Once you’ve created your business plan, it will:

* Guide your decisions based on your company mission and vision
* Help you create marketing strategies to attain your financial and sales goals
* Help you create a budget
* Outline how you’ll track money, incoming and outgoing.
* Provide lenders a financial blueprint for your business
* Gives flow chart of all aspects of your business from marketing to accounting so that all your bases are covered.
* Defines your target market.
* Documents your goals and your plans to attain them.

So knowing your business plan can help you accomplish all this is great but how is a more important question.

How to Use Your Business Plan

Step #1 25% of your time, at a minimum, will be spent planning your business. Your business plan is the foundation for this planning. If it’s comprehensive, it will guide your decisions, outline your goals and help you create strategies to achieve them. So, schedule a planning day each week. If you plan to work 10-12 hours a week then three hours of that time will be planning time, schedule it in and make it happen.

Step #2 When planning make sure to refer to your vision and mission statement to make sure you’re staying on course. If your vision is to become the single biggest online source for chocolate chip cookie recipes then your strategies and decisions should reflect that. If you’re offered an opportunity to partner with a baking website then you’ll need to see if that partnership supports your vision.

Step #3 Use your tracking tools to keep you on target. Your business plan will have a budget in it as well as a financial analysis and cash flow forecast. These are items that you’ll want to maintain and use on a monthly basis so you stay on top of your cash and create optimal cash flow management policies and procedures. However, tracking tools don’t stop there. You’ll also want to use the tracking tools to analyze traffic to your website and so on.

Step #4 When planning, don’t forget to use your business plan to stay on track with your target audience. You’ve defined it in your plan however, as time goes by and as you track your sales, visits and so on, you may find your target audience changes. Update your business plan to reflect your target audience and make decisions based on that information.

Planning is one of the most important tasks an entrepreneur faces and your business plan is your most effective planning tool. Create a thorough business plan and use it regularly to grow your business.

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Here’s how to maximize your deductions, legally!

#1 – Understand the difference between a business expense and a capital expense
Business expenses are expenses incurred doing business. They’re usually tax deductible and include things like rent, travel and contractors and employees. Capital expenses are the cost of purchasing assets, for example a computer to run your business by or a car to deliver products or services. These don’t qualify as deductible business expenses, but you can deduct them by amortizing or depreciating them over time. The IRS offers guidelines for how to depreciate certain items.

#2 – Understand the difference between personal and business expense

Strictly speaking you cannot deduct personal expenses. However, some expenses are used both for business and personal. A cell phone, for example, or your home internet connection are often combined business and personal expenses and you can deduct the business expense. Determine the percentage of business expense and deduct that. The IRS does offer guidelines for some expenses.

#3 – You can deduct your home office

If you use part of your home for business, you may be able to deduct expenses for the business use of your home. These expenses may include mortgage interest, insurance, utilities, repairs, and depreciation and are based on a percentage. This percentage is determined by calculating how much of your home expenses are used for business. The IRS offers articles and guidelines for home office deductions.

Know that you must use your home office regularly and exclusively. That means if your children use your office to do their homework, you’re unable to deduct it. You must also be able to show that your home office is your principal place of business.

#4 – Travel, Meals, Entertainment and Gifts

All business-related travel expenses can be deducted as well as all meals. If you take a client out for lunch, deduct it! If you send a client a bouquet of flowers or a gift basket, deduct it! If you take your family on a vacation and conduct business while you’re there, you can deduct a percentage of the trip.

#5 – Employees and Contractors

You can deduct the pay you give your employees and contractors.

#6 – Interest

This is a good one if you’ve funded your business with credit or a loan. You can deduct the interest charge to you. This is why it’s important to keep business and personal finances separate.

#7 – Retirement Plans

You can deduct the money you invest in your retirement account, depending on the amount you invest and how you invest it.

#8 – Insurance

You can deduct the cost of insurance for your business and this includes the cost of health insurance.

#9 – Business-Related Education

These expenses can be deducted. For example, seminars, classes, educational materials and conventions.

#10 – Subscriptions to industry publications and organizations

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PayPal – Offers an all-in-one solution so you can accept payments online, with or without a website and accept payments online. If you already have a merchant account then you can utilize one of two options including Payflow Gateway, which offers a secure connection from your online store to your internet merchant account or PayPal Express Checkout, which creates a 3-click customer checkout. Most options require a $30/month fee and like any merchant account, you’ll pay a percentage of each sale ranging from 1.9% to 2.9% depending on your chosen package.The benefit PayPal offers is that it’s available in 190 markets and 19 currencies around the world.

Alert Pay is a growing payment provider with members in more than 190 countries and supports 21 currencies. All monies deposited with AlertPay are FDIC and CDIC insured. While Alert Pay doesn’t offer the myriad account options PayPal does, it does offer low transaction fees of 2.5% + $0.25 per transaction, enables you to manage multiple online businesses with one account, use “Buy Now” buttons for one-time and recurring payments and it easily integrates into third-party applications. Additionally, they offer a number of business tools like sales reports and mass payment solutions.

CCNow offers only payment systems geared toward your business size, including, Start-Up, Small Business, and Established. Their fees include a one time set up fee of 9.95 and a monthly fee of 9.95 if your sales are less than $100.01 each month. Additionally, you’ll pay a fee of 4.99% of Gross Sales plus $0.50 per transaction

CCNow makes it possible to accept payments from common methods like Visa & MasterCard but also lets you accept payment via PayPal.

2CO Checkout.com – Easily integrates with other shopping cart systems, supports recurring billing and automatic payments. They also don’t charge any monthly fee however there is a $49 sign up fee, a 5.5% of Sale Amount and .45 per sale. They offer free code for your website, free shopping cart solutions and no fee to wire into a US or Canadian bank account. While they don’t support as many currencies as other vendors, they do support US, Australian, Canadian, Danish Kroner, Euro, GBP-Sterlings, Hong Kong Dollars, Japanese Yen, New Zealand Dollars, Norwegian Kroner, Swedish Kroner and Swiss Francs.

Other options include:
* e-gold which is an online payment system that exchanges currency in gold rather than dollars
* Authorize.net
* Securepaymentsystems.com
* RBSWorldpay
and many more.

When it comes to finding the right secure online payment system, there are many to choose from. Keep your budget, sales volume and the security of your clients and customers in mind before making your decision. Make sure they’re easy for you to use and integrate well with any system you currently have running.

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