Kymberlin started contributing to Merchant Maverick as a freelancer in 2022 and joined the team as the full-time small business health insurance expert in 2023. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Pacific University in 2020 and continues to reside in Portland, Oregon.
At its most basic, a business insurance quote is a document that shows what you could expect to pay for a policy from an insurance provider. Each business quote will be different due to the unique needs of each business and factors such as industry, number of employees, past insurance claims, and deductibles.
While small business health insurance is an additional expense for your business, the benefits for both you and your employees are likely worth the cost. Potential tax benefits for your business and happier and more productive employees make adding health insurance as a benefit a win-win for your small business.
You need a loss run report to negotiate lower premiums with your existing or new insurance provider, determine risks associated with running your business, and establish a plan to help mitigate potential hazards.
Even though you are not legally required to purchase health insurance for a single employee by law, there are still great reasons to offer health benefits. Health insurance is not a trivial purchase — your employees work harder and better when they feel protected and healthy. Now, with the addition of the tax benefits and expanded options, it’s easy to finally make it happen.
Health care is daunting, complicated, and time-consuming. So, for small businesses without a large HR department, navigating the health insurance process can suck up time and energy that you simply don’t have. Check this complete guide on small business health insurance.
It will cost you more for features you might expect to be standard (reservations, customer loyalty, and online ordering to name a few) which can run up your monthly bill. There are fewer integrations available which is a blessing for easily-overwhelmed new business owners but a curse for quickly growing restaurants.
If your business only takes cash and runs on a small scale, you can probably get away with a traditional cash register or cash box. But with the prevalence of card/contactless payments, we would still recommend a basic card reader and POS system.
Many kinds of businesses fall under the “food service” umbrella, including full-service restaurants, quick-service establishments, bars, and food trucks (or other mobile food operations). Some of these benefits will be better suited to one kind of eatery than another.
Every payment processor you research will have some form of fee you have to pay for every successful transaction. The best POS systems for small businesses offer reasonable flat-rate charges or interchange-plus fees. Small businesses will benefit from flat-rate payment processing, while high-volume businesses should consider interchange-plus processing for the best rates.
When applying for a loan, a potential lender is going to consider both your credit report and credit score, so it’s extremely important that you know your credit report and score beforehand.
It’s worth noting one more key difference between credit reports and credit scores. Credit bureaus are legally obligated to give you a free credit report once a year, whereas there is no law requiring them to provide a credit score. This means you’ll have to pay a fee to access your credit score through one of the “big three.”
There are many reasons you need a salon-specific POS system. Those POS systems may include every feature your salon, spa, or other service-based business needs — they are designed with your industry in mind. Others, however, might be close to perfect but don’t offer some of the built-in features you want. This is where POS integrations come in.
You (and your employees) need specific tools to be successful and help your customers leave feeling satisfied. Save yourself time, money, and energy by improving your customer retention and reducing your employee turnover with a salon-specific POS system.
In a perfect world, you would be able to ask other owners in your industry what POS system they use. If, however, you’re just getting started and not having luck in that regard, we would recommend checking out review aggregate sites like Software Advice, G2, the BBB, and Trustpilot to name a few.
The best point of sale systems for bars, nightclubs, breweries, and pubs will have bar-specific software integrations, ample hardware options, low payment processing fees, and give you a choice of payment processor.
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The vendors that appear on this list were chosen by subject matter experts on the basis of product quality, wide usage and availability, and positive reputation.
Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews. Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services. The rating of this company or service is based on the author’s expert opinion and analysis of the product, and assessed and seconded by another subject matter expert on staff before publication. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are not influenced by affiliate partnerships.
Our unbiased reviews and content are supported in part by affiliate partnerships, and we adhere to strict guidelines to preserve editorial integrity. The editorial content on this page is not provided by any of the companies mentioned and has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone.
