When The Going Gets Tough: 

Outsourcing Can Help Small Businesses in Hard Times

In the tight economy, it's essential for companies from all verticals to consider outsourcing paid work. Many small companies outsource tasks to us related to accounting, payroll processing, distribution, and more.

This economy has compelled many companies to suffer anything from huge layoffs to cutting an already small staff in half. Because every business needs professionals to handle certain tasks for them, many opt for outsourcing to survive. Our clients outsource non-critical jobs to us and enjoy several benefits. For instance, we know that:

• Outsourcing provides better control over capital costs. Through outsourcing, small businesses can convert their fixed costs into variable costs, and avoid large expenditures in the preliminary stages of the business. Plus, small businesses that outsource become more attractive to investors because they are able to utilize more capital for revenue-producing activities.
• Outsourcing also helps small businesses increase efficiency. Due to outsourcing, small business can lower development, research, distribution and marketing costs. Outsourcing companies enjoy an economy of scale and cost structure that give their company an important competitive advantage.
• Outsourcing is a clear reduction in labor costs. For small businesses, it's extremely difficult and expensive to hire and train staff for non-essential and short-term projects. It also can be difficult to hire temporary employees who live up to their expectations. Outsourcing can help companies use their trained employees on the tasks that serve the business growth most.
• Outsourcing companies can accomplish more in less time. In a recession, small businesses need to attract new clients, but at the same time, they have to cut corners to survive. Outsourcing helps many small businesses start new projects more quickly and more efficiently. Small businesses with strong outsource partners accomplish projects in days that might have taken weeks or months, because those partners came with trained people with substantial support.
• Outsourcing allows small companies to stay focused on their core competencies and key customers. Small businesses that send peripheral business activities to qualified outsourcing firms are able to concentrate their best effort on activities that serve current clients well and attract more of them.
• Finally, outsourcing saves you the burden of paying overhead associated with payroll taxes and expenses such as health insurance, worker's compensation and many soft costs. 

When you outsource with Off-Site Business Services, you can focus your time, attention and resources on your company's core competencies--and spend your time setting new goals and finding ways to achieve them. Give me a call today and together we can identify which tasks will save you both time and money. 

                                                                                                                  Kim

"Overstating" the Importance of Cost Reporting

 
Business owners rely on reports from their management team in order to make decisions. However, cost reporting is often inadequate for this purpose because there may be too much or too little information; or data may be misrepresented, incomplete, unrecognized, not validated, or simply inaccurate. Owner oversight of projects requires accurate, timely, and relevant status reporting, yet all too often it is not provided.

A panel of distinguished virtual office business professionals will be presenting a free webinar on September 24, 2014, from 2pm to 3pm EST, designed to help businesses identify the challenges in reporting project costs and risks to owner decision makers. The panel includes Kimberly Shannon, President, Off-Site Business Services, Nancy Smyth, President, Sunburst Software Solutions, Inc., and Shamese Shular, President, SHU Books.

This webinar will identify common pitfalls in project cost reporting, discusses the differences between accounting and project management software capabilities, and provides guidelines for developing periodic, consistent, useful reports to upper management.

During the execution of a project, procedures for project control and record keeping become indispensable tools to managers and other participants in the process. In this webinar, the panel explains the tools that can be used to record the financial transactions that occur as well as how they can give the project manager an indication of the progress and problems associated with a project.

Go here for registration or call 877-966-4441.

If you have not changes your banking, credit card and other passwords in a while, now would be a good time. How can you protect yourself and keep your information safe? Because,

    IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN!

Almost all of us are guilty of using real words, our kids or pets names as passwords for our online accounts.  How many of you use same password for multiple sites to make it easier to remember logging in?  Even worse, how many do this and have never changed the password on a website since you set up the account?

The good news is you can easily and inexpensively make your online accounts more secure by using one of the many Password Management Software programs available today. TopTen reviews some of the best. There are many free ones out there, but you can find several really good ones for under $30, including Sticky Password.

Once you have a website or application set up in the program, you can sync your data with a USB drive for portability, or view information from your IPhone or IPad. You can launch websites and applications directly from the program, and you will be automatically logged in. There is no need to worry about keyloggers (malicious applications that log your keystrokes to steal your login information.) The program will also generate strong passwords, enter pre-fill personal and credit card information, and set reminders to change your password. It will even shut down after a period of inactivity in the event you forgot to logout.