Template Business Brochure    As a business owner, it’s important to understand the main use of a business brochure and the elements to include in it. In this article, we’ll discuss the most important parts of the brochure and then link to some resources so you can get a template business brochure.   You should focus on the prospect’s problem that you can solve for that kind of prospect. For example, you can create a brochure to appeal to the problems you solved for your largest customers, and then get the brochure in front of prospects with the same problems. Then, you can change the brochure template to appeal to the problems you solve for smaller customers, and get it to similar prospects. This kind of customization allows a pre-printed brochure to at least be targeted to a like-minded group of prospects.   When you talk about your product features, make sure to include the benefits to the prospect. For example, a feature is, “Open 24 hours a day”, and the benefit is “So yo ...

  Free Printable Employee Attendance Form   As another offering in our template area of the site, we’re posting our Free Printable Employee Attendance Form. Feel free to use this blank Free Printable Employee Attendance Form for your company. As a business owner, documenting attendance can greatly help mis-understandings when employees go to book their vacations. In addition having a place for both the employee and supervisor to sign helps to ensure the timely completion of the form and creates a paper trail to lower process errors.   Customize the form as you see fit.      Modern Business Associates is an HR company that frequently helps companies with their business forms.  As a Professional Payroll and HR outsource organization, our clients rely on us to help them effectively deal with these kinds of topics.    

  Why do we need an HR business strategy?   Many times we get asked, “Why do we need an HR business strategy?” The reason is that HR can be transformed from a hassle-ridden financial sinkhole into a major data-driven contributor to your executive level decisions.   The benefits of having an HR business strategy can be: Executives can view and understand the business’ internal trends. Allows the company to estimate the effect of strategic policy changes. Illustrates the return on the company’s investment in the benefit package strategy. Allows management to create a logical link between employee performance and the factors that drive that performance. Accurate, relevant and actionable reports. Allows businesses to take their history to model future potential business decisions and the impact of factors outside of the company’s control.   Data-driven reporting in these areas can equip your senior staff with the power to understand the impact their dec ...

What is a payroll system?   As a payroll outsourcing company, many times when we sit down with clients, they initially ask “What is a payroll system?” This is a great starting place for planning how your payroll system will, at a minimum:   Gather your employee work hours Cut checks Stay in compliance with taxes and withholdings on a federal, state and local level.   Companies generally handle creating their payroll system in a few popular ways:   You can have employees fill out time cards and use your internal accounting staff to handle all checks. While this is a popular strategy, pay attention to some of the shortfalls of this system: It usually doesn’t scale easily as you grow your business It can be unmanageable to keep the accountant up-to-speed with state and federal withholdings and compliance issues You’re dependant on one person for your system. This makes the person very hard to replace if the need should arise for any reason.  ...

What is HR business intelligence?   The answer to, “What is HR business intelligence”, is that it’s a way to draw useful business information from HR areas to help with decision-making. Some popular areas of HR business intelligence provide:   Accurate, relevant and actionable reports. Allows businesses to take their history to model future potential business decisions and the impact of factors outside of the company’s control. Enables executives to view and understand the business’ internal trends. Allows the company to model the effect of benefit and policy changes. Allows management to create a logical link between employee performance and the factors that drive that performance. Insights like these can enable you to run your company with a much greater awareness of how one of your biggest expense areas (employees) will be impacted.   HR business intelligence can gain answers to many groups of business intelligence questions, like: If we doub ...

Why Is HR Important?   Sometimes the most basic questions about HR can lead to great conversations that help organizations flourish. One of the most basic in the Human Resources field is, “Why is HR important?” As a business owner, understanding that HR is one of the areas where you want to hire experts is a critical criterion for making your company stronger.   Why is HR important? – Support your management HR can provide training for management to help them work with the diverse set of employees on their teams. Knowing how they could best interact with a Baby Boomer looking for loyalty and stability, versus a Y Generation who may need daily praise, can make a big difference with retention rates and hitting goals. HR can help train managers prevent common mistakes that swell to legal nightmares. HR is a great resource for getting feedback from managers and identifying growing HR trends inside your own company.   Why is HR Important? - Legal Compliance Legislators on the state and nat ...

What are Strategic HR Services? When we get asked, “What are Strategic HR Services?”, we usually provide the following explanation. From our experience, strategic HR services try to save business owners from spending too much money and time on HR capabilities. The HR services should be focused on letting business owners grow the business, not logging excessive hours with HR issues. HR services should provide: Legal and Compliance Coverage to help avoid employee claims and to avoid fines. Employee Policy development, documentation and communication to let employees understand what they need to know. Benefits program development to create an appropriate set of benefits to retain employees and be in sync with the company’s corporate culture. Recruiting, Hiring and Terminations best practices to help personnel get through these stages quickly so the company can focus on growth. Employee coaching and counseling to help the company and employees keep the same expectations. Payroll ...

  Blank time sheet form As another offering in our template area of the site, we’re posting our blank time sheet form. It's in a Microsoft Excel format. Feel free to use this blank time sheet form for your company. As a business owner, documenting hours can greatly help mis-understandings at the end of a pay period. In addition having a place for both the employee and supervisor to sign helps to ensure the timely completion of the form and creates a paper trail to lower process errors.   This form is based on a bi-weekly pay cycle. Customize the form as you see fit.      Modern Business Associates is an HR company that frequently helps companies with their business forms.  As a Professional Payroll and HR outsource organization, our clients rely on us to help them effectively deal with these kinds of topics.  

  Figure payroll withholding taxes To figure payroll withholding taxes, just follow this guide of steps to take and links to resources. Employees’s Gross Pay Minus Required Payroll Tax deductions (including any voluntary deductions) What’s left is the net pay.     Required Payroll Tax Deductions   Since the payroll taxes have to be withheld from your employees’ paychecks, it’s important to understand the different kinds of mandatory withholdings: Federal Income Tax (based on the withholding tables based on the Fed’s Publication 15) Social Security tax withholding (6.2%, up to the annual maximum for that employee) Medicare Tax (1.45%) Any applicable state income tax Any applicable local tax withholdings (like state unemployment insurance, city, county, state disability)   Voluntary Payroll Deductions Voluntary payroll deductions are ones where the employee has previously agreed to the deduction. These include health insura ...

All banks, U S Post Offices and MBA will be closed Monday, September 6, in observance of Labor Day.  As a result, our processing and delivery schedule for this holiday will be as follows:          September 2, 2010                Payrolls reported on this day will be available for delivery on September 3, 2010        September 3, 2010                Payrolls reported on this day will be available for delivery on September 7, 2010   If you use our Direct Deposit service, you may need to change your payroll appointment if any of the following apply:              You normally would report your payroll on: September 2, with a September 6 check date September 3, with a September 7, check date September 6, with a September ...