Category: Tips

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Why You Need and How to Get a Federal Employer Identification (EIN) Number

Make Sure You're Aware of This Important Tax Information

If you own and operate a business, you may be required to obtain a Federal Employer Identification Number (EIN) and should consider doing so even if not required. Commonly referred to as a federal tax ID number, an EIN is like a social security number for your business. Just as your social security number is used to identify you as a unique individual by government, financial and other institutions, an employer identification number is used to identify a business as a unique entity by government, financial, tax and regulatory agencies. Obtaining and using an EIN to identify your business to the Internal Revenue Service and the various federal agencies that regulate businesses is a smart way to separate and differentiate between your personal and business obligations and liabilities.

Issued by the IRS as a tax identification number, an EIN is a unique identifier assigned and tied to the individual owner of a specific business. EINs are used by employers, sole proprietors, corporations, partnerships, non-profits, government agencies and certain other business entities. By using an EIN to identify their business, sole proprietors who have been using their social security number as both a personal and business identifier can create an important layer of legal separation and privacy between their personal and business affairs. Using an EIN rather than a social security number for business transactions prevents access to the personal information tied to your social security number.

An EIN provides the additional benefit of creating a continuous business identity even if the name, focus or location of your business changes. This allows business owners to capitalize on tax, financial or regulatory advantages developed in previous years. As long as business ownership and operating status do not change, your EIN follows your business through the inevitable cosmetic and directional changes that accompany the definition and growth of a business. You can use the same EIN even if you change the name or address of your business or add additional locations. However, because an EIN is issued to the specific owner of a business and not to the business itself, a change in ownership necessitates obtaining a new EIN. A new EIN must also be obtained if the status of your business changes; for instance, if you incorporate your business or take on partners and begin operating as a partnership. A new EIN is also required when a business files for bankruptcy or establishes a profit sharing or retirement plan.

Despite its name, you do not need to be an employer to obtain an employer identification number. You are required to obtain an EIN if your business operates as a corporation or partnership or you offer taxable products or services, collect sales tax, have employees, withhold taxes on income, have a Keogh plan or file any type of federal tax return. However a business owner can apply for an EIN even if not required and will generally find it to his advantage. An EIN is required on income tax forms, employment tax reports, social security records and tax payments and is required to apply for a business license. Most banks also require an EIN to open a business account.

The application procedure is simple and painless. While you can apply for an EIN by contacting your local IRS office and filling out form SS-4, online application is fast and easy. Available at www.irs.gov, the EIN application form can be completed online. As soon as you complete the online application, you will receive your EIN and can begin using it immediately. Make certain you download, save and print the EIN confirmation page. Because it takes about two weeks from the date of issuance for a new EIN to be fully integrated into the IRS data base, business owners must wait two to three weeks before filing electronic returns or making electronic payments. The EIN is a federal identification number. While many states also use the federal EIN, some require state identification numbers.

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Taking Care of Business While You’re On Vacation — Cool Things to Check Out

Tech Tips for Vacation from Medallion Fulfillment & Logistics

Like it or not, your work may be going with you on summer vacation this year.

Don’t get us wrong – a little R&R is vital to your physical and mental well-being. If you can completely detach yourself from the office or the warehouse and enjoy your time off, more power to you.

But by the same token, you’re not going to relax very easily if yu spend your vacation time fretting over missing vital messages or constantly phoning in to stay apprised of new order-fulfillment opportunities.

Aware of this conundrum, technology providers have graciously stepped up to create devices, data plans, programs and apps that help you manage your business and your email from wherever you are. They go a step beyond texting and Skype to deliver some rather cool options.

Summer business tips for keeping up while chilling out

Whether you’re hitting the road or hanging out at home, you can enjoy some time away from the workplace without worrying about falling behind. You may find the answer in free apps, or opt to pay a monthly surcharge or subscription rate – but you may discover that the investment pays off in peace of mind.

The Choices Are All Yours

Single-number convenience
If you’re the kind of manager who gets tons of voicemails, there’s no need to subject your fellow vacationers to the sound of a fulfillment or shipping challenge being addressed. Free – at least until the end of 2012 – Google Voice is an app that delivers phone and texting from the same number and, even cooler, voicemail transcription. This means Google Voice lets you download your voicemail and read it like email. The app also boasts of “cheap international calls” outside North America.

Computer access programs
Stuck on the tarmac? Ditch the Skymall magazine and catch up with the folks back home. GoToMyPC is a screen-sharing subscription program that uses the Internet to connect your mobile device (laptop, netbook, tablet or smartphone) to the computer back home. Available in different pricing tiers for individual and multiple users, this program enables full access to the “host” computer, from email to documents to downloads – you can even transfer files between devices. Just remember to keep your work computer running and connected online before you leave, and GoToMyPC will do the rest.

Windows Live Mesh does GoToMyPC one better – it’s free. This app also recreates the host-computer experience, though you do need to have Windows Vista or Windows 7 or above. You’ll also need Internet Explorer downloaded on your computer to make it work – remember that if you’re tied to Firefox or some other browser.

Personal WiFi
The days of ducking into a McDonald’s or parking behind a Panera Bread to score some need-it-now WiFi are over. Now you can tote your personal WiFi hotspot in your pocket with a data-plan-enabled mobile phone. A variety of hardware and software options – at varying price points – can attach your phone to your laptop or tablet and enjoy Internet access anywhere. Just remember to carry a charger with you – WiFi functions are notorious battery-suckers on phones.

If your spouse and kids are similarly tied to the Internet, you can keep everyone happy on vacation using portable devices. Verizon’s Mobile Hotspot connects up to five phones, tablets, game systems, laptops and other devices simultaneously, while Droid Razr Maxx is a tiny powerhouse that fuels up to seven devices and frees you from the slow access and annoying service charges of hotel and airport WiFi.

Email folders
You use email folders at home; now you can use them anywhere. Creating email folders on your smartphone or tablet takes little time and goes a long way toward helping you organize your communications while away from the workplace. Most plans work with the most popular mail servers, like Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Microsoft Exchange. If you have the iPhone 4, Siri will even transcribe and send your email for you.

It’s Your Time

You earned your summer vacation – make it a meaningful one. With robust technology at the ready, you can keep up at your convenience, return to the warehouse rested, ready – and without millions of emails and voicemails waiting to bury you.

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Subscription Boxes Lead the Way in Direct to Consumer Sales

Subscription Boxes Work to Build Your Business

From our June Newsletter – Subscribe Today!

Over 25% of consumers are signed up for subscription box services. The industry now contains over 3,500 established box services worth roughly $10 billion. And, according to MultiChannelMerchant, 75% of DTC (Direct to Consumer) brands will offer subscription services by 2023.

As the subscription model becomes more popular, many businesses are wondering if they should ride this wave with their own subscription boxes or supply their products to mixed or mystery boxes to attract new customers.

Subscription boxes are beneficial to everyone, which is one of the reasons they have become so popular across the board. Here are some of the benefits to consumers and businesses.

Consumers

• Save money

• Try new products

The benefits to consumers are simple. Not only can they avoid running out of products that they use regularly and count on, they also save money on these products. Plus, they can discover new products in the samples included in the boxes.

Sometimes the boxes are random selections, while other times boxes are selected entirely by the consumer. Each has its own benefits.

Businesses

• Better order forecasting

• Enhance customer loyalty

• Improve bottom line

Order Forecasting

One of the challenges of retail in general is the predictability of order flow. Some businesses experience a very regular pattern throughout the year, with peak season activity predictably raising revenue. But most struggle to anticipate the order volume. Forecasting isn’t easy, especially when it’s about the future.

The subscription box model helps regulate the order flow by grouping orders and standardizing the activity among subscribed customers. Although some will cancel their subscriptions, the overall pattern will be more regular than businesses without subscription options, evening out cash flow and helping predict revenues month over month.

In the early days of e-commerce, a business would need to manually create reorder logic to ship to a customer each month. Today there are numerous services that provide this capability within existing e-commerce platforms, communicating with fulfillment partners as well as the customer and fully automating the process.

Customer Engagement and Loyalty

Subscribing to a box is an act of loyalty. This model helps build a relationship between the customer and the business. The consumer is more likely to purchase from the business that they deal with so regularly and the business has an easier time creating engagement for promotions or new items and cross-selling.

Building this level of trust paves the way for potential up-sells. Familiarity enhances customer loyalty in this case. And it’s worth noting that many of these businesses would not have encountered or attracted the customers without the exposure to product trials that subscription boxes create.

Bottom Line Benefits

Subscription boxes can also save the business money. By regulating order flow, there is more predictability in inventory, which prompts a leaner supply chain and reduces carrying costs. At the same time, the business gains new customers and a more predictable order flow.

Fulfillment Partners

• Better forecasting

• Fill niche services

Similarly, a fulfillment partner that processes subscription boxes may be able to move inventory through more quickly, cutting down on stagnant inventory. Storage costs are rarely a significant source of revenue for a fulfillment house, but they can impact a business’ bottom line.

By filling orders and utilizing inventory in a more efficient manner, a brand can achieve JIT inventory (just-in-time inventory) and smooth the supply chain so there are less stuck-in-storage costs. This is good for everyone.

Shipping large volume for a client once per month helps a 3PL better predict staffing needs. 3PLs are accustomed to ramping up staff for peak holiday seasons, but when a client has a very successful sales promotion without warning, this can create a strain on the fulfillment operation.

Subscription boxes help regulate this flow and make the peaks more predictable. Not only does the fulfillment partner benefit from more regular peak order volumes, but this improves efficiency which impacts the 3PL’s bottom line.

Much like the businesses themselves, fulfillment partners can forecast revenue more easily with the more regulated pattern lent by subscriptions.

Fulfillment services who are adept at serving the subscription box market are prepared to handle the relevant logistics. Medallion Fulfillment & Logistics and Sprocket Express have successfully worked out the kinks and are set up to provide service to this niche, which is growing rapidly. This expertise helps us provide quality service to our clients across a variety of fulfillment scenarios.

Conclusion

The subscription box model works well for all parties in the transaction.

• Predictability (of delivery, order flow, revenue)

• Efficiency

• Relationships

• Saves money (retail prices, inventory, supply chain, preparation)

If your business is not involved in subscription service, this may be a good time to research your options. Almost every brand has a product that fits in one or more of these boxes. Contact us today to see how we can help with your subscription box service needs.

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Don’t Get Banned from Selling on Amazon; It Could Be Forever!

Learn About the Amazon Effect

Amazon.com offers small businesses and entrepreneurs ready access to a huge customer market for their goods. Of course, sellers pay a price for the opportunity to trade on Amazon’s good name, internet saturation and global market reach. Not only do private sellers often find themselves in direct competition with the internet behemoth for products and services, but Amazon holds all the cards. To protect its own reputation and maintain a satisfied customer base, Amazon’s sellers’ agreement and myriad rules stack the deck firmly in Amazon’s favor.

In order to sell on Amazon.com, sellers must follow an exacting list of expectations that dictate how and when they interact with their customers at every point in the sales process. Fail to meet Amazon’s performance expectations and you could receive a not particularly cheerful “Hello from Amazon.com” letter notifying you that your account has been blocked and your sales listings terminated. And, by the way, Amazon will be hanging onto your money for the next 90 days to cover any unresolved financial issues.

For businesses that rely on Amazon.com as a primary conduit to customers and order fulfillment, receiving one of Amazon’s computer-generated “Hello” letters can spell disaster. A big part of the problem is that the letters are computer-generated. Computer algorithms don’t care if you didn’t respond to a customer within the required 24 hours because you were hospitalized or on vacation. They’re completely unsympathetic that your approval rating appears to be in the toilet not because you provide poor service but because the only customers who have bothered to offer feedback are dissatisfied ones.

Many Amazon.com sellers complain that they’ve been unfairly booted off Amazon because they’ve fallen victim to the “law of negative averages” in which a small number of negative comments can, if they outnumber positive feedback, result in a negative feedback score. For example, if out of 50 sales, 47 customers are satisfied, but only 1 posts positive feedback while 2 dissatisfied customers post negative comments, Amazon’s trackers will record a negative average and you’ll soon be the recipient of a letter from alliance@amazon.com, Amazon’s enforcement department.

What sends sellers into a panic is the phrase “the closure of an account is a permanent action,” implying that you will be forever banned from selling on Amazon. And the ban will not only affect you, but anyone Amazon’s online trackers can connect to your name, street address or email address. All is not lost, however, sellers can petition Amazon for reinstatement and a number have done so successfully. The process is not easy; and, if reinstated, you can expect Amazon to scrutinize your account carefully for some time (and hang onto your money while they do so); but you can get back in the game.

  1. Look carefully at the points made in the letter you receive from alliance@amazon.com. Review your consumer metrics to see if you’re falling short of expectations.
  2. Respond promptly via email, explain that you feel your suspension is unfair and rebut each charge with as much factual information as possible. Attach pertinent records or letters from consumers and offer your explanation of any negative feedback.
  3. If you’ve failed to meet Amazon’s performance targets, review your sales practices and provide an action plan to correct the problem.
  4. Plead your case, emphasizing your sales and customer service record and pointing out how your product benefits consumers.
  5. Monitor your email for Amazon’s decision.

 

To prevent being terminated, keep a close eye on your email and regularly review Amazon’s agreements and help pages as Amazon may change its procedures and guidelines at any time without notifying sellers. Monitor the customer metrics Amazon provides and compare your performance to the Amazon’s seller performance targets to make certain you are hitting the expected benchmarks.

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Building an E-newsletter List? Make Sure You Are CAN-SPAM Compliant

What Should You Ask Your Accountant?

Have you ever felt burned by getting a piece of mail from your bank, cable company or insurer whose envelope blared “Important Account Information Enclosed”? You know the outcome: You opened the envelope, that “important information” turned out to be an ad.

Translate that print tactic into untold millions of e-newsletters in distribution, and you will understand why the CAN-SPAM business compliance guide was created.

Email a Powerful Attraction Tactic

Even in an age of Facebook “likes” and Twitter “tweets,” email and e-newsletters — when handled right — continue to be a robust tool for marketers.

  • According to 2011 statistics published by Exact Target, 42 percent of subscribers are more likely to purchase from a company whose emails they subscribe to.
  • The other side of that coin? Content Marketing Institute notes that the e-newsletter open rate can go as low as 8 percent, with monthly newsletters averaging in the low-20 range.

So the audience making up your e-newsletter lists needs to be one you screen carefully — those on your list should be the people most likely to find your information valuable enough to subscribe and to read at least occasionally with few opt-outs. If you use purchased e-newsletter lists, ensure they are from reputable sources consisting only of “opt in” subscribers.

Keeping Out of Trouble

Once you’ve identified an audience to invite as subscribers, you must establish an acceptable template for your message. Just a few false moves, and your carefully crafted e-newsletter could end up in the spam folder.

CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003) establishes standards for commercial email, including e-newsletters. It spells out what you can and cannot say, and sets penalties for violations.

Under the CAN-SPAM rules, for example, you are required to:

  • Identify the nature of your message as an e-newsletter.
  • Tell recipients where you are located. Your e-newsletter must include both an email return address and a valid physical postal address.
  • Tell recipients how they can opt-out of your e-newsletter, and honor their request within 10 business days.

Conversely, the CAN-SPAM law prohibits:

  • False or misleading header information. In other words, the “To,” “From” and “Reply to” headers must accurately identify the person or company initiating the email.
  • Deceptive subject lines. No false promises, “gotcha” wording or other text that doesn’t reflect on the actual content of the e-newsletter.
  • Sending through an open relay or using harvested email address (both examples of technology that allows spammers to find and use lists).

And of course, the CAN-SPAM act requires you to truthfully describe any products or services you are offering for sale in your e-newsletter — and if you are positioning this information as an ad, you must identify it as such.

How to Attract More Subscribers

Subscribers can quickly become un-subscribers, so identifying and attracting new audiences is an important part of your e-newsletter strategy.

How can you encourage people to opt-in?

  • Promote your e-newsletter on your website’s homepage. Keep a colorful sign-up icon near the top of the screen, as you can never rely on visitors scrolling all the way down.
  • Invite new customers to subscribe. If someone makes a purchase through your website, follow it up with an email invitation to the newsletter. You can use the same tactic with visitors who leave contact information on your landing page.
  • Include a “send to a friend” link on every e-newsletter to encourage forwards from subscribers.
  • Promote your e-newsletter on your social media pages; include sneak-peeks of articles or offers that subscribers will find in the newsletter.
  • Offer a free gift to new subscribers. It can be a special deal or item associated with your business, or something general, such as a drawing for an iPad. (However, all giveaways and drawings must be “no purchase necessary” in nature and something anyone may enter.)

Test and Test Again

The way you handle your e-newsletter lists may change once you see how many people opt-in and opt-out of their subscriptions. As with most forms of web marketing, e-newsletters can benefit from testing and measuring results to create the ideal marketing tool for you.