There are two ways to get better payment terms from your suppliers - make sure you know what the pricing is and negotiate the payment terms last, without warning. Most businesses do not expect small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal businesses to negotiate payment terms, so you have the element of surprise on your side - and it makes you look more professional.

Firstly there is the extended payment term, of 60, 90 and 180 days - see if your supplier will allow any of those terms. Even if they only give you 60 days, you can always go back after 3-4 month using this payment terms in which you have shown to be trustworthy. If it is declined and only 30 days are offered - because you have no history - then this is the perfect scenario of our second method.

Early payment discounts of 2% if you pay within 7 days. This is like a 24% p.a. discount on the invoice value, not a bad way to compensate for the overdraft interest charges from your bank.

Surly you supplier is interested in your business, and is not going to decline both offers - you win either way - if they decline, then look for a new supplier. Because you are not only helping yourself with your cash-flow, but theirs too.

As part of a bootstrapping exercise or a business start-up phase, working from home is a great way to work, so I thought of some points to consider when setting up your office, small business or personal business, like contractors, freelancer, self-employed, sole-trader and virtual assistants at home:

1. Cost - you will save a lot of money and be very eco-friendly when you decide not to rent an office, this saving can be used in other areas of your business, like marketing, better web-site or better IT.
2. Family - I suspect that many of you work from home because of your family, it allows you to be around when your kids come home from school or look after relatives, while still earning a living.
3. Commuting - again a very eco-friendly approach and saves money and time. This time can be spend on real business activities. It certainly will enhance your work/life balance and make your small business or start-up more cost efficient form day one.
4. Freedom - this may especially appeal to you if you like to work at odd hours, it will suit your lifestyle. Dress as you like it, so you will be more comfortable.
5. Healthy - if you work in an office and one of you gets ill, soon all the others are down too - not if you work from home.
6. Teamwork - chances are you need to work with other people, use online technology to collaborate with your colleagues and other team workers - they too may work from home.
7. Domestic Life - you’ll be around when the plumber finally turns up or other trades people. You can enjoy your local life more - by having a social network in your village rather than at work - this could be the return of the local community.
8. Small Business Infrastructure - use online technology to keep your data and work safe at all times without that you have to do anything, build your own virtual Small Business Team to timeshare professionals like yourself. Outsource to make your business more professional and scalable.
9. Meetings - even bigger businesses use coffee shops to meet - they often have WiFi - so can you. Make sure you plan them well, so you can be efficient with your time.
10. Eco-Friendly - you will only heat your home, no other workplace needs to be heated or air-conditioned, your energy efficiency goes up, no travel to work - so you reduce your carbon footprint enormously just by working from home.

You will need some pretty good reasons to go to an office and work. Especially for small business and start-up business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Professional-, Personal business, you need to ask yourself if you can afford to miss out on all the above opportunities for your work and for your life?

I work from home over 90% of the time and only go to the office for meetings and I love every minute of this. I use social network communities like linkedIn to build my professional network, utilizing our online office, skype and other tools to communicate and work worldwide.

More and more of my friends work from home so we have nice “pub-lunches” locally, no traveling, less stress and a much better work/life balance - how is your work/life balance?

For more of my checklists see the Small Business Checklists category and as always please add to my list with your comments, tell us what works for you.

There is a lot one can do to help the environment with the choices we make in buying products and services. Our On-Demand Small Business Infrastructure deploys environmentally friendly business processes and technologies to help our planet and reduce your carbon footprint.

Small business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Personal businesses can help reduce it’s carbon footprint just by making a choice between software and services delivery models, it is that easy:

1. Less Travel - More Time. More Money. Less CO2.

With our On-Demand SaaS technology you can work from anywhere, so no need to travel to an office. Run your small business from home and benefit in terms of time, money and investment - our environment will thank you.

2. e-Documents - Less Paper. More Trees. Less CO2.

Using our e-Quote, e-Invoicing and e-Statement you help the environment and make your business more productive. If your business partners did the same, imagine how much paper that would save.

3. Less Heating - More Money. Less CO2.

Not only can you save up to 2% of your annual heating bill by lowering the temperature 1ºC in your home, but if you work from home you will not need to heat an office for yourself and others - lowering your carbon footprint.

4. No CDs, DVDs, Packaging - Less Pollution and CO2.

Our software updates happen online, they are included in the price and we do not send out boxes all the environmentally unfriendly side-affects. No need for you to install anything and our 24/7 support will help you with any problems you have.

5. No Paper Manuals - More Trees. Less Pollution and CO2.

All our Support and Customer Care Infrastructure is online, so we do not need any manuals that are outdated with the next update, it helps us and you to stay up to date and the environment at the same time.

6. No Shipping - More Time, More Money and Less CO2.

We do not send out any software or other materials to you and we enable you to upload all your documents, so you do not need to ship anything to us.

7. Less Hardware - More Money. Less Pollution and CO2.

Since all our software runs on our servers you do not need to update your hardware all the time. Servers have a far longer service life than desk-top computers, we can change that.

8. Less Infrastructure - Less Overheads, More Money and Less CO2.

On-Demand Small Business Infrastructure works with professionals like you, so you can timeshare any expertise you need, no need for offices, heating, etc - outsourcing for our environments sake - it is the way to go.

What really makes these examples so appealing is that while you help to save our environment you also save money, overheads and time on every corner, for your efforts.

A lot has been written about the benefits of on-demand SaaS software, but the green aspect is often overlooked, at WinWeb we call this part of our offering ClimateByte™ Technology and more will be revealed when our new version 3.4 is launched on September 3rd.

Remember we can always do more to help the global environment, it’s not always going to be as easy as this.

If you would like to find out how to do more, click on some of the links below:

• Working Green: 50 Tips To Reduce Your Office’s Waste
• IT’s Easy Being Green

Not so long ago I wrote about small business being less volatile and that employees see small or personal business as less risky than working for bigger companies.

The NFIB-National Federation of Independent Business in a small business poll reported yesterday:

“…. nearly half of all small businesses, 49 % experienced no employment turnover during the past 12 month….”

The news for small business is getting better and better - let’s hope it will stay that way.

Hat-tip to Jeff Cornwell - Retention of Employees Strong Among Small Businesses.

I have been talking in the past about starting a business on the side and this morning has a excellent post ” The smart way to start a business” on YoungEntrepreneurs.com. Evan has a four step process in mind, here it goes:

1. Learn & Earn
2. Find Your Niche
3. Find A Customer
4. Break Away

You should read it. This is how easy it can be and it will be at a much lower risk level. Great blog post - thank you.

Small and medium enterprises need to use the internet fully to reach out to their target audience, not only to inform them but also to increase sales and revenue. The internet is the information highway of the world and online advertising allows small businesses to get through to clients and customers who are interested in their products and services.

It is thus important for small business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Personal businesses, to not only open an online shop but to also promote it well thorough online advertising. Internet marketing is quite distinct from conventional advertising and marketing and could require the services of professionals, unless you look on the web for the right way forward.

Adam Waylans, the editor of smallbusiness.co.uk claims that while this may be costly it is essential. He also says that search engine optimization should be given adequate emphasis by SMEs if they want to benefit from e-commerce. SMEs should also look at low cost methods of SEO such as keyword rich articles.

Small businesses need to ensure that their online advertising is in sync with their company policies and strategies and need to focus on IT solutions to ensure that they benefit from it. An online office is also a great way to ensure that companies stay in touch with their clients at all times.

Small businesses should not only utilise their web presence to engage customers and encourage sales, but also to take advantage of online advertising.

Adam Wayland claimes that the importance of search engine optimisation (SEO), which allows websites to achieve higher slots on search engines, should not be underestimated for business websites.

However, he added that the amount of advertising even a small to medium-sized enterprise (SME) can achieve over the internet means it can be an essential, if costly, investment.

Getting in an expert or investing in specialist software is one method, although there are also some techniques SMEs can use to achieve good advertising and SEO levels while saving on cost.

“Obviously if you want advertising space on one of the big sites or you want your search engine rankings to go up, they can come at quite a cost,” Mr Wayland said.

“There are techniques that small businesses can employ that aren’t going to cost so much such as using key words in articles.”

He added that some of these small details can be important for certain firms who do not wish to use a “flash website with all the bells and whistles on it”, such as a plumbers firm for example, but that still need to gain good advertising

The environment and the growing threat to it by global warming has been given due emphasis by companies of all sizes. Energy consumption and its reduction has been the focus of the business world and it is heartening to see that micro businesses are deeply involved in this effort.

Small business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer-, Personal businesses account for a large chunk of the energy consumption of the country and hence their participation in reduction of carbon is vital. The National Association for the Self-Employed released its nifty surveys in June of this year and reported that micro businesses are very environment conscious and are considering the environment and affects to it when making business decisions.

By looking for on-demand IT solutions, businesses can look for ways to reduce carbon use and energy consumption. An online office is an excellent way to reduce carbon footprints and can reduce the amount of paper being used in the business as it puts crucial and relevant information at the fingertips of employers ad employees, and can be accessed from anywhere.

Hat-tip to Microbusiness News Briefs.

Private equity plays a crucial role in the manner in which new entrepreneurs can shape their business and work at making it a success. And thus it is understandable that there is a growing concern in the manner in which the Government seeks to change its policy regarding Private Equity.

The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has expressed concern on the manner in which small business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Lifestyle-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer businesses, will be affected if the government decides to clamp down on capital gains tax relief.

BCC director general David Frost says,

“While the BCC recognizes the advantages private equity managers can take of capital gains taper relief to pay lower rates of tax, we worry that any knee jerk changes could have serious implications for the entrepreneurial culture embedded within our membership.”

Currently the capital gains policy supports budding entrepreneurs who utilize private equity for their businesses and create jobs. On its part the government maintains that it needs to take steps to make the private equity industry more open and transparent.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber says, it wants the Treasury to review the tax paid by private equity investors, and calls into question the ease with which the super-rich can claim non-domiciled tax status.

The government policy with regard to Private Equity will have a deep impact on the manner in which business start-ups work and SMBs need to pay keen attention to it.

Whatever you are planning a personal business or a small business, like SOHO-, SME, SMB-, Micro-, Home-, DIY-, Hobby-, Boomer businesses, the time has never been better for starting a business. Many politicians will have you believe that the current up-rise in personal and small business activity is due to their policies, that is b*** s****, it is due to the greatest platform for entrepreneurial activity to date - the internet and related technologies.

Anyone between the ages of 13 (apparently) and 81 (?) can be a first time entrepreneur, and best of all - thanks to the technology available - it:

1. Does not need a lot of capital: bootstrapping and outsourcing techniques allow you to start your business on the side at less than what you spend on a meal out.
2. Only need very little business experience: we live in a time when business processes are rewritten, and much happens online, information, advice and tools are available for free, communities help you to build online networks and make starting easy.

So if you ever had a dream or goal in business, now is the time to start, some people make their hobby into a business, others their DIY skills and some even start social businesses for giving someone else a helping hand - the reasons and opportunities are truly limitless.

What business would you like to start today?

Pamela Slim has a nice post “Start smart: 5 quick ways to set up business processes on the fly” - I can recommend you reading it:

“..You will find that in the start-up phase of business, many of the vendors, government agencies, potential customers, media contacts and partners want the same kind of information about you and your company. So instead of digging through file folders and your “sent” email, here are five suggestions for setting up quick and dirty business processes and organizing your information for easy access:….”

Being organized from day one will save you a lot of time and help you to stay focused on your business - not your office.

That is the reason I came up with the On-Demand Small Business Infrastructure - so you can stay focused on your business goals and not lose your time, money and energy on some administrative function. If you can not automate it - outsource it, to someone who makes a business out of it - like a Virtual Assistant.