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How to overcome the fear of the tax man?

Some small business owners live in perpetual fear of tax authorities. Their thermometer could go haywire the night before the tax audit! Some businesses even miss their accounting deadlines. The reason for this fear is mostly associated with inaccurate bookkeeping.

The ‘indifference’ factor in bookkeeping
Many small business owners are indifferent where bookkeeping is concerned. They do not attach much importance to it, given the size of their business. They either manage it themselves or transfer the responsibility to their spouse or admin. In that case they run a huge risk of their bookkeeping activities going berserk. Neither indifference nor ignorance is good for business.

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The story behind our new logo

In 2010,  we were 6 years old and we started a mission to transform Integra from “good to great”. A few of the steps towards this was empowerment of our staff and implementation of “profit sharing” initiative that would significantly benefit all our hard working people. 2 years down the line, the transformation is truly on.

We needed a new logo to represent and symbolize our transformation from “good to great”. The new logo had to be meaningful, attractive and should represent our business, our values and culture. How to create one and what should be the new logo?

What should be our new logo?

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What is SEO? Learn from Little Tim!

Little Tim was very happy!

He had won a game with friends and his reward was a marble. The small round marble meant big to him – he loved to play with it.

But as he was walking home playing with his prize, it suddenly slipped from his small hands and bounced off! He ran behind it trying to catch it, but it was too late! The marble led him to a narrow alley.

An alley full of other green round little marbles.

Where did his innocent precious little marble roll off? How does he find his amidst a million others?

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How to calm an angry customer down in less than 30 seconds

“Come, let’s punish the floor”, said Mama to the injured child…
Kids slip and fall all the time, don’t they? They often lose balance while running or walking and fall down. And they get hurt and cry.

What does Mama do? She rushes to the kid and says, “Oh Sweetie, let me see your hand. Oh did the floor do that to you? Come, let us punish the floor”. Sometimes she even speaks to the floor, “Here, how dare you injure my child! Take that, and that and that!”

Now Mama knows that the floor was harmless. The kid just lost his balance.

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Top 5 financial mistakes every business should avoid

You can’t teach an old dog a new trick.
It is almost impossible – because it is adamant not to learn anything new and continues to do what it has learned in its early years.

Start-up business owners are like old dogs. Like an old dog, you would have picked up lots of habits. When it comes to finance, majority of them would be bad habits. If you don’t consciously look into those bad habits and find ways to correct them, it would severely affect your business. Let us look at some of these bad financial habits and ways to correct them.

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What your babysitter can teach you about dealing with customers

Have you ever seen babies in business suits? The idea seems a little weird, doesn’t it?

Yet you see them all day and you do business with them. You would not get your bread and butter but for those babies in business suits! (Hey that’s alliteration!

Yup, you guessed it.

We are talking about your customers!

If you come across a difficult customer, picture the image of a child in that suit. It’d be funny, yes, but that’s exactly what your customer is – a child!

How do you handle children?
What do you do if a friend asks you to babysit her two year old kid?

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Are you committing this fatal error in your business?

If you decide to end your life, God forbid, there are several ways to do it. You could pull a noose around your neck. You could swallow a pill or jump off a hill. (You could take your girlfriend shopping ;) ).
Or you can be careless about your small business bookkeeping.

Because NOT maintaining accurate books of accounts is like committing suicide. An error that is fatal!
Whether you are a contractor, freelancer or a small or large business owner, it is mandatory for you to keep accurate records of financial transactions. Inaccurate bookkeeping creates several problems that could threaten the very survival of your business.

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Has your start-up business fallen for the “Sorry Seven”?

A start-up company is like a premature baby. A premature baby typically spends several days or even weeks in an incubator. An incubator, as you know, is an apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for a premature baby and it prevents the baby from falling sick due to alien conditions.

Like a premature baby, a start-up business also needs an incubator in its early days. If not, the business can easily fall sick and get into trouble by making mistakes. Let us look into seven of those typical start-up mistakes: the “sorry seven”!

1) Under pricing: Start-ups think that by under pricing, they can easily attract new customers.

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How to cut down your bookkeeping expenses by 60%?

Have you ever played stress buster games online? Apparently, they are very popular and have several million fans. The objective of the games is to relieve the players of stress.

There is one such game in which you hit the screen with a hammer. You can imagine the screen to be anything or anyone – your boss, your ex, your neighbor, morning traffic – just about anything. You then hit the screen hard to vent out your anger and frustration.

A very popular game…
If you are running a small business, next in line would be probably ‘bookkeeping’! Or worse, your bookkeeper!

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How to set multiple options in customer care without irritating them

Businesses want their customers to be very happy with their product or service. They strive very hard to please them.  Many businesses go over the top to pamper them. Just like how we want to please our kids. We take them to the candy shop.  The kids get excited.  There are 100’s of candy choices.  We ask them to choose one and they get confused. They struggle to select one out of 100.  Even though it is a struggle, they are delighted because it is a nice problem.

Businesses often give the same nice problem to their customers

They give many options for the customers to contact them.

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