Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Form an LLC for these 5 Reasons

Monday, May 11th, 2009

As a business owner, your company can be run as a sole proprietor, or you can run a formal structure, such as an LLC. Form an LLC as your business structure is an excellent choice for the average business. There are several benefits to running your company as an LLC.

Below are just a few of many reasons to contemplate having a limited liability company:

1. Protection of personal assets - As a business owner, you are more apt to be sued. You have to protect your personal assets from those of your company, so your personal assets are untouchable in case a lawsuit is brought against your business. By starting a LLC that is properly setup, you are generally protected.

2. Profession image - You have a very professional image when you use a legitimate business structure. Just about anybody can call themselves a business, but only those that go the extra distance by setting up a business structure show how serious they are about the success of their business, and customers see this.

3. Gain trust - If you are an LLC, you are making it a lot easier to find suppliers to deal with, and very simple to get a bank to lend you money. Managing your business as a profession, and not a hobby, is a tremendous way to gain trust with those other businesses that you need to deal with.

4. Less chance of being audited - Sole proprietorships are at greater risk to be audited by the IRS than LLCs are. This probably has something to do with the fact that someone might be saying they are a business to just get some tax benefits and the IRS is onto these people. However, if someone has taken the effort of form an LLC, then they are most likely in business for all of the right reasons.

5. Business flexibility - When operating as an LLC, you have more choices in how to handle running your business. Adding additional owners is an easy process, which you cannot do as a sole proprietor. An LLC is a very flexible structure for business which allows you plenty of options on how your business should be run.

If you are going to own a company, then you should do what you can to have as good of a company as possible. Making use of an LLC as the business structure for your business has many strong points, even more than those appearing in this article. Treat your company the right way and make it an LLC.

Advanced Call Management Features in Virtual Phone Systems

Monday, May 11th, 2009

By offering tremendous call management benefits, a virtual telephone solution system gives your existing phone solution a feature boost. You can make use of these great features to have an efficiently run company, or to better handle customer calls. If you don’t currently use a virtual small business phone systems, thought should be given to explore using one to find out how it can update your current telephone solution.

The following are a selection of call management features used by a virtual telephone solution:

1. Virtual auto attendant - Incoming calls are dealt with automatically by the virtual receptionist, which makes sure that calls are sent to where they should be going. People calling have the option of deciding the extension they want to be routed to, and the solution takes care of the rest.

2. Screen incoming calls - A virtual small business phone offers you the capability to view who is calling and make a decision if you want to take the call. Some systems will give you a virtual call controller that gives you the ability to monitor calls via your computer.

3. Rules for call handling - These services give you the capability to determine call rules that incoming calls have to follow, which allows you to direct calls based on various criteria. Calls can be routed based on the day of the week, what time of day it is, and also based on where a call comes from.

4. Large call volume queues - You can have the capability to put inbound calls in a holding queue and handle them based on the order that they came in. If you receive a good amount of customer calls, or run a call center, this is a very handy feature.

5. Call forwarding - Your virtual PBX phone system solution can forward customer calls to any phone, regardless of its location. Therefore, you can work from home, or get important calls when you are away from the office.

A virtual phone solution gives you a variety of very powerful tools to manage your calls, which enables you to affectively take care of your customers. If you are fed up with the shortage of features your basic phone service allows you to have, consider updating to a virtual service which gives you the features that all business owners need. The charge is more than reasonable and the remaking of your current phone solution will blow your mind.