Time to Start Preparing Your PPP Forgiveness
It’s time to start preparing your documents for the PPP Forgiveness. With more than 96,000 requests for Paycheck Protection Program loan forgiveness already being submitted to the Small Business Administration. THE SBA has announced they will begin approving request in early October. Small business owners who have been waiting to have their Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiven can breathe a sigh of relief, as forgiveness for smaller PPP loans is expected to be processed quickly, and easily. Start collecting your payroll reports, your rent invoices, your health insurance bills, your 941 and your unemployment tax returns. Here is are great resources to calculate your forgiveness as well as other great forms to help you prepare. Watch and learn how to prepare your PPP Loan forgiveness.
What is the Future of Office Space?
The pandemic has forced the adoption of new ways of working. From working at home, to social distancing at the office, organizations are having to reimagine not only their office space, but also how to create safe, productive, and enjoyable jobs and lives for employees. Before the pandemic, the conventional wisdom had been that offices were critical to productivity, culture, and winning the war for talent, however productivity with remote work has proven to work. Although, many have enjoyed working from home, with little to no commuting, and being home more people are ready to go back to the office. A recent employee surveys indicate most Americans do not want to work from home full-time. But they do enjoy the flexibility of being able to do so as they choose. Watch as Bill and Harry predict what the future of office space will be.
How to Build a Home TV studio
Working from home, social distancing, and online meetings, are new territories for most of us. Whether you’re doing a video chat from a home office or a meeting from the park everyone has access to a live TV studio from their laptop or phone anywhere anytime as long as they have internet access. With your life being essentially on display it is important you look your best, after all you only get one first impression. A few of the ways you can make a great not only first impression but lasting impression is through, proper infrastructure (ditch your wireless connection), make sure you have good audio, lighting is super important (make sure that it allows you to be warm and clear), make sure you have a camera. Watch as Carl and Harry discuss how to build out a professional home studio.
Payroll Tax Deferment
You may have heard that the president’s executive order for a payroll tax deferral went into effect on Sept. 1, 2020. This order states that from September 1st to the end of the year employees can defer payment on their Social Security Tax that is taken out of your paycheck. To start, it’s not mandatory, and employees still owe the deferred money. During the first part of next year, employees will have to repay the amount deferred to the IRS no later than April 30, 2021. Get the ins and outs of how the tax deferral will work, and how it may effect you and your clients.
Continued Learning
During these uncertain times we need to make sure we are staying competitive, by innovating, adapting, and continuing to learn. There are so many learning opportunities at your finger tips from Microsoft Learn and Bigger Brains (an online learning platform) to local colleges and universities. Learning new knowledge or skills will help employees see things in a new light and help take organizations to the next level. Companies and or organizations need to be onboard and help create learning culture. Another way other than learning programs to integrate learning into your company is to bring in an intern who can not only help but bring in new skills and talent to your workforce. Watch as Harry and Andrew Bettany chat about continued learning in reference to IF – By Rudyard Kipling.
Managed Service Tiering Levels
Selling managed services is not easy, and like any service offering, it takes a lot of time, resources, and dedication. Many new and even some seasoned MSPs have questions on tier levels, bundling, and even pricing. Structuring your bundles/tier levels correctly can be vital to the success of your business. If you charge too much, you risk scaring customers away — charge too little, and you cheat yourself. Too many plan options confuse customers, while too few limits your market. Along with planning your bundles learning how to talk to clients about the process, helping them understand the value, training your sales team, and serving the client can help with the bundling process. Watch as Harry and Josh discuss tiering and how you can structure your levels and what you can offer within each tier.
Dharma Virus
Our virus duo (Michael Jenkin and Ken Dwight) take over SMB Nation to chat about the new developments in the malware and security field. These two explore a virus that has been around since 2016 and has been reappearing with new versions regularly during recent years. Dharma is a new variant of Crysis – a high-risk ransomware-type virus. Following successful infiltration of your system, Dharma encrypts stored files using asymmetric cryptography. Small businesses and bigger organizations should also be cautious as the Dharma ransomware virus keeps presenting new file extensions and have recently infected two large companies forcing them to pay the ransomware. Be sure to have and verify your backups on a regular bases to make sure they are running and protecting your data to prevent loss of data. Watch as Ken and Michael give some great tip and information on the Dharma virus and how you can protect your clients.
Lateral Movement
In today’s security landscape, cyber security threats to businesses are becoming more sophisticated than ever. Hackers are developing tools that allow them to easily gain basic access to your data and files, through phishing attacks, malware infections, and ransomware. Through scanning thousands of computers at a time hackers are able to target their victims using software and tools to gain higher privileges and access not only to the infected computer but between devices within the network. This technique is called “Lateral movement” which is a technique used by hackers to systematically move through a network in search of accessing the crown jewels. Sometimes these hackers will take months to work their way through the network to gain access to extract the information they need. Watch as Ken and Michael go over how you can protect yourself and your clients from lateral movement.
Technology Marketplace
From the newest technologies to the explosion of communication and remote working, technological innovation has enhanced our ability to work more effectively and efficiently. Although, technology is ever changing, sometimes it is hard to get your physical product in the hand of the consumer. With that said, marketplace platforms allow a more effective and efficient process for purchasing technology-related goods and services. Watch as Harry and Danny Brown chat about Technology Marketplaces and the ways they enable service providers to automate billing, provisioning & subscription management.
Corruption of Onsite Backup
Data loss is becoming more and more prevalent in today’s business world. With many companies transitioning employees to work from home, and ransomware in full swing it is more important than ever to protect your backups from corruption. Without consistent, reliable backups, valuable company data can be lost forever, so choosing a backup method that will work effectively is important for your clients business’s survival. Weather you choose to store your data onsite or offsite there are some easy steps you can take to safeguard your clients backup. Watch as Larry and Harry chat about simple steps you can take to help preserve your clients backup. Remember your disaster recovery plan depends on backups, so it’s important to make sure your backup process works.
