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Healthcare is a complicated and highly politicized topic. Google this post’s title, and you’ll find ample opinion both for and against Medicare for all, a solution proposed by presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and others. When it comes to small business owners, however, opinion is less divided, with a growing number of supporters. But, politics aside, how would Medicare for all potentially affect small businesses? The answer starts with a more in-depth look into our current system and the proposal to change healthcare.

Medicare – our national health insurance program

Currently, Medicare is the national health insurance program primarily for those over 65. Medicare also covers some younger people with disabilities and other conditions, but in general, the program’s scope is limited to older adults. While the current plan’s eligibility is limited, funding comes from payroll taxes imposed on all workers and employers. Workers pay a 1.45% tax on their earnings, and employers pay an additional 1.45%. Also, some Medicare costs are paid by plan participants through monthly premiums, copays, or other fees.

Small business and healthcare

Under the current state of affairs, small businesses that have fewer than 50 full-time employees are not required to provide health insurance. Larger companies that fail to do so, as provided by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), are subject to fines. But if we focus on those businesses that are exempt from the ACA, the mandatory cost of healthcare to a small business at present is 1.45% of wages

Despite what may or may not be mandatory, businesses often provide health coverage as a benefit, and failing to do so can cost them good employees in a thriving job market. So, in reality, the actual cost of health care to small businesses can be much higher than just Medicare tax.

The expansion proposal

Medicare for All would replace our current healthcare insurance system, which primarily involves private insurers and some government services provided to a small group. Every citizen and legal resident would be entitled to coverage. Under some proposals, Medicare will be an option for all, but those with private insurance could continue to pay for healthcare coverage privately. Cost estimates vary depending on which study you read. Still, it’s safe to assume that the cost of covering everyone versus only a small percentage of the population will be much higher than the combined 2.9% payroll tax will raise.

The tax effect on small businesses

Under Sanders’ plan, for example, the employer portion of Medicare tax will increase from 1.45% to 7.5%. This increase would only apply to the first $2 million in wages, so smaller businesses that fit under this ceiling will not see an increase. The current plan has similar protections for small businesses, with no premium for those with under 50 employees. Still, these businesses currently pay 1.45% on every penny they spend in wages, regardless of the number of employees or their total payroll.

The wellness effect on small businesses

Looking beyond payroll, proponents of Medicare for All believe the program will result in a healthier population in the country. This, according to backers of the reform, translates to fewer sick days, happier employees, and increased productivity.

Also, Medicare for All will potentially remove the connection between employment and insurance. In other words, employers and employees will be free to negotiate terms of employment without bringing health benefits into the mix. The precise effect of this situation is unknown, as employers who no longer have to pay a share of a premium may have this savings canceled out or negated through additional taxes.

Healthcare reform is an essential issue for small businesses. An increasing amount of these businesses are calling for a change, as healthcare continues to become more and more expensive.

It’s getting easier and easier, and considerably cheaper to find great candidates in the digital age. New marketplaces and job boards are popping up all the time, some leveraging novel strategies to bring employers and job seekers together. Many of these fall into the category of free job posting websites.

Recruiters, head hunters, and traditional employment agencies still have an important role to play, particularly for high-value, high-skill positions. But for the lion’s share of open jobs, there are a plethora of free or inexpensive options that can deliver qualified candidates directly into your inbox. Here we feature some of the top choices.

Google for Jobs

Google for Jobs is one of the newest entries in the free online hiring space. Unlike traditional job sites that maintain their own database of listings, Google’s search algorithms trawl existing job listings on other people’s sites.

The easiest way to list with Google is to add your job opening to any of the services that have already partnered with Google. These include Glassdoor, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter.

If you post job openings on your own website you can have them included in Google searches as well by making certain to format your HTML properly. Once this has been set up, future job postings will be automatically added to Google’s listings.

Indeed

By far the most popular job board in the U.S. Indeed allows completely free job postings, and millions of employers take advantage of the service.

Indeed’s high traffic volumes assure that even basic posts will be seen by good candidates, particularly now that posts will also be included in Google for Jobs searches. But if you want to be certain your post gets maximum exposure you can boost your visibility with PPC (pay per click) ads.

Jora

Relatively new, their model is similar to Indeed. They offer free job posts for employers and does not offer a paid or sponsored tier.

Angellist

Free job postings that tend to reach people in the techhnology and those in startup mode.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a massive hub for business connections around the world, and while you can’t post a job listing for free, you can exploit the site’s search features to look for candidates on your own. There’s no charge for these sorts of searches, and there are plenty of qualified candidates in your extended network waiting to be discovered.

LinkedIn also features job postings and their Recruiter Lite component that feeds you passive candidates that are outside of your network, but these are both paid functions.

Glassdoor

Glassdoor isn’t technically free to post, though a new trial account will give you ten no-cost job postings. After that, the price per post is fair based on the other value Glassdoor brings to the table.

Not only is Glassdoor an employment marketplace, but it also allows employees and clients to rate companies based on their experience. Companies that offer a great place to work and good customer service are rewarded with excellent ratings on the site. This makes it easier to attract top talent to your job postings.

Craigslist

The venerable classifieds service that was introduced 25 years ago is still a good source for low-cost job listings today. Posts cost between $15 and $75, depending on the size of the city where you’re posting, and last for 30 days.

Interest in Craigslist job postings is still fairly robust, even with all of the other options available. However, don’t expect any of the extra functionality present on sites built specifically for job listings.

Ladders

Ladders distinguishes itself as a platform for jobs that pay $100K or more per year. The site is structured in a similar way to services like Indeed. You can post your job listings for free and then optionally boost them, for a fee, to increase their visibility.

Neuvoo

This is currently the fastest-growing worldwide job site, and it’s free! Employers can post to get access to the site’s estimated 75 million visitors each month. As with many services, if you pay to boost your listing you’re promised a tenfold increase in the number of candidates seeing your ad. The site doesn’t many bells and whistles, but it’s a solid, standard job board.

Smartly

Smartly takes a novel approach to recruitment. The company’s primary business is technology and business training. This creates a pool of newly-minted professionals looking for work. The top 10% of their trainees qualify for Smartly Talent, a hiring service that allows employers to post inexpensive ads to recruit these candidates.

It’s a win/win. Trainees get an exclusive marketplace for their talents, and employers get a low-cost option for talented individuals.

ZipRecruiter

ZipRecruiter is immensely popular, but not because of the price tag. The service is neither free nor low-cost. However, we include it on this list because it’s extremely effective. According to their marketing materials, 80% of employers find quality candidates within the first day, and customer experiences seem to bear this out. If you’re looking to fill important positions quickly, ZipRecruiter offers value commensurate with its costlier price tag.

The service broadcasts your job listing to over 100 individual job boards. Additionally, you can choose email placements and access to their database containing millions of resumes. The service isn’t inexpensive, but if you need to hire for a lot of positions, the price can be worth it.

If you own or manage a business, you know that your time is at a premium. You have numerous tasks each day — some require the unique set of skills you’ve developed over your career, but many of these tasks are repetitive and somewhat simple, lower-level items on your to-do list. In today’s busy and fast-paced world, those who are overburdened by their workload either fail to complete their jobs each day or do a less-than-optimal job because they are stretched too thin. A simple solution to this problem is to delegate lower-level tasks to someone else, so you can focus your skills and expertise in the right areas to ensure maximum productivity.

Increasingly, businesses and individuals are using virtual assistants to help get a handle on workloads. Virtual assistants can handle a wide range of jobs, from helping to manage schedules to providing marketing support and beyond. No matter your need, there likely is a virtual assistant service that can handle it and make your work life a bit easier. The key to getting the most value from a virtual assistant (VA) is in understanding the services provided and finding the right assistant provider.

Popular virtual assistant services

Imagine if your business had an unlimited budget and could hire anyone to help complete a job or to ensure that you have a helping hand every day. If money were no object, you would likely hire as many people as necessary to get the work done. In reality, businesses struggle with balancing staffing needs with actual budgets. With a VA service, companies only pay for the services they use. But, more than a budget-friendly approach to staffing, VAs helps businesses tap into expertise, on-demand. Common VA services include:

• Calendar management
• Travel arrangements
• Marketing support
• Project research
• Social media posting and research
• Data presentation
• Writing
• Voicemail

The list goes on, with more specific, technical, and C-level support services. From simple clerical tasks to high-level executive assistant capabilities, VA services handle all that today’s businesses need.

The true value of a virtual assistant

Virtual assistants offer an additional benefit over new hires. Even experienced new employees have an adjustment period before they reach optimal productivity levels. The first few weeks might involve training, administrative onboarding tasks, and other activities that do not directly impact revenue. A virtual assistant provider offers seasoned professional help on-demand without the need for an extended and unproductive learning period. The best VA providers can offer immediate access to productivity because they prioritize customer success by assigning a dedicated staff member to manage the client.

It’s crucial, then, to think of a VA service as more than just a tool for getting a particular task done. Properly used, VA services are an ongoing process of increasing efficiencies and productivity in your business.

While there are hundreds of VA services, with some specializing in certain industries or tasks, here are five of the most popular VA service providers, with details and review information.

Zirtual

With its promise to “streamline your success,” Zirtual offers assistants that handle email management, scheduling, travel, research, expenses, and personal tasks. Zirtual’s virtual assistants are college-educated and U.S.-based, are proficient in Microsoft Office and Google G Suite, and receive ongoing training. Zirtual also provides a dedicated account manager for customer support and service, such as changing assistants, pausing subscriptions, adding hours, and addressing special projects.

Zirtual bills monthly, ranging from $449 a month for 12 hours of task work to $1,499 a month for 50 hours.

 Vasumo

With a mission to help you get your time back, Vasumo provides virtual assistants that can cover all of your business needs. Vasumo provides over 300 different tasks, all with U.S.-based contractors. The company invests in training and certifying its assistants, providing an easy method for customers to choose assistants with the needed skills for any project.

Vasumo’s pricing is simple and low, ranging from $398 to $598 a month for from 25 to 55 hours.

Belay

Focusing on the productivity benefits of delegation, Belay provides virtual assistants, bookkeepers, and web specialists. Belay focuses on these three general task areas as critical components of growing a business. Its contractors are based in the U.S., with proven and tested experience.

Belay’s pricing varies depending on the work needed, project duration, and other factors, but charges an hourly range from about $38 to $45.

Task Bullet

TaskBullet distinguishes itself from the others in this list with its Bucket System. Customers purchase a bucket of VA hours, ranging from $220 for 20 hours of VA services, to $1,560 for 240 hours. The bucket hours are valid for three months, so users have the benefits of on-demand skilled work, without a monthly subscription, extra fees, or complicated billing.

 Time etc

Providing a wide range of virtual assistant services, Time etc wants to free your mind from to-do list stress. Its assistants cover everything from writing a blog post to finding the best flights for an upcoming trip — any task that people are likely to procrastinate completing.

Time etc offers dedicated U.S.-based assistants from $250 a month for 10 hours to $1,260 a month for 60 hours.

Companies and individuals can benefit from working with a VA, but finding the right VA provider is the key to success. VA companies essentially sell time so you can spend more of it improving other areas of your business, or simply enjoying it with your family.

As long as your business has customers, there will be customers who have trouble keeping up with their payments. The financial side of your business can be absolutely fraught, especially because you don’t want to compromise your business’s customer service reputation by being too aggressive with debt collection. The best way to avoid this? Do everything you can to avoid customers defaulting on payments in the first place.

Of course, you have limited control over your customer’s financial situation, but there are ways you can minimize the chances that a customer defaults on their payments. Using these tactics, you can incorporate measures to avoid late payments or total defaults from your customers.

1. Be Transparent

This is not only a basic courtesy to your clients and part of an honest sales process but also critical when making it clear what you expect your clients to pay. Your customers aren’t going to be able to prepare effectively for your bill if there are hidden fees or unexpected expenses. Before anything else, your client should know exactly how much they’re going to be billed for. Which leads directly into our next tip.

2. Avoid Billing Mistakes

Your customers expect you to keep track of how much they owe and be accurate when requesting payment. If you accidentally undercharge your client, they’ll feel cheated when you reach out to collect the full amount. If you overcharge your client, they’ll feel like they have to pick through every bill with a fine-tooth comb to ensure that they aren’t being cheated. Make sure that your billing practices are locked down before you send out a single invoice.

3. Send Automated Reminders

In this day and age of auto-pay, it can be tough to remember to submit all of your payments on time. Regardless of the format in which you collect your payments, you should send out automated reminders about when the bill is due and/or when the money will be automatically withdrawn from your client’s account. That way they can remember to either make sure the account has sufficient funds or manually send in payment. Repeated reminders are the best way to prevent customer defaults on your bills.

4. Accept Partial Payments

The fact is, sometimes unexpected circumstances happen. If you’re seeing that a client is scrambling to make the payment but doesn’t have the full amount, accept what they have and make a note of the continued debt. It’s not a perfect solution, but it allows you to handle the situation gracefully and helps you build a rapport with your client by being understanding.

5. Send Itemized Invoices

If you’re consistently seeing questions about your bills, the lump sum at the bottom is probably to blame. This goes back to transparency as well. Sending an itemized invoice allows your clients to look at everything covered by their lump sum payment and break it down in their own minds to understand where the money is going.

6. Implement a Process for Debt Collection

No matter how careful you are, debt will happen eventually. You don’t want to be approaching the situation without any plan at all for how to handle it. Before it becomes an issue, make sure you have a process in place for managing overdue bills.

7. Offer Payment Plans

If your client is suddenly in a situation where your bill has become a problem, you can offer to set up a longer-term payment plan that gives them more time. It’s not an ideal situation, but at least it forces a conversation about the overdue bill and sets a plan in motion for them to pay it. You may not be able to prevent customer defaults entirely, but if you receive even a portion of accounts receivable, consider this as the bonus money which you would have not got if you were trying to recover entire payment in one transaction only.

8. Be Timely

You don’t want to sit on unpaid bills or problem debt. They aren’t going to go away on their own. Address the problem as quickly as possible and make it clear to your client that you aren’t going to simply forget about the money owed on their bill.

9. Keep Records

Every step of the billing process should be recorded, as should every step of the debt collection. If it comes down to it, you don’t want there to be any doubt about what amount is owed and how you took steps to address the situation.

10. Hire a Debt Collection Agency

If a lack of payment is an ongoing problem, it’s time to call in the professionals. A debt collection agency can handle the debt issues you might be facing, and you can go back to focusing on your business.

Financials are one of the more complex aspects of business, but they are what allow businesses to succeed! They allow you to expand your business plan, hire new employees, and ultimately measure your business’s worth. There should be no doubt when it comes to receiving the money that you are owed, but in the event that there is a problem, you can manage it. Implementing these practices into your business plan early is a great way to set yourself up for long term financial success. And if all goes well, hopefully, you’ll never need to worry about debt collection. Collection agencies are the best way to prevent customer defaults on your bills once the boll is over 90 days past due.

The title of this article is sensational on purpose. Certainly, many small businesses today are doing just fine without the benefit of AI. However, AI is the sort of technology that builds slowly at first until it reaches a critical mass, at which point it mushrooms quickly in functionality and ubiquity.

Companies that begin using AI now, and smartly prepare their businesses for the coming explosion of AI-powered business technology will be well-poised to benefit, leaving their competitors to an early grave. Now is the time to adapt.

Already we can see how AI will lead this revolution in business efficiency, productivity, and predictability. Below you’ll find a number of examples of AI’s current applications in small business as well as an extrapolation of their future potential.

Competitive Intelligence

Small businesses frequently operate in highly-competitive markets, where small competitive advantages can have an outsized effect. The more insight businesses have into what their competitors are doing, the better equipped they are to revise their own strategies.

Today, tools like Crayon are applying AI to the task of collecting actionable competitive intelligence, and the practice is showing promise.

Crayon passively scours the hundreds or thousands of advertisements, online updates, social media posts, and other public communications made by your competition looking for patterns. It can tell if a given competitor is subtly changing its marketing language, shifting its focus to other business priorities, and whether its in a cycle of price increases or decreases.

With natural language processing capabilities and machine learning algorithms built-in, these sorts of competitive analysis tools can come to know your competition better than they know themselves.

In the future, these tools will be able to track and analyze far more data points, with a deeper level of integration. They could provide a meaningful, moment to moment picture of exactly what your competition is doing, how they fit into your overall industry, and exactly the steps you should take to overtake them.

Business Management

Today there are myriad tools that help businesses of all stripes manage inventories, schedule employees, track project statuses, keep tabs on their finances, and more. Prescient software designers are beginning to add AI and machine learning into these functions to give businesses the ability to not only track key business factors, but also to predict them.

You can imagine a software tool that keeps tabs on a business’s sales, current inventory, returns, as well as industry and social fads, in order to more reliably predict product usage over time. This reduces inventory risks, making businesses leaner and more competitive.

Small businesses like restaurants have been using integrated, digital POS (point of sale) systems for years. These allow owners a central dashboard to keep tabs on food usage, food sales, dining room staff composition, staffing needs, and more. The future will see this sort of software expand into more industries, along with full AI-integration.

Companies will have AI-optimized business management at their fingertips. Machine learning algorithms will be able to automatically keep inventory at optimal levels, maximize staff efficiency, enhance spending practices for better cash flow, suggest strategies to stay ahead of the competition, and monitor customer feedback online for useful insights into what the business could do to improve.

In the future, AI could replace managers entirely, but for now, the intelligence it provides will make your managers far more effective.

Customer Service

Responsive, informed customer service can make the difference between a business’s ultimate success and failure. However, many small businesses don’t have the resources to address customer service as holistically as they’d like. This is particularly true for small online retail businesses that deal with large volumes of customer feedback, questions, returns, and more.

Today, online AI chatbots, like Boost.ai and MobileMonkey, plug into a company’s website or into Facebook Messenger to help address common customer concerns without the need to speak with a human. As the AI that powers these evolves, it will begin to monitor all customer interactions, learning answers to customer questions it didn’t previously know.

In time the AI would be able to field most any customer questions or concerns. It would only require human support for unique cases it hadn’t encountered before.

It’s reasonable to imagine a future where intelligent chatbots and automated phone systems handle the entirety of a business’s customer service needs, serving up instant answers, advice, and recommendations based on more data points than any person could ever keep track of.

AI is the Future for Small Business

AI-powered software and machine learning algorithms will begin to dominate the small business space in the coming years. Now is the time to familiarize yourself with what these technologies can do for your business. Don’t wait until your competitors have already lapped you. The future belongs to the bold.

The truth of business is that, no matter how successful your business is, there will be good times and there will be tough times. There will be times when the business is flush with cash and times when the lack of cash on hand becomes a problem. There are many different reasons businesses run into cash flow problems. No matter how you end up there, the simple fact is when you do, you need to get cash in the door quickly to recover. When this situation occurs, you need solutions that will help you collect faster. Here are 3 ways to speed up cash collection in emergencies.

Hand Over Past Due Debt  to a Collection Agency

Even if your company has a solid collections department, that is not your core business. In order to recover as much money as you can for accounts receivable that are past due and in the collections process, handing it over to a professional collections agency will help. Just as your business is good at what you specialize in, so are collection agencies. They can dedicate more time and have more experienced, skilled, persistent negotiators on staff to go after the money your business is owed. Yes, it will cost money upfront or a portion of the debt collected but that is a good trade-off to make when you need cash fast.

One thing to keep in mind when you are looking to outsource your debt collection company is that you are working with an ethical debt collection agency. Any company collecting a consumer debt is beholden to the “Consumer Credit Protection Act” and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. If a less than reputable debt collection agency does not follow this, you risk not getting paid and damaging the reputation of your company.

Reward Early Payments, Penalize Late Ones 

Going after clients who are past is one side of the equations. The other side is working to incentivizing clients to pay early and penalize those who pay late (this is for customers who are late but not delinquent). Especially for customers who are diligent about paying their bills on time, offering a small percentage discount or other perks for early payment may be something they are keen to take advantage of.

On the other hand, for those clients who are always paying late and do not seem to make a move until you politely “remind” them a few times about their bill, you may want to consider taking slightly harsher actions and charge a fee for late payments. This is a valuable tool because it can either get you some more money when they eventually pay, or you can waive it for the customer as long as they pay immediately. That will help get the money in much quicker. Finally, if you have customers that are consistently behind on payments, you may consider dropping them. Sometimes it is just not worth it.

Bill Better, Bill Faster 

By streamlining the billing process, you will be able to get money in the door quicker all the time which will hopefully lead to fewer emergency situations to begin with. You want to make sure that bills are going out promptly, either when goods are shipped or service is provided. If you are on a billing cycle, you can speed that up too. If bills generally go out every month or two weeks, change it up to every week. The simple adage to keep in mind is that you cannot collect on what you have not billed.

One of the best ways to do this is to switch to an online or automated billing system. With these types of systems, bills go out and are followed up on automatically so there is less room for human error or oversight. The added benefit for this is that most of these systems come with online payment portals as well. If you do not have to wait for a check to be mailed or picked up the money will hit your coffers much quicker.

Conclusion

When times are tough in business, the main focus needs to be getting cash in so you have the working capital you need to function properly. By following these 3 tips, you should be able to get cash in immediately to help the situation. These strategies also will be beneficial for the long-term health of your business because they will speed up your accounts receivable process so you do not get in as many tight situations in the future.