Survival Tips For Small Business Owners In 2022

Times have been tough recently in the great white north, and small businesses were severely affected by the pandemic, with many struggling to survive and stay afloat. If small businesses constantly make losses and incur debts, the Canadian national economy will stagger and fail to function properly given the significant role small businesses play in Canada. For instance, in 2020, small businesses made up 98% of employer businesses in Canada and 64% of the total labour force. All small business owners know the importance of keeping a close eye on the books. It’s easy to overspend and plunge yourself into debt and jeopardize the future of your business. To help you out, we came up with this piece on survival tips for small business owners in 2022.

Hire An Accountant

Doing all your accounts in-house can take up a great deal of your spare time, and you may decide to hire an accountant to take care of your small business’s books for you. Are you far from a skilled mathematician and fear you will make some mistakes when trying to calculate your outgoings and the taxes you owe? In that case, hiring an accountant could take a real weight off your mind and enable you to focus more on improving your business and the services you provide to customers.

Do Your Company’s Books By Yourself

Alternatively, you may decide to sort out your books yourself. Even if you’re not experienced with numbers, it’s incredible what you can teach yourself on the internet or through watching helpful videos on YouTube these days. You can even take courses in business finance to help you organize your small business’s accounts better. Sometimes it’s satisfying to be able to do things on your own. There’s a wealth of information out there online for small business owners to read through. However, don’t believe everything you read on the internet; check the information you’re reading is coming from a reliable source with reputable experience in your area of business.

Keep A Close Eye On Your Tax Returns

As a small business owner in Canada, you should make an effort to monitor your taxes constantly throughout the year so that everything remains above board. Failing to keep proper track of your tax returns can cause the tax man to start to get on your back. As a small business owner, the last thing you want is to take your profits away from the taxman after not paying enough attention and taking your eye off the ball when managing your tax payments. In Canada, you are not just faced with having to pay federal income tax like everyone else, but you also have to pay provincial income tax depending on which of the country’s 10 provinces you live in. Provincial taxes in Canada are higher than state taxes in the USA. The nation’s largest provinces are Nunavut, Quebec, and the Northwest Territories. If you are an owner of a small business in the stunning historical province of Quebec and want to learn more about how much income tax you need to pay, check out this helpful Quebec tax calculator online. Using a tax calculator will help you to ensure that you pay the correct amount without too much effort.

Monitor Your Company Outgoings Meticulously

It can, without a doubt, be expensive to run a small business in Canada in 2022. Do you need to cover the costs of driving around a large gas-guzzling vehicle loaded with your tools every day for work? Gas prices are constantly rising in Canada, and it’s showing no signs of abating anytime soon. Every year, many large, medium, and small businesses get into debt or go completely bankrupt due to overspending on entirely unnecessary things. Therefore, you need to ensure that you do an excellent job of monitoring your company expenses and outgoings. Before dishing out money from the company pot, ask yourself the question, do we really need that? All competent shrewd small business owners know about the importance of not going overboard with their company spending. Some small business owners develop a reputation for being notorious tight-fisted and keeping a close eye on their firm’s purse strings. Although being called stingy by others isn’t nice, it’s an approach to spending that helps many small business owners run successful companies and stay in the green financially. Remember, during tough economic times, it’s even more essential for small businesses to watch things and monitor spending closely.

Look For Ways You Can Save Money On Company Spending

All small companies need to spend money at some point. However, there are many things you can do to save yourself considerable amounts of money. Do you have employees working in an office environment? Try to get energy-saving lightbulbs and heating for the office space. Not only will investing in energy-saving utilities save you some dollars, but it’s also a good move for PR purposes since it gives the impression that your company cares about the planet and reduces your contribution to global warming.

A lot of small businesses also waste money by failing to manage their HR processes efficiently. Try and use the latest technology to streamline and smooth out the recruitment, hiring, onboarding, staff training, performance-related appraisals, and employee relations processes. In order to run a successful small business, you need to operate a well-oiled machine that works relatively hassle-free.

Hire Highly Competent Staff Who Can Deliver Results

Diligent recruitment and doing your best to select competent staff will also play a crucial role in ensuring the financial stability of your small business. Employing incompetent, error-prone staff can have significant knock-on effects on your business accounts. Yes, sometimes employees will make mistakes at work. Nevertheless, as a business owner, you must make sure employees’ errors don’t become commonplace and go unchecked, as this will diminish your performance levels and output. To prevent financial issues due to underperforming staff making a catalogue of errors day in, day out, be meticulous with the people you decide to employ from the range of candidates who apply for vacant positions at your small business. Try to hire applicants who can demonstrate they have the necessary skills, qualifications, professional experience, temperament, and a positive can-do attitude.

How can you go about employing the best person for the job? A good place to start is to create a thorough interview process as a company policy for your small business. During interviews, try to get to know the candidate well and clearly understand what they could bring to your firm.  Do you own a business in an industry that’s particularly high-pressure and stressful? You may decide to set applicants some challenges and tasks so you are able to assess how they perform under pressure close up and in the flesh.

Staff are at the beating heart and soul of any business. As a result, your business will only thrive if you make an effort to employ the best possible people to work with you.  Your firm is more likely to go bankrupt or get outcompeted by competitors if you keep on staff members who are clearly not up to the job. Sometimes in business, it pays to be brutal, and regarding the approach you take to the recruitment of new staff, this can very often be the case.

Ensure Your Staff Receive The Best Possible Training

In order to have productive, high-performing staff members working for you who are an asset to your company and help your small business to make profits, you must ensure they undergo regular training and stay up to date with the latest industry developments and regulations. Poorly trained staff will have a disappointingly low output and cause you to struggle to survive as a small business. In addition, you will inevitably receive lots of negative customer feedback if your staff are poorly trained and not informed regularly about your company procedure, and unaware of how businesses operate in 2022. After a while, constant poor feedback on online customer review sites, social media platforms, and word-of-mouth due to staff with insufficient training will mean you could take a big hit financially as a small business.

Remember, The Customer Is King

All small business owners should be customer-focused and think about doing what they can to maximize customer satisfaction levels. Remember that the old mantra ‘the customer is king’ still rings true for small businesses today. Whether one-time or loyal returning customers, your business would cease to exist without your paying customers. If you have recently received a large number of complaints and negative feedback regarding the lack of quality of the products and services you provide to customers, don’t be idle; act on it as soon as possible to drive customer satisfaction levels back up.

Things have been pretty tough for everyone in recent times, and money has been tighter than ever for many families across Canada. However, these helpful survival tips aim to provide you with a blueprint for how you can carry on making regular profits as a small business owner in 2022.