How to organize the work of your company so that no economic and legal disasters bother your activity and the work of your staff?
Always keep records
Generally, this is universal advice both for a large company from the Virgin Islands or for an individual manufacturing business from Minnesota. There are two things to keep in mind.
First, reporting is a way to analyze your business. Understanding the cost structure will help increase profitability, and the correct reflection in revenue accounting is to avoid additional taxes. Even if the company is required to submit zero reporting only once a year, this does not mean that you should not keep any internal documentation.
Secondly, even if by law you are not entitled to demand a particular report or certificate, their presence can greatly facilitate your life. For example, some banks, scoring a client, require additional information about the activities of the company. And if it doesn’t turn out, they refuse it under a plausible pretext or increase the prices for services. Thus, your foresight can save money. We are not even talking about the fact that a copy of a contract three years ago that everyone forgot about can save the company from prosecution. Therefore, when your accountant asks to purchase an additional cabinet for archives, do not refuse it.
Stay tuned
It sounds like advice from a fashion designer, but we are not talking about clothing style, but about economic sentiment. Europe took up arms against the accounts of non-residents? So, it is worth thinking about getting rid of the shell company from suspicious jurisdictions and opening a more or less “white” company. Here, for example, are the criteria by which Latvia divides companies into trustworthy and not so good.
- It is suspicious if the company is registered in a jurisdiction that is not involved in the tax information exchange system.
- Failure to submit regular financial statements to supervisors can also play against you. However, we have already talked about this.
- The lack of a permanent office and a mailbox instead of an address, as well as the near-zero scale of economic activity, will definitely raise questions from the regulator.
The main thing is not to pull it to the last: when tax officials knock on the door or the bank blocks the account, it will be too late.
Buy knowledge
Do not hesitate to resort to the services of specialists in those areas in which you yourself are not well versed. A cool professional in the field of foreign trade does not have to understand the intricacies of international law or the specifics of company registration. You can understand this, but it will take time that could be spent on negotiations and the conclusion of profitable contracts. It will be more cost-effective to turn to a specially trained person or to a company specializing in registration, opening accounts, etc.
Another important tip follows from the previous one. There are three ways to use the knowledge of professionals. A specialist can be hired, entered into a service contract, or contacted as needed. The first option is not suitable for everyone: a full-time specialist in company registration is unlikely to be 100% busy. It would seem that the cheapest way is to contact consultants with one-time orders. But in practice this is not so.
The principle of “cheaper wholesale” has not gone away, that is, services within the package, as a rule, cost less than one-time costs. Moreover, incoming specialists are different and not the fact that you will immediately get to the “right one”. And it’s even more convenient when the same people have been engaged in the company for a long time: they don’t have to re-examine the specifics of your business every time.
