A Private Employer Benefit Plan (PEB) is an alternative retirement plan to the better known 401(k)s and IRAs. These non-qualified deferred compensation plans offer a legal way to fund your small business’s retirement plan with pre-tax dollars. These benefit plans work for:

• Privately held C and S corporations,
• Partnerships and limited liability partnerships (LLP),
• Limited liability corporations (LLC)
• Professional corporations, and
• Sole proprietorships.

Small business owners utilizing 401(k) plans are finding that in an economic downturn, employees stop saving in order to meet bills. With reduced employee participation their retirement plan begins to look “top heavy” to the IRS. Avoid unnecessary penalties and paying too much in taxes by talking to USBFC’s financial advisers about which of our new PEBs could work best for your business. Our retirement planning services utilize the IRS 409, 412 or 419 plans which can be funded by life insurance and fixed annuity products.

Our retirement plans keep you from unnecessarily paying out more in pre-tax funds and keep you from penalizing top-heavy 401(k) situations. Your retirement investment grows in a tax-deferred manner, making the most use of your growing retirement principal. Upon retirement, the deferred compensation you have accrued becomes your retirement income that you can use largely tax-free!

An added benefit of creating a Private Employer Benefit Plan for your company is another way to financially reward and retain your key personnel. Since some of the plans allow substantial annual contribution limits, they are very well suited to owners who are just starting to fund their retirement savings or have realized that the amount they have set aside may not be adequate in today’s volatile market.

Whether your small business is a start-up or you are a business owner desiring to quickly build equity in your retirement account, contact USBFC’s financial advisors to explore the financially rewarding possibilities a Private Employer Benefit Plan can have for you, your family and your employees.

With the US tax law changes brought about in the EGTRRA 2001 legislation, certain retirement plans were created that allow business owners to contribute a maximum of $40,000 to their retirement accounts. Over 6 times as much as traditional self-employed retirement plans.

Several plans utilize life insurance or annuities to fund the account. A benefit of these plans is the life insurance premiums are paid for with pre-tax dollars and the equity created for the owner and employees is protected from creditors should the company suffer severe financial reversals. Unlike 401(k)s, these plans are buffered from the volatility of the market and can be structured so your principal never loses its original value. Risk is also reduced since the insurance company guarantees the retirement benefits with the annuity or life insurance contract. This benefit, that the assets you place in your PEB are fully protected against market swings, also serves to protect them from any legal actions trying to relieve you of your assets.

Another benefit of using pre-tax funds to finance the Private Employer Benefit plan is it can significantly reduce your state and federal income taxes. This allows business owners to directly benefit, and continue to benefit as their retirement account grows, on a tax-deferred basis. Owners of every type of small business, from a sole proprietorship to a privately held C corporation, can benefit from instituting a Private Employer Benefit plan.

If you need to catch up on funding your retirement plans and the traditional IRA route does not allow you to put away the necessary amount, contact the small business financial advisers at US Business Finance Corp and see how you and your family can benefit from a retirement plan tailored to your business and retirement needs.

The foundational training is centered on the company culture, which covers the basics such as who is the employee accountable to and what are they responsible for, dress code, using the time clock, calling when there are schedule changes, and use of company property. Make sure there are no “unspoken rules” that carry greater weight than the documented rules. Unspoken rules can undermine the success of the best systems.

When training employees, by following the money trail, the employee has a logical framework to couch their new found knowledge. Start with product training, possibly on a graduated basis for more involved products, so they know what the company offers – and what problems the products solve.

The next step in the money trail is sales. Sales training ranges from operational steps such as working the cash register and credit card terminals to the customer service area of handling irate customers, finding the right product for clients to soliciting customer feedback. The US Business Finance Corp team provides our merchant credit card account owners and employees training on both the credit card “point of sale” terminals and the handling of various customer situations. We believe credit cards should benefit your company with greater income and by minimizing “operator error” and credit requests through training we can help improve your business and protect your profit margins.

The last steps are usually the back office steps of handling payroll, invoicing and bill collecting. Though maybe somewhat tedious, one place most businesses have room for improvement is timely billing on their outstanding accounts. The sooner invoices are sent, the sooner clients will send their payments and keep the cash flow at the necessary level to meet the business’s own bills.

Documentation in some areas can be as simple as block diagrams or photographs of steps in a process. Simplifying steps aids in their ability to be remembered as well as the time it takes to document the steps. And it help keep documentation maintenance time low so its more likely that your training material remains current to your business’s innovations and improvements.

US Business Finance Corp realizes the tremendous benefits to consistent training as well as consistent customer service and help from your credit card service provider. We assist our customers, not just in providing great rates, but also in providing the training necessary to protect your merchant account status and your rates. Contact our small business financing team and credit card services experts today.

Health insurance helps attract key talent and becomes a bargaining chip in the hiring practice. Many companies have sought for a middle of the road solution to both help their employees and avoid the hefty health insurance increases. Weighing in on the decision was the nature of the insurance – to keep the insurance cost down, many companies covered employees for catastrophic illnesses with high deductibles. They found that most employees did not benefit from the coverages and looked for alternatives that would better benefit most of their employees.

The 2003 legislative changes created Health Savings Accounts (HSA) – a tax-exempt savings account that could be funded on a monthly basis by employers or a pre-tax contribution by the employee, depending on how the account is set up. Employees could tap into their individual accounts to pay for simple doctor visits. The accounts are not limited to the employee’s health care, but extend to their family also. These accounts work to cover the area that the high deductible insurance policies do not cover.

Another benefit of an HSA is that the medical treatments that are allowed by the IRS (they have a say since it is a tax-exempt account) cover many alternative healing modalities such as chiropractors, acupuncturist, and psychoanalysts, as well as dental and eye care, which are often excluded from basic health insurance policies.

Employers like the HSA route since it both can save them money – almost 30% over the co-payment insurance route – and gives their employees greater control over their medical care. A side effect of HSA implementation is that once employees take more responsibility for their health maintenance they often start making healthier choices at meal times.

Employees also like the HSA option since all unspent funds remain in the savings account. The account can continue to accrue funds to be available after retirement. Since the HSA belongs to the employee, not the employer, the employee has the discretion to use the account or save up for the medical rainy day.

Since small and medium-size businesses historically have found that health insurance has given them a competitive advantage in hiring the best employees, HSAs give employers a way to help employees beyond the affordable catastrophic coverage. Also when health insurance programs are instituted, employee moral and the businesses profitability usually go up.

To help your company increase sales, turn to the alternative financing and credit card processing specialists at US Business Finance Corp – we find the best credit card processing and alternative financing solutions for small and mid-sized businesses.

1. Keep the typical business level in mind. When times are very good and an expansive mindset is in place, always keep in mind the nature of the business cycle. Decide whether you really need to hire more employees or if allowing for overtime will best meet your labor needs. The benefit of overtime is that you are using experienced employees and when the sales cycle shifts employees go back to their regular time and no one needs to be laid off. In good cycles, talk to your financing specialists, lining up a business cash advances or a business line of credit is best done in solid business cycles.
2. Recognize when you have a “hit the wall” situation and need outside advice. A hit the wall situation is one that you are not trained to handle and are tempted to solve in ways in which you are comfortable. Unfortunately in hit the wall situations, your gut instincts tend to be wrong – usually leading to wrong decisions. A red flag is if business decisions are reactionary: crisis-management thinking. Typically the reactionary thinking is following a period of denial that the market has changed and avoidance of painful, but necessary, business steps.

   Outside advice can help you gain the necessary perspective. US Business Finance Corp assists small businesses with alternative financing that can deal with business changes. One business consultant commented that most small businesses fail by fixing the wrong problem – they fixed the one they knew how to fix, not the one that endangered the company.

   US Business Finance Corp has helped many small businesses meet operating capital needs with cash advances only after the owners widened their search for solutions beyond traditional bank sources. Once they found out how quickly and easily they could access business cash advances using their future credit card sales, they were able to turn around challenging business situations.

3. Approach cost cutting carefully. Drastic cost cutting can send the wrong message which has a way of reinforcing the market’s negative perceptions. Always keep the vision for what you need coming out of the market fluctuation. Employment expenses and business supplies offer the largest amounts of costs that tantalize with a fast cost cutting step. However, these are also the ingredients you will need in place to take advantage of your next business opportunity. Another option is to be honest about the state of the business with your employees and then you can explore less drastic and more beneficial measures, such as pay cuts or reduced hours that will see the company through and keep your trained work force intact.
4. Never lose sight of adding more markets. No business saved their way to profitability. Building the income stream and constantly looking to service new markets not only builds profitability, but is also one of the best measures to minimize market fluctuations. New customers, strategic alliances with complementary businesses, new products or services or business cash advances to bolster operating capital all build the company’s forward momentum. Also, remember to take input from and reward your employees for business opportunities they perceive.

Business downturns and upturns can equally benefit your company if you address the needs of the market with your vision and your workforce – addressing the present while building for the future. Contact your financing professionals at US Business Finance Corp to see what alternative financing solutions we have to meet your business’s operating capital constraints.

1. A measure of franchises is “Transferability of knowledge”. Any company with employees has to establish a training program to transfer corporate knowledge quickly and accurately. Training gives your employees the basic tools to meet most of the situations they will encounter in their jobs. Training documentation creates a readily available FAQ that allows employees to double check items without always “calling on the boss”.

   Companies can adapt training programs already available into their own companies. Visa and MasterCard merchant card service providers like US Business Finance Corp provide employee training programs to quickly acclimate your workers to knowing how to handle credit card sales, credit card declines, protect your company from fraud and safeguard your merchant profile. US Business Finance Corp recognizes the importance of problem-free credit card transactions and our team helps train our clients’ employees as well as provides training material.

2. Franchises also system their standard operating procedures (SOPs). Time and trial-and-error expenses are saved when employees are trained in the correct way to do things. With a system in place, owner’s time is freed up from having to deal with every situation because employees can quickly apply knowledge of the system to most challenges. Of course, part of the system is when all else fails call the boss!
3. Create the prototype. Each franchise started out as an independent enterprise that proved the concept of  the business model. Even if you are not going to franchise, by seeing your business as a prototype, you constantly utilize customer and employee feedback to improve the training, offering and systems for maximum profit and customer service.
4. Committed to relationships. Franchisors must build long-term beneficial relationships with owners and managers of their franchises to ensure a consistent level of customer service, brand reinforcement and products. In a similar manner, by focusing on strong relationships with your employees, customer service, morale, and product knowledge stay consistent as well as minimizing employee turnover.

Small business entrepreneurs adapting these four areas to their independent business ventures will find it easier to concentrate on the areas of their business that demands their talents. A well-trained work force is better able to accept delegated duties and responsibilities when they know how to do it, how they will be measured on their performance and how their actions contribute to the overall success of the business. Contact US Business Finance and improve your merchant credit card processing service and training program – quit paying for mistakes.