Tips and tricks for business owners – Intro and trick #1

CB Insights recently published The Top Twenty Reasons Startups Fail. The second highest reason that these young companies fail is that they run out of cash. There are many ways companies burn through money and there are good ways to save each dollar without sacrificing productivity. Here at Brockman Consulting, we’ve tried to keep our monthly overhead as low as possible. That means finding free solutions wherever we can and finding business software that will maximize the money in our collective pockets.

 

As we find these cost-saving solutions, we’ll post them here in our tips and tricks for business owners. Our first entry is MileIQ, which has revolutionized tracking business driving.

 

MileIQ

Download the app to your smartphone now! This is a serious life saver!

 

Here in Canada, the CRA (Like the IRS in the US) requires those wanting to claim business driving expenses to maintain a written log with a bunch of information. Forget to log the trip or forget to log the correct information and you’ve just lost out. Installing MileIQ on your phone allows the app to automatically look for drives and then requires you to either swipe left for personal (Non-claimed) or right for business (claimed) driving. That’s it!

 

In three months I’ve logged over $1,000 worth of business trips. This is money that I can claim as a business expense and puts money in my pocket right away. The app requires that you give location access all the time to capture drives automatically and is free for 40 drives or under per month. To log unlimited monthly drives here in Canada costs $7.99/month or $79.99/year, very worth the money!

 

US – Here

Canada – Here

 

In future posts we’ll talk about accounting software, business banking packages and more. Leave a comment if you have a problematic business area – either our team at Brockman Consulting or another reader might have a solution waiting for you.