Downloadable software allows you to handle payroll yourself, but for a lot of shallow businesses, outsourcing the piece of work is the wont to go

By Karen E. Klein

Watch full size video:

I own a small used-car dealership and I’m in need of an employee. I’ve searched online everywhere on how to add an employee to payroll. I dress in’t have payroll for myself; I just remuneration estimated requisition every quarter. Can you give me any advice or a Web position to start through? —J.M., Canton, Ohio

If you don’familiarily already have one, you should apply for a treaty employer identification number (EIN) from the Internal Revenue Service. You’ll also need to apply for a state withholding number for your walk of life and a specify unemployment rate and numeral. Information attached these requirements is available for your state online at the Ohio Business Gateway. The locality likewise answers many other questions about running a small business and provides useful links you might explore.

You should open a trade bank account for your company where you will draw the operating funds that will cover your payroll, says Mike Haske, vice-president of sales and marketing at Paylocity, a payroll services provider based in Arlington Heights, Ill. Then you’ll need to decide whether you defectiveness to handle payroll yourself or outsource the task. "There are many quality in-house applications available, and some one of them will do a good job of careful taxes and providing accurate output reports because of filing," Haske says.

If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, purchase software online from a source that allows you a free trial period. Give yourself a happen to use the program, determine how difficult it is, and figure out whether it’s right for your needs before you purchase the abounding bundle. Most payroll programs work with QuickBooks, the popular small business accounting software. Talk to an expert in accounts or bookkeeper who works regularly with small businesses and be able to control answer your questions and set up the program to record details such while employee earnings and deductions. A professional can also help if you need a recommendation since a particular product.

If you don’t want to pother by handling payroll yourself, you can hire a assemblage to do it for you. You’upshot be responsible for sending them your employee identification knowledge along with the hours your employee works every pay determination, Haske says, and the guests would handle the rest of the process, including withholding taxes, making plain deposits, or printing checks.

Outsourcing may not make sense if you have only one employee—though some third-party payroll services will labor with small companies that desire a staff of no other than one or couple—but it wouldn’t hurt to investigate the possibilities now. As your business grows and you add additional employees, at more dot you’re likely to outsource the lesson.

Along with taking a tedious job off your hands, hiring an outside payroll service takes the potential accountableness off of you for any penalties incurred by the federal or state government for late deposits, missed deposits, or incorrect filings. "One of the biggest advantages to outsourcing payroll is the payroll provider assumes the liability and responsibility for filing accuracy and making all tax deposits on a timely basis in succession behalf of the employer,” Haske says.

The IRS has a helpful site for small business owners that answers frequently asked questions in an accessible, straightforward manner. Several of the topics on that site relate to employee rules and regulations.

If you see a crunch coming, barter, liquidate inventory, ask clients for push payments, and renegotiate vender relationships, just for starters

By Jill Hamburg Coplan

Watch full size video:

If turn into money is king, the castle remain is looking pretty bare with regard to entrepreneurs, grappling by a recession, a credit acme, and the fallout from an unexampled series of bank meltdowns. An October survey of business owners through PNC Financial Services Group (PNC) found 68% expected a cash crunch in the coming six months, up from 48% a year gone. Even businesses that are adding customers and shipping more product can be at risk if cash inflows lag outflows.

Naturally, you want to bill immediately, collect diligently, and enforce a credit cunning that filters out objectionable customers. If that stationary isn’t sufficiency, turnaround experts have a few more ideas for surviving a cash pinch in uncertain times.

1. Investigate your lender. Few banks are increasing lines of credit, but if your financial institution itself is in bad shape, “open up discussions immediately,” says Allan Tepper, a CPA and finance consultant to selfish companies. “If they’re not there on account of you, consider alternative lenders.” You might also approximate a merit union: Their lending is up 36% over last year.

2. Forewarned is forearmed. Get a cash-flow projection from your bookkeeper or accountant (or use accounting software to generate a true the same yourself) each month. From there, you can micromanage your cash position to get ahead of any huge payments. You could ask healthy customers to pay in 10 days rather than 30, in return for a rebate. If you can afford it, offer 5% off for payment within five days (instead of the customary 2% for payment within 10 days), says Larry Rice, a CPA and monitor of strategic consulting with Rodman & Rodman in Newton, Mass. Just make without doubt the payment date is clear on the invoice.

3. Get payments in send, and by credit card. Most clients will resist paying up front, on the contrary a few may prefer to pay a fixed amount by month especially than getting sandbagged with a large bill—and a scarcely any clients may be all you need. You be possible to speed things up by asking for payment by credit card. Even in businesses that have not traditionally kept their customers’ credit cards on file, it’s becoming increasingly common to process payments automatically.

4. Tighten your belt, however make sure the cost-cutting measures don’t show. Make Internet calls instead of using traditional phone carriers, and e-mail documents (in a secure file format) instead of printing and mailing them. Save bottom by turning opposite computers and printers. In northern climes, program the thermostat to fire up the warmth righteous before the workday begins and shut it away an hour before it ends, suggests Jennifer Kluge, president of the National Association for Business Resources, a membership association in chilly Warren, Mich.

1. Cut payroll, but be creative. You can’t hold fast out of the way of scrutinizing your biggest charge, nor should you. But “keep the people you need and make stable they’re light-hearted,” says Julie Lenzer Kirk, a former tech entrepreneur turned lecturer and consultant. Forgo raises and cash bonuses and instead offer days off, early Fridays, flextime or telecommuting benefits, or even an unpaid sabbatical or teaching reimbursement. You might create a four-day workweek, institute a no-overtime policy, or shift from a richer PPO health-care plan into disgrace to an HMO to survive the crunch.

2. Barter. Elizabeth Donley, CEO of Stemina Biomarker Discovery in Madison, Wis., barters with her software consultant: He does statistical and Web site work for her company, and in exchange, she lets him shape his business gone out of her excess office space. That’sitting netting her company $50,000 in savings transversely the length of the 15-month contract. If you can’t moil it through on your own, inspect organized traffic by exchanges exchanges and networks (there are hundreds). Just be sure to put all agreements in writing and record them for tax purposes.

3. Renegotiate seller relationships.

Observers of all stripes reply the financial crisis is making the credit meteorological character especially cold and difficult

By Stacy Perman

Watch full size video:

Over the out of the reach of year, the economic downturn and the frozen credit markets have harmed small business owners’ access to get loans and credit lines. While the acrimony of the effects onward entrepreneurs are still being debated—with some noting that credit has for aye been difficult to obtain and others finding the tightening typical hind an economic expansion, an important question is, what will the climate look like in 2009? BusinessWeek’s Stacy Perman spoke to a spectrum of economists, academics, entrepreneurs, and lenders who offered their predictions. Edited excerpts of their conversations follow.

Bill Dunkelberg, great economist, National Federation of Independent Business, Washington

Last year’s balance sheets won’t look so good, in like manner next year people enjoin find it harder to get credit or their credit merit. decree depreciate and the loan pipeline order decrease. The percentage of companies planning capital projects has dropped to historic lows. It’sitting just not a good time to be borrowing cash, and we won’confidentially have existence seeing much change in the current situation in credit availability or lending criteria. It will be tough to try and get a loan with lofty banks like Bank of America (BAC)—they made a lot of mistakes and are short on capital. Small common banks are the way to go. We let the big banks get in like manner massy that they are too big to manage and that estate too big to fail.

I am the chair of the conclave of a scanty bank and we motionless make loans. In fact, our loans grew 30% this year. We don’t have the kind of stupid moonshine Wall Street invented—we are in the occupation of savings and lending. [Of course,] business is tougher now, and we have a record number of [small businesses] whose own sales are in decline and that will impact their balance sheets.

Mitch Jacob, CEO, alternative lender On Deck Capital, New York

It is going to subsist extremely challenging. Historically, small business owners be seized of been in a credit crisis since 1776, and the events here in the U.S. and around the world are taking that difficult funding environment to new heights.

Even foregoing to the credit crisis, access to capital from banks for small businesses was extremely limited. Most relied on alternative sources to meet their capital needs. We have always woefully undercapitalized this critical segment and now it’s even worse.

I think there will have being a critical shift in in what plight we look at the capital markets and begin focusing on the returns that will fix the broken relationship between lenders and borrowers. If climate change results in change like clean technology, then the financial crisis will consequence in innovation in financial services. Just pumping money into system will not solve the problem.

Dennis Ceru, professor of entrepreneurship, Babson College

I am looking out my window, and the falling snow reminds me of the financing climate for small business loans: cold and difficult. I think the liking for lenders in general is very dried up. Lending in spite of small businesses, that has to the end of time been difficult, will just get more difficult in this environment. The traditional forms of unimportant business financing have always been family and friends first, followed by angel investors. As a business starts to grow, hopefully it will have increase to lines of credit and objective bank loans, but I do not foresee that happening without the possessor’s signature, which makes it a special loan.

I put on’t think that it is going to get any easier in 2009. I look for, as more businesses’ give faith to lines are up for renovation, they may subsist asked to provide another set of materials to demonstrate they are creditworthy and/or their terms or rates may travel some change in..

Watch full size video:

Richard Johnson is the first to admit it was a bad idea.

Recently laid off from a job fabric trailers in Elkhart, Ind., Johnson came up a dollar friable at Martin’s Supermarket last month when he went to bribe a $4.99 bottle of sleep medication. So, “for some stupid reason,” he tried to shoplift it and was arrested.

“I was hopeless, I guess,” said Johnson, 25, who said he had never been arrested before. As the arrangement has weakened, shoplifting has increased, and retail ease experts say the problem has grown worse this holiday season. Shoplifters are taking everything from compact discs and baby formula to gift cards and designer clothing.

Police departments across the country say shoplifting arrests are 10 to 20 percent higher this year than last. The problem may be even greater because shoplifters are ofttimes banned from stores, rather than arrested.

Much of the increase has tend hitherward from first-time offenders like Johnson making rash decisions in a pinch, magistrates judge. But the flexibility through which stolen goods can be sold steady the Internet has meant a bigger role for organized-crime rings, which also engage in receipt fraud, fake price tagging and gift-card schemes, the police and negligence experts say.

And similar to temptation has grown for in posse thieves, so, too, has stores’ vulnerability.

“More people are desperate economically, retailers are operating with leaner staffs, and police forces are cutting back or being told to deprioritize shoplifting calls,” said Paul Jones, the vice president of asset protection for the Retail Industry Leaders Association.

The problem, he declared, could be specially acute this month; shoplifting usually increases in December.

Two of the largest retail associations say that more than 80 percent of their members are reporting sharp increases in shoplifting, according to surveys done in the by two months.

Compounding the problem, stores are more reluctant to stop suspicious customers because they fear scaring from home much-needed transaction. And retailers are increasingly trying to save riches by hiring seasonal workers who, stake experts say, are themselves further likely to commit fraud or theft and are smaller practiced at catching shoplifters than full-time employees are.

More than $35 million in merchandise is stolen each day nationwide, and surrounding one in 11 people in America have shoplifted, according to the nonprofit National Association for Shoplifting Prevention.

“We used to conceive more repeat offenders doing it because of drug addiction,” said Samyah Jubran, an assistant district attorney in Knoxville, Tenn., who in spite of 13 years has handled the bulk of shoplifting cases there. “But people of these new offenders may be doing it because of the economic situation. Maybe they’re hurting at home, and they’re taking a hazard they may not not dispute other causes.”

Watch full size video:

Biotech startups are known for burning through huge hemorrhoids of cash as they carry on expensive research in hopes of one day hitting the jackpot with a miracle remedy.

But in a troubled economy dominated by tightfisted investors, Kineta is trying a new be nearly equal. The Seattle-based society in South Lake Union plans to fund its research grade by step, relying on revenue-generating deals to undertake the next track in exploration.

“Our fundraising strategy is to enlarge in one organic way,” uttered CEO Charles Magness.

Kineta’s formula underscores the biotechnology sector’s struggle to remain alive the economic wild flight.

Software and other sectors relying on venture capital are suffering from the drop in venture funds and the depressed market towards equities.

Biotechnology firms are particularly in bad shape because they need more cash and longer lead times than other budding companies.

Local companies like Targeted Genetics, which has only enough cash to have influence through the first quarter of next year, are caught in the crunch.

Magness and companion Kineta founder Shawn Iadonato started the fellowship last December but unveiled it publicly only this month.

Their new venture nimbly came after the $9 million sale of their previous gang, Illumigen Biosciences, to Massachusetts-based Cubist Pharmaceuticals. If Illumigen’session research and commercial potential fully pans out, its shareholders could get up to $330 million in additional payments from Cubist.

Kineta — which has the philosophical backing of University of Washington scientists Michael Gale and Michael Katze — focuses on therapies that could help the immune system take arms diseases such as influenza or hepatitis C.

Kineta’s strategy is to do early-stage research until it be possible to prove a biotech compound works, then seek a bigger partner that command pay for an interest in the product and do the expensive clinical experimentation and commercialization efforts.

“We’re looking for more return to the house in the three-year time frame,” as opposed to the nearly decadelong wait many biotechs effort for, Magness said.

Kineta has so far partnered with Cubist for early-stage work on a hepatitis C medicine, and has received funding from the National Institutes of Health. But it is also pitching itself to investors.

The company plans to host one investor render free of access house Jan. 15, according to its Web site.

Ángel González: 206-515-5644 or agonzalez@seattletimes.com

Watch full size video:

PULLMAN — A Washington State University sound says the state should focus on producing biofuels from waste products instead of food products.

The report from WSU economists was requested last year by the agency of state lawmakers.

The team from the WSU School of Economic Sciences says incentives to exhibit biofuels from corn, sweeten beets and canola are not well-suited to be cost powerful.

It said the state should focus on using farm and logging residues or city solid wastes.

The team also recommended the glory consider a tax on greenhouse-gas emissions to promote research and fuels with low carbon emissions.

Watch full size video:

The weekend sledding parties on Denny Hill lasted long into the nights.

One of the region’s steepest stretches, East Denny Way betwixt East Olive Way and Howell Street, was closed by the city after the first heavy snowfall Thursday.

Since then, the upper division has become a sledding nave.

“Two o’clock in the morning last darkness they were out here,” said Richard Lammert, who lives in a nearby chamber and was picking up trash left behind by sledders.

That street was lawful one sledding of many around the area.

The drollery hasn’t been riddle free. At least five children have been admitted to Harborview Medical Center for sledding injuries in the spent four days, reported Dr. Brian Johnston, chief of pediatrics.

Some involve head injuries, he said, and the most serious involve colliding with cars.

One teenager was sent to a hospital Sunday with a head bruise and “probable broken haunch” after colliding with a car. Police said the teenager was listed in stable class.

Many more children were treated and released at Harborview or seen at other hospitals.

To prevent injuries, experts recommend wearing helmets, having adult supervision and sledding in parks — not on streets.

Nonetheless, residents sledded down thoroughfares throughout the area Monday.

And upper part in Capitol Hill early in the day, Lammert and resident Cameron Hart grumbled as they gathered up the mess sledders left astern.

“People must opine their dam lives here,” Hart groused.

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com or Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com

Watch full size video:

To give ear the city’sitting spin, Seattle’s road crews are making “great progress” in clearing the ice-caked streets.

But it turns out “plowed streets” in Seattle actually means “snow-packed,” as in there’s snow and ice left forward major arterials by the agency of device.

“We’re trying to create a hard-packed surface,” said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff notwithstanding the Seattle Department of Transportation. “It doesn’face to face look like anything you’d find in Chicago or New York.”

The incorporated town’s come nearly up means crews unhampered the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long because they are using durance, Wiggins said.

The icy streets are the outcome of Seattle’s refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the parade Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.

“If we were using salt, you’d behold patches of bare road inasmuch as sharp is very effective,” Wiggins said. “We decided not to utilize salt because it’s not a healthy addition to Puget Sound.”

By ruling out salt and more of the chemicals routinely used by snowbound cities, Seattle has embraced a less-effective strategy for clearing roads, namely sand sprinkled on top of snowpack along major arterials, and a chemical de-icer that is operative when temperatures are below 32 degrees.

Seattle also equips its plows with rubber-edged blades. That minimizes the damage to roads and manhole covers, but it doesn’t scrape off the ice, Wiggins related.

That foliage many drivers, including Seattle police, pretty much on their own until quality does to the snow what the sand can’t: mollify it.

The city’s patrol cars are rear-wheel drive. And even by tire chains, officers are avoiding hills and responding without ceasing foot, according to a West Precinct officer.

Between Thursday and Monday, the city spread about 6,000 tons of sand on 1,531 miles of streets it considers major arterials.

The tonnage, sprinkled atop the packed snow, amounts to 1.4 pounds of sand per linear twelve inches of roadway, each purport one expert said might be too little to provide efficient attraction.

Watch full size video:

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Now, that’s one costly snowball.

New York Jets defensive end Shaun Ellis was fined $10,000 by the NFL for throwing snow at fans following the team’session loss at Seattle on Sunday.

Several fans threw snowballs at New York players and staff as they walked over the field for the Seahawks’ 13-3 victory. As he approached the walkway leading to the locker room, Ellis reached into a pile of snow, pointed up a large chunk and tossed it into the stands at Qwest Field, appearing to hit at least a scarcely any fans. No one was believed to have been injured.

Ellis said Tuesday that he wasn’face to face angry at the time, and there was no malicious intent on his lot.

“It was all in fun,” he said.

Video of the impinging originated on YouTube after a fan captured it on film and well-informed it attached the site. As of early Tuesday afternoon, the 53-second cut had been viewed nearly 340,000 times. Several other Web sites have also posted links to the video.

“It was sort of like a little battlefield outright there, so to tell,” Ellis said. “I mean, it was just all in frolic, going to the locker room.”

According to an NFL spokesman, players are notified before each season that some contact with fans that potentially presents crowd-control issues and risk of injury is prohibited. Players are also informed that they must not confront fans for the period of games and must leave any issues to security personnel.

Coach Eric Mangini thought his team was put in a unsafe predicament as it walked off the department, saying several people were pelted with snowballs.

“That situation in the stadium in general was not a very safe situation for anybody involved,” Mangini said. “That doesn’familiarily justify us acquisition involved in it on the flip border of that. He understands that. We thought that there could’ve been more finished to prevent what was happening in articles of agreement of the safety from snowballs coming down.”

Mangini seemed to indicate the Jets could file a formal complaint to the league regarding the behavior of Seattle’s fans.

“I wouldn’t want that to happen at our stadium,” he said. “I’salmagundi sure Seattle didn’familiarily want that, either. It’session just something that hopefully have power to be avoided whether it’s us, Seattle, whoever in the subsequent time. You just don’t want someone to earn struck and hurt in that environment.”

GPS devices and airport videophones are even-handed some of the latest gadgets that can help people through disabilities enjoy travel and leisure

By Suzanne Robitaille

Watch full size video:

Assistive technologies are prevalent in the workplace, but when people with disabilities gear up to have some fun their options are more limited. This may seem like an oversight, but it’s not: Disability protections have mostly focused on boosting jobs for this group, and employer demands during the term of computers, mouse alternatives, and similar assistive technologies have soared over the last decade.

With the New Year, the landscape will be altered—for the better—for the nation’s 56 million disabled Americans. President Bush in September signed the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act, which will go into effect Jan. 1, 2009. The act faculty of volition expand upon the body the original 1990 law to take in additional disabilities that affect "one or more major life activity," such as learning disorders, among frequent others. It will moreover clarify that a major life mode of exercise doesn’t just include work. The have influence expands this description to include communicating, reading, and other activities of central pomposity—of the like kind during the time that plain old fun. The new requirements for businesses have not yet been spelled out.

The ADA Amendments Act marks each of high standing milestone for Americans through disabilities, and likewise offers new opportunities for companies to contrivance and market more accessible products and services. Even without the law, doing so makes good business sense. One in five Americans has a disability, representing a $200 billion market of consumers keen to spend without interruption technologies that will improve their lives.

A handful of technology providers have taken the lead in putting more pleasure into pastimes for people with disabilities. Some companies, such as Microsoft (MSFT), already be in possession of a foothold in workplace assistive technologies, and they’re now expanding into new scenarios. Others came to the assistive technology market by accident—having realized their products were life-changers for the disabled at play. Either way, they’ve all had a hand in opening the mart for technologies that are making period of life more sportive and productive for people with disabilities.

The travel industry is at the forefront of providing accessible technologies, partly because airports and airlines are public spaces and be necessitated to comply with many existing ADA rules. Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports are exceptionally innovative. In September 2007, O’Hare began offering public videophones that let deaf and hard-of-hearing travelers place calls in sign language with the better of a 24-hour, familiar video relay advantage. At the push of a button, a of man sign-language expounder comes up on the screen to support the customer seat the call and communicate their message. These multilingual, touchscreen videophones in like manner provide tourist and transportation information and read airport announcements. Midway began offering the videophones in early 2008, and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport now provides a similar service. "If the journey over industry doesn’t adapt, its customers last will and testament be literally stuck at home," says Eric Lipp, fail of Open Doors, an organization that promotes accessible travel. The cost of each videophone to the airport: $8,500, but they’re free to application by dint of. anyone in the airport.

As numerous road-trippers know, traveling in unfamiliar territory can subsist each exercise in foiling, one that’s made easier with global positioning systems. Unfortunately, most GPS programs are designed for car travel, not pedestrian travel, which renders it useless to people who are blind. One solution: Mobile GEO from Barcelona-based Code Factory, that makes the only GPS navigation software beneficial to Microsoft Windows’ Mobile-based smartphones, pocket PC phones, and PDAs. With Mobile GEO the listener, using a Bluetooth headset, hears a voice accord. detailed instructions on how to get from here to there, find to one’s mind so: "Walk 200 yards south, cross the street, and Starbucks (SBUX) will be upon the body the northwest corner of 18th Street and Broadway." Landmarks are preprogrammed, but users be possible to set in their own notes to repress them avoid scaffolding or blockades. Mobile GEO, that was released in July in the U.S., runs on devices from AT&T Wireless (T), Sprint (S), Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Motorola (MOT), Samsung, and other manufacturers. It costs around $900 for the mobile phone, software, and headset.