The complete archive

More than eight in ten US businesses use some form of financing or leasing when acquiring equipment. The decision is usually made on instinct. A systematic financial analysis produces a better answer, specific to the asset, the tax position, and the business’s cash flow needs.

The best time to apply for a business line of credit is before you need it. This issue covers how to evaluate readiness, what preparation produces the best terms, and what to say when the lender asks why you want the line.

The accounts receivable aging report is one of the most useful financial documents available to a business owner and one of the most consistently underused. This issue covers the thresholds that signal a problem is forming and how to use the report as an early warning system.

The S-Corp election generates its tax advantage through one structural decision: splitting owner income into a reasonable salary and profit distributions. This issue covers how to set a defensible salary, what documentation protects it, and how the salary decision interacts with the Section 199A deduction.

Business owners who have a cash reserve in place experience a slow quarter differently from those who do not. This issue covers how to calculate the right reserve target, where to hold it, and how to build it systematically from the next payment received.

Your overall gross margin is the weighted average of every client relationship in your book of business. Client profitability analysis reveals which relationships are driving the business forward and which are consuming capacity that could be directed elsewhere.

A 1% increase in price translates to an 11.1% improvement in operating profit. This issue covers how to know when a price review is due, how to calculate the adjustment that actually restores the margin, and how to have the repricing conversation with clients.

Business owners with a clear financial picture make more confident decisions. This issue covers how to use the financial data your business has already produced to set goals that are specific, connected to actual performance, and designed to hold up through the full year.

Most business owners treat their profit and loss statement as a record of what already happened. Read correctly, it is the most forward-looking document in the business. This issue covers the three lines most owners never look at closely enough.

Owner dependency is one of the most consistent factors that compresses the price a buyer will pay for a small business. This issue covers the five core business systems every owner needs, how to build them, and what the process does to both the business and the owner.

Most business owners have a rough sense of what they think their business is worth. Most are wrong — not because they are bad at math, but because they are anchoring on the wrong number. This issue covers the valuation metrics buyers actually use and the five factors that move your multiple up or down.

Most business owners plan to sell the business and live off the proceeds. This issue addresses the deeper question: how do you build a personal wealth plan that generates financial independence regardless of what the business does?

Insurance gaps almost never announce themselves. A business owner checks the obvious boxes, files the policies away, and assumes the risk is managed. Then something specific happens and the claim comes back denied.

Most business owners choose their entity structure once, at formation, and never revisit it. That single decision, made without full information and rarely updated, often costs more in unnecessary taxes than any other avoidable expense.

Most business owners hold one of two extreme views on debt. Both miss the actual question, which is not whether debt is good or bad, but what specific purpose it serves and whether your business generates enough cash to carry it.

Pricing research consistently finds that the vast majority of poorly chosen prices are set too low, not too high. This is one of the few business mistakes that never sends a warning.

A single bad quarter is not a hypothetical. Every business eventually faces one. The businesses that survive are not necessarily the most profitable — they are the ones whose balance sheet had enough cushion to absorb the hit.

A business can show a healthy profit on its income statement and still run out of money to pay its bills. This is not a contradiction. It is the single most common reason healthy-looking businesses fail.

If your business operates as a default LLC or sole proprietorship, every dollar of profit currently faces a 15.3% self-employment tax on top of your income tax. There is a legal election that changes this math for many owners.

The order in which you fund your investment accounts determines how much wealth you actually keep long term. Most business owners get this sequence wrong, not because they are careless, but because no one ever explained it.

Tax season is when most business owners think about taxes. That one habit is costing them thousands of dollars a year. Here are three strategies updated for 2026 that consistently deliver the highest return.

There is one number that reveals how much wealth your business is genuinely building for you. Most owners have never calculated it. Here is what it is and how to find yours.