to spend some time understanding how they work before you make a decision.
Be Prepared For The Unexpected – Save Your Grocery Budget
You’ve learned that planning your weekly menu will save you both time and money. However, you’ve run into a few problems lately. You’re working later than expected some days and dinner doesn’t get started on time like you’d like. You have extra errands to run after work and the kids have a special science project that requires a stop at the library. Now, your meal plan is in serious jeopardy.
If you had gotten home on time, as planned, you would have started the Chicken Parmesan, as planned, and had dinner ready at 6:00 p.m., as planned. Well, the plan has been derailed, and now you don’t even have enough time to swing through the grocery store and pick up something quick for dinner. So, it’s the drive-thru tonight. Not exactly frugal or nutritious. Your carefully structured menu is just a vague, happy memory.
Your best-laid plans are an ideal. Certainly, you hope that nothing interferes with these plans, but something always does. Planning for a disruption isn’t something we very often do successfully. The Boy Scout motto “Be Prepared” may be your solution to this problem. When the inevitable happens and your menu plan is messed up, you need to have a back-up plan prepared and ready to put into play.
If your weekly menu plan fails because of an interrupted schedule, you need a quick-reference recipe finder. This is something that would give you a “grab ‘n’ go” meal idea for a night that didn’t quite allow enough time for your wonderful meal plans. When things start falling apart during the day and you just know you’ll never be on time to put your roast in the oven, your mind starts to go astray right along with your day and your meal plan. The more rushed you feel, the more likely you are to drive through the fast food place and then your meal, and your budget, really suffers. Time to regroup. Let’s try these three steps to create a back-up plan.
FIRST STEP: You’ll want seven of your family’s favorite recipes, preferably meals with few ingredients, but healthy ingredients. Your back-up recipes should be good and nutritious so that you don’t lose all the health and budget advances you’ve made so far in your menu planning system. Try to stay with mostly one-dish meals as you’re already rushed for time when you turn to this back-up meal. Now, just write each of the seven recipes on individual index cards.
SECOND STEP: Pick a cupboard or pantry door in your kitchen, and attach some peel-and-stick bulletin board cork squares inside and pin your recipes to the cork board. If you don’t want to attach cork board inside your cupboards, tape an envelope to the back of a cupboard door and place your recipe cards inside the envelope. Your favorite go-to recipes are now all set when you need to use your back-up plan. Another advantage to having these recipes ready, is you can now call on your family to start some of the prep work if they can just grab the recipe card and begin.
THIRD STEP: A grocery list that is specifically made for your new back-up recipe plan is essential for this method to work. This is a list that you keep in your purse or car. You will create this by first writing your seven recipes down, then list the ingredients needed next to each recipe title. Be sure to simplify the list by eliminating the items that you have on hand all the time, like salt, pepper, butter, etc. When you pick the list out of your purse, you’ll choose your recipe, then go quickly through the grocery store picking out just the ingredients you need. When you get home, just pull your recipe out of the envelope, and dinner will be ready in no time. You won’t have to stop and think when you start down the grocery store aisles. The decisions have already been made, courtesy of your back-up plan.
If you’re thinking “But it took so much effort just to create one menu plan and now I’ve got to create another one?” you’re half right. Of course, it takes time to create a menu plan, but it saves a lot more time down the road. A back-up plan not only saves time, but money. There will always be disruptions to your best-laid plans. When you prepare yourself for those disruptions, you can move a bit more smoothly along a solution. No more frazzled stops at the drive-thru to pick up a high fat, low nutrition, big money, dinner for your family.
So, who needs a back-up plan? We all do. Won’t it be great to look at your watch when you’re running behind for dinner and think, “oops… Plan B” instead of “EEEEK! Now What”? You’ll enjoy your drive home, you’ll enjoy your time with the family, and you’ll enjoy your own favorite meals… even if they are Plan B!