It should go without saying that maintaining a steady, positive cash flow is critical to keeping your business afloat. After all, if you don’t have the cash, you can’t pay your bills. And, if you can’t pay your bills, you won’t be able to stay in business for long.

As a business owner, you may consider distributing bonuses to employees as a show of appreciation for their passion and dedication to the business and/or to reward employees for exceptional performance and/or achievements. It’s important to remember that bonuses should be treated as taxable income and reported accordingly.

As a business owner, receivables (accounts receivable or A/R) are a vital part of your business. If you are not billing or invoicing clients and subsequently, collecting those receivables in a timely fashion, your business will be unable to sustain itself.

When you make the shift from being an employee to a business owner, you’ll want to gain an understanding of how compensation and health insurance will differ as a business owner versus that of an employee, as well as familiarize yourself with something called imputed income.

If you decide to go into business for yourself, you’ll eventually want to form a legal business entity. A common type of entity structure for startups and small businesses is the Limited Liability Company or LLC. LLCs are established at the state level and are generally easy to form and don’t have as many requirements as Corporations.

Generally, if you are comfortable preparing your own tax returns, are familiar with your tax situation and you don’t have a complex tax situation (ex: you only have income from W-2 wages, interest income from interest-bearing accounts, you don’t itemize your deductions or only itemize state & local taxes & charitable contributions), you should be able to prepare your own tax returns using tax preparation software (desktop or online) from companies like Intuit (TurboTax), H&R Block and TaxAct, just to name a few.

Hopefully, you’ve already started your taxes or at the very least have taken the time to gather your tax documents so you’re ready to go, whether you do your taxes yourself or work with a CPA or other tax professional.

Once your business is on track to “go live” and commence business operations, you’ll need to find a good bank and open a business bank account. To start off, you’ll probably only need one business bank account - typically, a business checking account but as the business needs and requirements change, opening additional accounts may be warranted.

As you get started with your new business, there may come a time when you will need to seek professional counsel from a good business law firm and/or CPA firm. Even if your circumstances may not warrant professional counsel at the onset of your new business, you may eventually need to seek counsel as your business grows.

Now that you’re ready and committed to starting a business, you need to put together a game plan. There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to starting a business so it’s important to be organized, detail-oriented and have all your ducks lined up. You’ll first want to take a “view from 10,000 feet” and then drill-down into the specific details.

So why do you want to start your own business? Time for a REALITY CHECK!

So, you’ve reached a point in your life and career where you want to take a leap outside of your comfort zone and are considering starting your own business.