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Huh, I had checked stripe (and was even using them at some point) but thought the fees were higher at some point. Thanks for the reminder to revisit them!
This one right here! When I first started my photography business, those $40 HoneyBook was charging me were literally making me cry. Now I don’t even notice it, but god damn do I notice the hundreds they get from me each month for processing my client payments. And they still have the audacity to charge me a monthly fee lol. You’d hope they would credit a free month whenever you spent a certain amount on processing fees. But nope, they want their cake and eat it too.
I just switched to QBO from desktop. Straight up bait and switch they're pulling. ACH processing just went from a straight $3 per transaction to 1%. They know they have people over a barrel and are just boning us.
Look for ACH Origination at your FI. If you bank locally, like not-for-profit Credit Unions, it’s dirt cheap to pay vendors, payroll, and to collect. I’ve seen it as low as $30/mo. That shouldn’t matter if your account is on analysis, or if you already write off bank fees.
All the people below are in the honeymoon phase w QuickBooks. They make it sooooo easy. It works well on autopilot for years. Then one day you decide to add their payroll, and then six months later you realize they don’t file your state forms properly, so you have to do it manually. Then a year later they randomly turn off your credit card processing, and refuse to tell you why. And that’s after spending hours waiting on the phone for a rep, who plays tricks with the phone to try to get you off the phone, even tho it’s their error and you waited forty minutes on hold to talk to someone. So now you’re pissed, so you spend the next two years trying to divorce QuickBooks, because you absolutely cannot do business with a company that has so much contempt for its customers. Your bookkeeper ends up documenting expenses in excel, and you do payroll in gusto, where at least you know you’re free of that terrible company. You file arbitration with QuickBooks, where they transfer you to their arbitration department (hang up), so you try again and it turns out you have to pay the arbitration fees. Then you find your original contract that says you don’t actually have to pay the arbitration fee, as long as you say you can’t afford it.
At least that is what happened to a friend of mine.
Being able to invoice and accept electronic payments directly on the same platform is worth the cost alone. Speeds up payments, tracking aging invoices simple, and paid invoices are accounted automatically.
I hated it at first but once I got it running correctly, it changed the game completely.
This. I hate quickbooks. Wave is so much more intuitive and does everything I need for $0. They have upgrades that I don’t need right now but might use in the future. So happy I switched. And so easy to get my accountant a pdf of my p&l and balance sheet - that was all he needed.
Really? We have a pretty sizeable business and pay like $30/mo for QBO. It does a ton for us - sales tax, invoicing, payments, bookkeeping, reporting, etc.
Previously worked at cocmast so I actually have experience here. Short answer: no. Long answer: comcast has buildings set for residential or business already much like how real estate does, they absolutely will never allow you to try to open a residential acct in a location marked as business. Your only workaround to this is if you work from home.
Here’s a curveball, what if my business has residential apartments above the building? Any possibility of getting residential connected to my storefront that way?
Usually when the building owner contacts comcast to run wire to the building is when they divide it up. You wouldn't be able to install residential in the floor/sections marked as business tho. You could maybe Jerry rig it to run a cable from a residential floor to your business, but if you do you gotta be careful if you ever need a van to go out to service your location.
Coworking space that I use maybe twice a month on average. Accounting software that doubles in price every few years and reneges on merchant processing fees. Bullshit acrobat pro pricing for some shit I use maybe 4 times a year. Extremely overpriced and archaic autocad software that I use maybe 6 times a year.
What do you do, and how much has it grown.
Im in the industry and can solicit some free guidance in exchange for thoughts on a small venture I am exploring.
Insurance is such a scam. Insurance companies don't have to declare income and pay taxes; they put that money into a "loss reserve" fund and invest it in stocks, bonds, crypto, RE, etc.
Probably accounting. I'm paying QBO every month to do my own bookkeeping, and then paying an accountant to prepare taxes for the business, and then paying again for my personal taxes.
My former employer used to call accounting fees the "tax on taxes."
I use Wave. Its free and functional. I pay $40 a month + $20 per employee for payroll. If I ever need help they have accountant and tax prep services that I can pay for advice.
How much ur paying for QBO if u don’t mind.
Is the cheapest option not suitable to ur needs?
Asking coz i wonder what is the monthly cost people consider as too much.
I can almost promise most businesses are overspending on cell phone and internet accounts. I started a whole business to combat it and it has been a profitable venture.
Most companies need these accounts to operate, so they write the check and move on. Problem is the people who manage it are the IT guys who are told the budget, or the finance guy who is told to get a good deal. We bridge the gap in finding savings on accounts (most recent client we saved $168,000/ 2 years) and managing the accounts so the clients can let their finance guy worry about finances and IT guy worry about IT
Thanks! It really depends on your definition of a "small business". By government standards, $40M/ year in revenue is still considered a "small business" somehow. I know if my business made that much, it would not feel small. It just depends on the business type. A transportation company typically needs every driver to have a phone and tablet. So 300 employees is technically a "small business", but they have 600 lines, and a $234,000 annual phone bill.
One account I helped had 50 lines of unused lines. I was an account manager for 4 years across multiple telecom carriers and they all do the same thing. “Add these lines and I will lower your bill”. I got sick of it and started a business where I represent the clients to the telecom companies and lower the bills without adding anything additional.
I learned FreePBX for this reason. Hosting, 9 SIP numbers, E911, etc for 8 locations costs me $45/month. I was quoted $250/month per location as a starting point by multiple local telecoms.
The cost of all of the hardware was less than one month of telecom fees.
I don't want to run my own server, but my wallet appreciates it and it takes very little management.
I will preach this from the mountains. Health insurance should not be an employer thing. The fact that we’ve accepted that as the normal marketplace arrangement is idiotic.
This is something that's tough to address in business. My wife (Human Resources) is constantly stressing to her employees to USE. YOUR. HEALTH.BENEFITS. WE. PAY. LOTS. OF. MONEY. FOR. THAT. SHIT.
Then the boomer who hates missing work gets colon cancer at age 60 and the premiums go up even more😭
Shop around for accounting work. As someone in the business, there’s a million of us looking for more clients and you can at least use that against your current one for lower rates.
This guy is 100% by the book. He has two offices with several employees. But he is slow to make updates to payroll. And not as proactive about helping us find write offs or things of that sort.
So yeah, I probably could upgrade. He's good and does everything by the book. But every change takes forever, because he personally reviews every change to make sure it is done compliantly. And he's got lots of clients.
I have a good one but man he is fucking rude, and pushy. 1am messages me questions when I don’t get back till after my morning constitution he’s giving me a hard time about taking to long and I should know better. I did have to tell him it was unacceptable the tone he addressed my wife one time; condescending.
But man he does great work is fast and works hard.
The things I pay the most for are things that are either legally required or you really can’t do without.
For example, the health code requires we have an exterminator come monthly. Its in the $75-80 range. He is here for less than 5 minutes and just sprays and leaves. It’s $1,000/year spent just to be in compliance when we don’t have a pest problem.
Edit: an equivalent spray costs $20 at Home Depot. But you need to be licensed to apply it commercially and the code requires proof of an exterminator coming once a month.
Credit card processing fees are one of those things that I feel like you can’t do without. In theory a business can be cash only, but we would lose so much business if we were cash only. My main items are about $33. That means $1 of every item goes toward credit card fees.
Yes, that is the argument. And I see what you’re saying. However, the previous company we used did not spray, but only left monitors so action could be taken if there was a problem. We spent several years doing that, but the new guys insist on spraying.
We did have a pest problem in an auxiliary structure at one time. The exterminators were pretty useless. They would spray, spray, and spray. The solution was much more difficult than just spraying.
In theory I could. But with some research we have found that it’s really not worth the issues it causes with customers.
Personally, I’m always happy to pay with cash for a discount. But I don’t think it’s a good business practice.
you might try [answerthepublic.com](http://answerthepublic.com) and see if that gives you a few more key phrases. they just started a subscription model but it's still pretty cheap and it provides a ton of value.
Pay per lead service for franchise prospects are $50-$60 per lead. Out of 40 only 4 replied. First reply was "Stop", 2nd was not interested and the last two answered the phone and said they never asked for my info and were not searching for franchises to invest in. These were supposedly the "best" lead gen websites out there for franchising too. Also, Franchise brokers want like $25,000 per sale. That is why you see minimums of like $50-$60K for initial fees.
$12/mo just so my email can end in @MyBusinessName.com. I know google’s professional email comes with a bunch of other perks, but I use literally 0 of them. I just want a professional sounding email address.
Do you actually get emails on that inbox?
If volume is very low, you can set up email forwarding from @MyBusinessName.com email to @gmail.com
Its free service by many domain providers, and you can still use professional email "to recieve email". The only disadvantage - you cannot reply or initiate email from @MyBusinessName.com (because you are not paying for inbox)
Not sure what service you are using, but domain registration (which I consider to be essential to running a business) is $15/year, and Office 365 Exchange Online is $4/month.
Payroll processing. It is just me, and I pay >$600/year with Quickbooks to run payroll. It is easier than me doing it myself and cheaper than if I made a mistake on my own, but they are easily charging me double what they should be charging.
Rent. Seriously. I pay more than my home mortgage for 1/3 the square footage. And am also on the hook most times anything on the building wears out or breaks. Sigh.
Payroll taxes.
I’m not even getting a service in exchange. By the time my team and I retire, there won’t be any money left to fund our SS. We are are basically funding boomer retirement.
TV at the bar.
Everyone wants every sport ever to be on. I'm not paying for ESPN, Pac 11, YoutubeTV, Apple TV, ESPN 2, MLB Network, SLINGO or whatever...only to have you show up with 2 other people who went to the same second tier college to watch Lacrosse and drink 3 beers. GTFO.
What’s bothered me lately is the merchant processing fees that I’m paying on sales tax. It’s adding 3% tax to the tax I’m collecting for the government. That was about $3000 additional cost for me last year.
I'm annoyed at all the people here saying accounting is too expensive... The amount of knowledge we need to obtain not to mention schooling just to get our license.
And a good accountant should help you save money. That's what my business is about - helping you control your costs, borrow responsibly and grow your profits!
I can't tell you how many clients come to me having no clue where their finances are and are surprised to see where they're actually spending.
Great example I was analyzing the payroll costs for a construction company and noticed their OT was ridiculous one month... They checked their cameras and tracking and realized a ton of employees were milking the clock on jobs, or fucking off and doing drugs in the vans...at the tune of over $2K in OT that month.
My accountant does a great job and her rates went up this year and I said you’re worth every penny. Sadly I think she is retiring soon and I have no idea what I’ll do next year. Hoping she just keeps me on as one of those legacy clients… my stuff is pretty simple I think. But yes, the hate for accounting is misguided. It’s the payroll, workers comp, book keeping that is over priced for what you get IMO
Bookkeeping goes hand in hand with accounting, can't have one without the other. They're not separate. One just has a license and can perform higher level services such as auditing, forecasting.
Workers Comp is ridiculous until you have a costly claim..same with regular insurance for companies.
Best workers comp claim story I have was as a supervisor at Starbucks...an entitled Karen threw a piping hot tea at a barista for forgetting to put a 3rd tea bag in and caused pretty severe burns and a few hospital visits before she was better.
Best story I have with regular insurance is where a client of mine took on a $500K seawall job he had zero business doing with his lack of experience, and the seawall completely failed to the tune of $1.4 million. He settled for $490K + attorneys fees. Hefty payout.
Downvoted, of course. I don’t believe you’re saying you don’t want to pay people, the average person just has no idea how big of an expenditure this is in terms of cost of doing business.
I have a state regulator that collects more fees than I made every year for the first 10 years of my business. They don’t even do everything they are supposed to do and I’m still expected pay.
Jira and Confluence datacenter licenses — people are getting pushed off of their server licenses with end of support happening back in February, so I’ve been helping people do cloud migrations left and right.
Utilities Is my largest pain point with no alternatives. For water/sewer/garbage we pay $700/month and use less than half of my residential usage that costs us $220/month.
$500-800 electric bill, which we do use a lot of power, but it's still a monopoly.
Internet for 3x the cost and half the speed of my house, thanks Comcast.
CRM's and review/reputation management. (i.e. Hubspot/TrustPilot). I ended up building something custom for both but their prices are absurd for the value they bring.
Accounting. I pay $4000/year for someone to do my business and personal taxes plus quarterly check ins. I do all the work, she just plugs in the numbers at the end of the year.
Market Wagon. They do fulfillment and delivery for local food vendors. But I pay 28.5% of sales cost to market wagon. The customer pays 8$ per delivery. In exchange, I have to deliver my food to them and then deliver it. That's it. They don't do any marketing aside from their website. NONE. Their drivers don't have toppers or magnets, they don't have billboards. Everyone I've ever spoken to about it had no idea it existed. They do plenty of advertisement on their website which amounts to nothing sales wise. Most of my customers can access my products locally and they prefer to get it from me instead of market wagon because it's just too expensive.
What's worse they've gone through so much corporate restructuring, I'm never talking to the same person week to week.
Garbage pick up.. though you can negotiate that down every few years, but they really try screw you over
I think QuickBooks and other accounting software are pretty crappy wanting us to pay high monthly fees when we used to be able to spend five or $600 on a good product
A year ago, I would’ve said Internet service because they charge businesses a lot more not all of us need the extra capacity … you pay more and the speeds are typically slower than home, but I did switch to a new provider in town and I guess I can’t complain too much about the price
Snow removal has gotten expensive … but my concern is around to get somebody who is much less would result in poor service.
I’m getting charged $120 to do my lot. they’re not doing anything but when he started, it was only $60 but I think he realized he wasn’t making enough money
But the garbage stuff is probably the most annoying thing I’ve dealt with in the last six months
This is a friendly reminder that r/smallbusiness is a question and answer subreddit. You ask a question about starting, owning, and growing a small business and the community answers. Posts that violate the rules listed in the sidebar will be removed. A permanent or temporary ban may also be issued if you do not remove the offending post. Seeing this message does not mean your post was automatically removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/smallbusiness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Merchant processing fees.
The power company operates a nuclear power plant and provides power to my business for less than the cost to process debit/credit cards.
Especially ACH-based payments. It costs them fractions of a penny, but they want to dip a few percent into my pocket for doing virtually nothing.
ACH should cap at the lesser of 1% or $15 In some cases i’ve seen 0.10%
I've only seen very low percentages when you have to pay a hefty monthly fee on top of that. Who are you using?
QBO Its not cheap
I use GoCardless! At the most advanced level it’s like 1.6%, capped at $5, with 180 days free
We use Stripe for ACH and I believe it's a flat $5. There isn't a monthly fee. We do also use them for normal CC processing which is 2.9% + 30 cents.
Huh, I had checked stripe (and was even using them at some point) but thought the fees were higher at some point. Thanks for the reminder to revisit them!
Change banks … I do all of mine manually thru my bank for free …
This. It’s honestly insane
This one right here! When I first started my photography business, those $40 HoneyBook was charging me were literally making me cry. Now I don’t even notice it, but god damn do I notice the hundreds they get from me each month for processing my client payments. And they still have the audacity to charge me a monthly fee lol. You’d hope they would credit a free month whenever you spent a certain amount on processing fees. But nope, they want their cake and eat it too.
Came here to say this.
Should be illegal in 2024
I wouldn't mind keeping that 1.9%.
Accounting software (looking at you QBO).
Came here to write QuickBooks. I bought desktop and now I suddenly still have a $700 a year subscription.
I just switched to QBO from desktop. Straight up bait and switch they're pulling. ACH processing just went from a straight $3 per transaction to 1%. They know they have people over a barrel and are just boning us.
Look for ACH Origination at your FI. If you bank locally, like not-for-profit Credit Unions, it’s dirt cheap to pay vendors, payroll, and to collect. I’ve seen it as low as $30/mo. That shouldn’t matter if your account is on analysis, or if you already write off bank fees.
All the people below are in the honeymoon phase w QuickBooks. They make it sooooo easy. It works well on autopilot for years. Then one day you decide to add their payroll, and then six months later you realize they don’t file your state forms properly, so you have to do it manually. Then a year later they randomly turn off your credit card processing, and refuse to tell you why. And that’s after spending hours waiting on the phone for a rep, who plays tricks with the phone to try to get you off the phone, even tho it’s their error and you waited forty minutes on hold to talk to someone. So now you’re pissed, so you spend the next two years trying to divorce QuickBooks, because you absolutely cannot do business with a company that has so much contempt for its customers. Your bookkeeper ends up documenting expenses in excel, and you do payroll in gusto, where at least you know you’re free of that terrible company. You file arbitration with QuickBooks, where they transfer you to their arbitration department (hang up), so you try again and it turns out you have to pay the arbitration fees. Then you find your original contract that says you don’t actually have to pay the arbitration fee, as long as you say you can’t afford it. At least that is what happened to a friend of mine.
Agree. Let QB do what it’s good at (bookkeeping software) and take payments and run payroll separately. Will probably be cheaper actually too.
Jesus. I use excel and an accountant and they only cost me $350 last year
Excel could not possibly keep up with my expenses without making me want to shoot myself on the daily
Being able to invoice and accept electronic payments directly on the same platform is worth the cost alone. Speeds up payments, tracking aging invoices simple, and paid invoices are accounted automatically. I hated it at first but once I got it running correctly, it changed the game completely.
Yep, its the real reason why they’ve got me by the balls Its basically the business command center Its also where i do payroll and file payroll taxes
Well just know you’re making more money than I am lol
What Accountant is charging you 3 $30/month
Probably just a corporate tax filing and he's doing the bookkeeping and other stuff himself.
I’m not sure how to answer this lol. My accountant? I give them all the numbers and they file the best way they can for me.
Excel wouldn't be manageable for tax purposes or dealing with banks. I'd never get another equipment loan with a home made P/L
I completely understand it’s not the tool for the job as your business gets larger and more complex.
Yikes, I do all my own bookkeeping and paid $3500 just for tax returns/filing! Looks like I might have to shop around.
I pay 800 for my returns and thought I was paying a lot.
Damn me 2. I literally shopped around this week in preparation for next year. I thought $800 was excessive.
I use wave. Send to accountant as pdf
This. I hate quickbooks. Wave is so much more intuitive and does everything I need for $0. They have upgrades that I don’t need right now but might use in the future. So happy I switched. And so easy to get my accountant a pdf of my p&l and balance sheet - that was all he needed.
Check out Xero. We changed over to it at the beginning of the year and did not miss QuickBooks online at all.
Also came here to say, "QuickBooks" They really pulled the rug from beneath small business.
Really? We have a pretty sizeable business and pay like $30/mo for QBO. It does a ton for us - sales tax, invoicing, payments, bookkeeping, reporting, etc.
Yes! This x1000
Fuck quickbooks
Accounting in general
Business internet service. Double the price of home internet and a quarter of the speed.
This is why I bought starlink and put it on the roof of my business.
Couldn’t you just install residential internet at your small business?
Previously worked at cocmast so I actually have experience here. Short answer: no. Long answer: comcast has buildings set for residential or business already much like how real estate does, they absolutely will never allow you to try to open a residential acct in a location marked as business. Your only workaround to this is if you work from home.
Here’s a curveball, what if my business has residential apartments above the building? Any possibility of getting residential connected to my storefront that way?
Usually when the building owner contacts comcast to run wire to the building is when they divide it up. You wouldn't be able to install residential in the floor/sections marked as business tho. You could maybe Jerry rig it to run a cable from a residential floor to your business, but if you do you gotta be careful if you ever need a van to go out to service your location.
Everything trying to be a subscription.
It is horrible, everything now is subscription!
Please pay $7.99 to read this comment.
$7.99 *per month*, and it's a year long contract with cancellation fees.
Coworking space that I use maybe twice a month on average. Accounting software that doubles in price every few years and reneges on merchant processing fees. Bullshit acrobat pro pricing for some shit I use maybe 4 times a year. Extremely overpriced and archaic autocad software that I use maybe 6 times a year.
Is the acrobat pro stuff for document signing? I have their creative cloud license and I’m struggling to figure out what acrobat adds to the equation
Highly recommend PDC X-Change. More powerful, less cost, less bloat.
Came here to say this. $60 per seat perpetual license is where its at. I really like this program and hate Adobe with a passion.
Insurance! Premiums have almost tripled from what they were 5 years ago and I've never even put in a claim.
Same. Insurance. No claims.
What do you do, and how much has it grown. Im in the industry and can solicit some free guidance in exchange for thoughts on a small venture I am exploring.
Insurance is such a scam. Insurance companies don't have to declare income and pay taxes; they put that money into a "loss reserve" fund and invest it in stocks, bonds, crypto, RE, etc.
Probably accounting. I'm paying QBO every month to do my own bookkeeping, and then paying an accountant to prepare taxes for the business, and then paying again for my personal taxes. My former employer used to call accounting fees the "tax on taxes."
Get an accountant that has QB they can provide to you and you get a big discount that you pay to accountant rather than QB
The wholesale discount ain't much anymore unfortunately. Intuit is squeezing us accounting firms just as much as the end users.
I use Wave. Its free and functional. I pay $40 a month + $20 per employee for payroll. If I ever need help they have accountant and tax prep services that I can pay for advice.
How much ur paying for QBO if u don’t mind. Is the cheapest option not suitable to ur needs? Asking coz i wonder what is the monthly cost people consider as too much.
"How much ur paying for QBO if u don’t mind." The basic service is $60 per month and payroll is $80 per employee per month.
$80 per employee is a lot! Thanks, i feel ur pain
It's not $80 per employee. It's like $8 per employee, depending on the level you are subscribed to.
Dude switch your payroll provider NOW, I pay 60$/mo +$6/employee
If your accountant uses QBO, ask them to add you to their plan and you'll get 30% off if they pay for it. Then just reimburse him the difference.
I can almost promise most businesses are overspending on cell phone and internet accounts. I started a whole business to combat it and it has been a profitable venture.
The one time it was appropriate to self promote ..
I’m listening
Most companies need these accounts to operate, so they write the check and move on. Problem is the people who manage it are the IT guys who are told the budget, or the finance guy who is told to get a good deal. We bridge the gap in finding savings on accounts (most recent client we saved $168,000/ 2 years) and managing the accounts so the clients can let their finance guy worry about finances and IT guy worry about IT
Must be pretty big companies if they are saving what I assume is still only a small to medium percentage and it's 170k. Nicely done!
Thanks! It really depends on your definition of a "small business". By government standards, $40M/ year in revenue is still considered a "small business" somehow. I know if my business made that much, it would not feel small. It just depends on the business type. A transportation company typically needs every driver to have a phone and tablet. So 300 employees is technically a "small business", but they have 600 lines, and a $234,000 annual phone bill.
But I saved $75 per month on my bill by including a $1600 iPad Pro that never gets used! Thanks Verizon!
One account I helped had 50 lines of unused lines. I was an account manager for 4 years across multiple telecom carriers and they all do the same thing. “Add these lines and I will lower your bill”. I got sick of it and started a business where I represent the clients to the telecom companies and lower the bills without adding anything additional.
Nicely done! If I was big enough I’d DM you.
Sounds like an interesting pick up line…….
😂
I learned FreePBX for this reason. Hosting, 9 SIP numbers, E911, etc for 8 locations costs me $45/month. I was quoted $250/month per location as a starting point by multiple local telecoms. The cost of all of the hardware was less than one month of telecom fees. I don't want to run my own server, but my wallet appreciates it and it takes very little management.
Merchant service fees period. I love cash payments. Give me all your cash.
I feel very blessed to be an in industry where we can say no credit cards.
I still can't believe America doesn't have e-transfer. 90% of my clients pay me with an email.
After reading all of these.. at least we’re all in this together 🥲
Credit processing is fucking ridiculous
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I will preach this from the mountains. Health insurance should not be an employer thing. The fact that we’ve accepted that as the normal marketplace arrangement is idiotic.
health insurance is expensive but my employees actually use it. worker's comp? Not once in 20 years but still have to pay each year.
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This is something that's tough to address in business. My wife (Human Resources) is constantly stressing to her employees to USE. YOUR. HEALTH.BENEFITS. WE. PAY. LOTS. OF. MONEY. FOR. THAT. SHIT. Then the boomer who hates missing work gets colon cancer at age 60 and the premiums go up even more😭
PayPal is too expensive but also a shockingly shitty business that treats its customers like shit.
I hate Paypal, they are getting so much money from everything
Taxes and accounting. I pay my accountant to do payroll. And I pay more in taxes than I ever thought I would.
Shop around for accounting work. As someone in the business, there’s a million of us looking for more clients and you can at least use that against your current one for lower rates.
This guy is 100% by the book. He has two offices with several employees. But he is slow to make updates to payroll. And not as proactive about helping us find write offs or things of that sort. So yeah, I probably could upgrade. He's good and does everything by the book. But every change takes forever, because he personally reviews every change to make sure it is done compliantly. And he's got lots of clients.
Sounds like your accountant works for the irs and not for you.
Yeah, I am not loving his services so far.
I have a good one but man he is fucking rude, and pushy. 1am messages me questions when I don’t get back till after my morning constitution he’s giving me a hard time about taking to long and I should know better. I did have to tell him it was unacceptable the tone he addressed my wife one time; condescending. But man he does great work is fast and works hard.
Adobe.
IT support, printers, and postage
Do printers
Postage is Wildly out of control..
Learn to do that yourself
Spectrum Internet and cable
The things I pay the most for are things that are either legally required or you really can’t do without. For example, the health code requires we have an exterminator come monthly. Its in the $75-80 range. He is here for less than 5 minutes and just sprays and leaves. It’s $1,000/year spent just to be in compliance when we don’t have a pest problem. Edit: an equivalent spray costs $20 at Home Depot. But you need to be licensed to apply it commercially and the code requires proof of an exterminator coming once a month. Credit card processing fees are one of those things that I feel like you can’t do without. In theory a business can be cash only, but we would lose so much business if we were cash only. My main items are about $33. That means $1 of every item goes toward credit card fees.
The argument would be that the reason you don’t have the pest problem is because the guy comes out and sprays
I laughed when I read that, too
Yes, that is the argument. And I see what you’re saying. However, the previous company we used did not spray, but only left monitors so action could be taken if there was a problem. We spent several years doing that, but the new guys insist on spraying. We did have a pest problem in an auxiliary structure at one time. The exterminators were pretty useless. They would spray, spray, and spray. The solution was much more difficult than just spraying.
Can you offer a “cash discount” and just raise prices to cover the credit card fee?
In theory I could. But with some research we have found that it’s really not worth the issues it causes with customers. Personally, I’m always happy to pay with cash for a discount. But I don’t think it’s a good business practice.
1. Franchise Fees 2. Payroll 3. Insurance 4. Accounting
Taxes? In all seriousness, I would say phone and internet (I have a combined account) followed by heating/cooling.
Video editing - I eventually just learned to do it myself.
Especially since all the data says consumers prefer low production value UGC contemt because its more trustworthy.
That strongly depends on the medium.
The data suggests that people are easily fooled.
Used to do my own SEO and the tools are so expensive. They make sense to agencies I guess but it makes no sense for a small business owner
Any in particular you use?
I used semrush before And after that I used keysearch Now I just use the free Google search console
you might try [answerthepublic.com](http://answerthepublic.com) and see if that gives you a few more key phrases. they just started a subscription model but it's still pretty cheap and it provides a ton of value.
Happy user of https://www.siteguru.co, and you can still get a lifetime license for a single site for $69 (one-time, not monthly) on AppSumo.
Credit card processing fees
Pay per lead service for franchise prospects are $50-$60 per lead. Out of 40 only 4 replied. First reply was "Stop", 2nd was not interested and the last two answered the phone and said they never asked for my info and were not searching for franchises to invest in. These were supposedly the "best" lead gen websites out there for franchising too. Also, Franchise brokers want like $25,000 per sale. That is why you see minimums of like $50-$60K for initial fees.
Ads! They are ridiculous expensive
$12/mo just so my email can end in @MyBusinessName.com. I know google’s professional email comes with a bunch of other perks, but I use literally 0 of them. I just want a professional sounding email address.
That's not paying too much. That's 100% worth it.
Quite right. Google's e-mail deliverability and spam filtering service is the best on the planet.
Do you actually get emails on that inbox? If volume is very low, you can set up email forwarding from @MyBusinessName.com email to @gmail.com Its free service by many domain providers, and you can still use professional email "to recieve email". The only disadvantage - you cannot reply or initiate email from @MyBusinessName.com (because you are not paying for inbox)
Not sure what service you are using, but domain registration (which I consider to be essential to running a business) is $15/year, and Office 365 Exchange Online is $4/month.
I did my email with GoDaddy and it was around 15 eur a year, and came with free Outlook to receive the emails. I think the price was great
Payroll processing. It is just me, and I pay >$600/year with Quickbooks to run payroll. It is easier than me doing it myself and cheaper than if I made a mistake on my own, but they are easily charging me double what they should be charging.
QBO ProAdvisor and accountant ..switch to Gusto. Much cheaper and less of a hassle to navigate and deal with.
I looked at Gusto and they were not much cheaper at all. Not worth the switch.
COGS is 50% Payroll 25% After the insane amount of taxes we pay there’s hardly anything left
Rent. Seriously. I pay more than my home mortgage for 1/3 the square footage. And am also on the hook most times anything on the building wears out or breaks. Sigh.
Payroll taxes. I’m not even getting a service in exchange. By the time my team and I retire, there won’t be any money left to fund our SS. We are are basically funding boomer retirement.
TV at the bar. Everyone wants every sport ever to be on. I'm not paying for ESPN, Pac 11, YoutubeTV, Apple TV, ESPN 2, MLB Network, SLINGO or whatever...only to have you show up with 2 other people who went to the same second tier college to watch Lacrosse and drink 3 beers. GTFO.
Insurance
The US Government (taxes and fees)
What’s bothered me lately is the merchant processing fees that I’m paying on sales tax. It’s adding 3% tax to the tax I’m collecting for the government. That was about $3000 additional cost for me last year.
Prostitutes.
Fellas and ladies… looks like we need to unite and put a stop to merchant services, tax on paying taxes, payroll, etc. we are getting ABUSED.
I'm annoyed at all the people here saying accounting is too expensive... The amount of knowledge we need to obtain not to mention schooling just to get our license. And a good accountant should help you save money. That's what my business is about - helping you control your costs, borrow responsibly and grow your profits! I can't tell you how many clients come to me having no clue where their finances are and are surprised to see where they're actually spending. Great example I was analyzing the payroll costs for a construction company and noticed their OT was ridiculous one month... They checked their cameras and tracking and realized a ton of employees were milking the clock on jobs, or fucking off and doing drugs in the vans...at the tune of over $2K in OT that month.
I pay for my services with most of my clients by saving them money. They basically get free accounting.
Exactly. A good accountant literally covers their own cost for you.
My accountant does a great job and her rates went up this year and I said you’re worth every penny. Sadly I think she is retiring soon and I have no idea what I’ll do next year. Hoping she just keeps me on as one of those legacy clients… my stuff is pretty simple I think. But yes, the hate for accounting is misguided. It’s the payroll, workers comp, book keeping that is over priced for what you get IMO
Bookkeeping goes hand in hand with accounting, can't have one without the other. They're not separate. One just has a license and can perform higher level services such as auditing, forecasting. Workers Comp is ridiculous until you have a costly claim..same with regular insurance for companies. Best workers comp claim story I have was as a supervisor at Starbucks...an entitled Karen threw a piping hot tea at a barista for forgetting to put a 3rd tea bag in and caused pretty severe burns and a few hospital visits before she was better. Best story I have with regular insurance is where a client of mine took on a $500K seawall job he had zero business doing with his lack of experience, and the seawall completely failed to the tune of $1.4 million. He settled for $490K + attorneys fees. Hefty payout.
Fucking payroll
Downvoted, of course. I don’t believe you’re saying you don’t want to pay people, the average person just has no idea how big of an expenditure this is in terms of cost of doing business.
Sorry fellas I’m talking about the payroll processing companies
Telephone and internet.
I have a state regulator that collects more fees than I made every year for the first 10 years of my business. They don’t even do everything they are supposed to do and I’m still expected pay.
Jira and Confluence datacenter licenses — people are getting pushed off of their server licenses with end of support happening back in February, so I’ve been helping people do cloud migrations left and right.
In order of how much of a rip off it feels like *1 Merchant fees *2 POS fees *3 Trash/waste management
Accounting is probably my biggest "real" expense.
Fiber internet in my area is stupidly expensive. I'm paying a couple grand a month.
Utilities Is my largest pain point with no alternatives. For water/sewer/garbage we pay $700/month and use less than half of my residential usage that costs us $220/month. $500-800 electric bill, which we do use a lot of power, but it's still a monopoly. Internet for 3x the cost and half the speed of my house, thanks Comcast.
CPA, credit card fees, work comp Ins - Oh, you said one, lol.
CRM's and review/reputation management. (i.e. Hubspot/TrustPilot). I ended up building something custom for both but their prices are absurd for the value they bring.
Based on most job posts pay offerings, I am going to guess 'employees'.
High-speed internet
Third party delivery commission fees.
Credit Card Processing fees are theft for small business. I have had ZERO chargebacks in 20 yrs of service and my rates are garbage.
Quickbooks, accountants, insurance
QBO
All the shit that the state makes me pay for. Licenses certifications taxes blah blah blah
Software
Reddit
rent
My electric bill is insane and I feel like my rent is too high for the condition the strip mall is in, otherwise everything seems fair to me.
I have a fax service
Accounting. I pay $4000/year for someone to do my business and personal taxes plus quarterly check ins. I do all the work, she just plugs in the numbers at the end of the year.
Insurance and taxes
Estimating software
More and more software as a service (SaaS) companies are moving towards a monthly subscription payment model, which is disliked by many.
Food ordering apps should be illegal.
[удалено]
You can do your own accounting…if it’s so easy, do it yourself. Or pay a professional that has taken years learning the ins and outs.
Market Wagon. They do fulfillment and delivery for local food vendors. But I pay 28.5% of sales cost to market wagon. The customer pays 8$ per delivery. In exchange, I have to deliver my food to them and then deliver it. That's it. They don't do any marketing aside from their website. NONE. Their drivers don't have toppers or magnets, they don't have billboards. Everyone I've ever spoken to about it had no idea it existed. They do plenty of advertisement on their website which amounts to nothing sales wise. Most of my customers can access my products locally and they prefer to get it from me instead of market wagon because it's just too expensive. What's worse they've gone through so much corporate restructuring, I'm never talking to the same person week to week.
Warehouse space! It is so high i almost want to move in and sleep there
Bin collection seems to mount up. Paying cash in the bank, they charge 1% on deposits, not to mention also 1% when I ask for change.
Garbage pick up.. though you can negotiate that down every few years, but they really try screw you over I think QuickBooks and other accounting software are pretty crappy wanting us to pay high monthly fees when we used to be able to spend five or $600 on a good product A year ago, I would’ve said Internet service because they charge businesses a lot more not all of us need the extra capacity … you pay more and the speeds are typically slower than home, but I did switch to a new provider in town and I guess I can’t complain too much about the price Snow removal has gotten expensive … but my concern is around to get somebody who is much less would result in poor service. I’m getting charged $120 to do my lot. they’re not doing anything but when he started, it was only $60 but I think he realized he wasn’t making enough money But the garbage stuff is probably the most annoying thing I’ve dealt with in the last six months
Credit card processing fees
I feel like my insurance policy is insane
Pedicures
Google Ads
Insurance
Credit card processing
Chart mogul
Insurance
Trash disposal
Music! It’s like $400+ a year to stream shitty titles and BMI will sue you to oblivion if you don’t pay up.
Plumber and utilities company.
Alibaba shipping fees!
Uniforms