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What Are Merchant Cash Advance “Double Fees”- and How Can You Avoid Them?

If your company does a considerable amount of its business in credit card and debit card sales, the chances are that you’ve already heard about merchant cash advances. If you aren’t familiar with MCAs, though, they are in essence a type of loan available exclusively to businesses (usually merchants or vendors) that accept credit or debit cards.

Merchant cash advance

These types of loans are especially common for restaurants and retail stores. If such a business had a major expense they had to cover—whether for new equipment, inventory, or the like—they could apply for an MCA instead of a traditional bank loan. If approved, the MCA would be delivered in a lump sum amount, same as a traditional loan.…

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A Brief Guide to Commodities Trading

Commodities are the raw materials that we use for sustaining lives. Some of the examples are energy and fuel, agricultural products, and metals. Metals, agricultural products, and energy are three classes of market commodities. These are the essential pillars of the global economy.

Trading commodities

Criteria that commodities need to fulfill

Commodities need to fulfill these three criteria:

  • Tradability: Tradable commodities needs to have values that can be used as production materials of other goods or servicers.

  • Deliverability: Can you physically deliver the commodities to the buyers?

  • Liquidity: Commodities’ liquidity offers you an opportunity to get in and out of an investment easily.

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Why Office Dress Codes Are Going Out Of Fashion

When you run a business with onsite staff, it is down to you to set the policy when it comes to how you expect people to present themselves at work. However, while office dress codes used to be pretty much expected by employees, more and more businesses, particularly in certain sectors, are abandoning the concept in favor of less restrictive dress policies.

Hip and fashionable business people

1. Dress Code Options

There used to be just a few options for your office dress code. You could have a formal business dress code, a business casual dress code (where men, for example, could wear a shirt without a tie but things like jeans, t-shirts and sneakers were not allowed), or no dress code at all.…

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From Company to Consumer: 3 Ways Corporations Are Giving Back for Social Change

In the past, many corporations tended to be self-focused; if we’re being realistic, most of them still are. However, some companies have begun to take a more serious look at the long-term impact their business practices have on social change and environmental damage.

corporate social responsibility

“Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR) is a term that is now being used to describe their new business practices. The three kinds of CSR include environmental, philanthropic, and ethical labor practices. Implementing any of these strategies in your business is considered CSR and work wonders for company rapport and revenue.

For example, Sands Las Vegas Resort values sustainability as one of their top priorities.…

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Testing Isn’t Only for the Technical Team: The Tests Your Business Needs to Be Doing

Frequently, when we talk about testing, we are talking about tests done by a dedicated testing team. More recently, development have also had to think about developer testing.

User acceptance testing (UAT)

There are many different types of testing: development testing and automated testing such as unit testing, integration testing and regression testing; as well as manual testing performed by dedicated QA staff. One important type of testing that is frequently overlooked is business process testing, such as UAT.

What is UAT?

When you make a change in your ERP system, whether they are testing SAP ERP or Oracle EBS, you want to make sure it does what it is supposed to do.…

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6 Common Spending Mistakes New Businesses May Make

Most of today’s small businesses experience failure during the first few years of their operation. Whether it’s a lack of planning at the beginning or some other pitfall, there are common mistakes you need to avoid in order to stay alive. You can boost your company’s chances by avoiding the six following mistakes.

Startup mistakes

1. Begin Your Business with a Huge Loan

The first two years of business is critical for small business owners. Since many fold at the beginning, you want to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your employees. Although you want to focus on efficiency and meeting deadlines, you also want to set a positive environment for your employees to work in.…

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4 Compelling Reasons Why Business Dashboards are Important to SMB’s

As a small business owner you already understand the importance of being able to collate and monitor data, to help you align your business in the future. However, this is often a time consuming process which could be made easier with the help of a business dashboard.

Cyfe business dashboard - screenshot

Through a convenient ‘easy-to-read’ visual display, dashboards pull complex data relevant to your company from multiple areas and present it on one screen. This includes information such as key performance indicators and metrics. This data can then be used to channel behaviour to deliver better results and grow your business.

Now you have a basic understanding of what a business dashboard is, let’s delve deeper and take a closer look at 4 compelling reasons why business dashboards are important to SMB’s.…

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Managing Business Across the Globe using Netsuite Oneworld

Managing ecommerce portals located across the globe is really challenging these days. The integrated platform that offers to your business flexible intuitive solutions is Netsuite Oneworld. It is one such platforms that helps you to get cost effective solutions related to organizations dispersed across the globe.

NetSuite screenshot

So, what are the upsides of Netsuite Oneworld?

1. Flexibile

From designing the web, managing the content, taking care of the inventory, pricing of the products, everything can be very well managed by the o. The best point about the platform is its flexibility. The mobility in terms of multi-language, multi-currency, multi-product web stores and multi country facility can be good enough to manage ecommerce businesses from any corner of the globe.…

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How Your Business Can Go Global (And Why It Should Go Micro-multinational)

With the internet levelling the playing field for how far a company’s reach can extend, more businesses than ever are able to go global without relocating or losing capital in the process. Micro-multinationals, as they are known, are able to keep costs low whilst still operating on a worldwide scale. They embrace technology to keep their teams connected, but still maintain traditional face-to-face business relationships with clients, which has been proved to be financially beneficial in the long run.

Go global using digital tech

What steps can you take to turn your business into a micro-multinational? Here are a few hints to get you started.…

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4 Tips to Keep Your Small Business Employees Happy and Productive

Most startups and small businesses fold within their first two years. And with that in mind, it makes sense that employee productivity can feel like one of the many metrics which can make or break your business. Getting work done efficiently and meeting client deadlines is absolutely critical to build the trust and reliability you need. But that can mesh relatively poorly with the expectations of employees, who often expect that a smaller company will provide them with less stress and more flexibility.

Happy employees

But the worst thing business owners and managers can do is crack the whip to try and squeeze more productivity out of their employees.…

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