Our first priority is to restore these websites and give you full and complete access to our sites and your data as soon as possible. We are also investigating the cause of the problem and will take measures prevent a recurrence. We appreciate your patience and will provide more information as it becomes available.

Get some repellent for those pesky insects from the Online Security Center!  With an increase in phishing scams (fake emails masked as though they are coming from Intuit), everyone needs extra protection.

Sporting a recently revamped website, the Online Security Center lets you bite back and report a fake email or Website.  I think this site is a solid resource for folks who are concerned about security risks.   It’s thorough and direct, yet calming, and quickly lets you know what Intuit does to ensure your online security.

The site gives phishing repellent tips on how to:

• Protect your information
• Protect your computer
• Protect your business, employees and customers.

A few other cool “bite-repellent” options the Center offers are:

• Live Security Alerts
• Malwarebyte’s Free Anti-malware
• Secunia’s Free Scanner

I don’t know about you, but  I’d much rather slather on some insect repellent, kick back in the sunshine and relax (knowing I’m fully protected), while waiting for a real fish to bite my line! That’s why I say the Online Security Center is worth a visit.

Only time will tell what the impact is to small business.  With the credits and exchanges we can expect more small businesses to offer health insurance, but how many will depend on the depth of the savings from the exchanges.  We can also expect sole proprietors to have an easier time getting health insurance, which could indirectly encourage more entrepreneurship.  And for our larger small businesses (those with 50+ employees) the fear is that there will be an adverse impact on hiring given incentives to stay below 5o employees and 80k salaries.

Current state: The smallest businesses aren’t providing their employees with health insurance

Lots of small businesses aren’t offering health insurance…
Only 49 percent of firms with 3 to 9 workers offered any type of health insurance to their employees in 2008. In contrast, 99 percent of firms with more than 200 workers offered health insurance.

Those that do offer insurance are paying more…
Small businesses (less than 100 employees) pay up to 18 percent more per worker than large firms for the same health insurance policy.

And things aren’t looking up.
Between  2002 to 2008, businesses with 3 to 9 employees offering health insurance to their workers declined from 58 to 49 percent.

The reform’s intent is to lower costs for the smallest businesses with credits and exchanges and make insurance mandatory for bigger businesses

How small businesses will buy insurance:

• By no later than 2014, states will have to set up Small Business Health Options Programs, or “SHOP Exchanges.”
• A SHOP exchange will pool small businesses (less than 100 employees)  together  to buy insurance.
• The impact?  These are expected to have a small positive effect  (between 1-4%) on the premium cost and amount  of coverage offered.

Starting now until 2014, businesses with less than 25 employees will get a tax credit.

• If you have 10 or less employees that you are paying less than $25K a year, you will be eligible for a tax credit of 35% of health insurance costs
• If you have between 11 and 25 workers with an average wage up to $50K, you are eligible for partial credits.
• You don’t get a tax credit if you have more than 25 employees.
• Any employee who earns more than $80K/year will be excluded from the credit
• In 2014, if you have 10 or less employees, earning less than $25K, you could earn a 50% credit.

It is pay or play…for bigger businesses

• By 2014 if you have more than 50 employees, you will have to either offer insurance or pay $750 per employee.
• This coverage will have to meet minimum benefits and services, as well as handle 60% of costs.
• In 2011, employers will have to provide coverage for dependents of employees until the age of 26. (Now it is typically age 19 or the end of college)

If you are a freelancer/one person shop, coverage expansion will help you:

• By 2014 insurers won’t be able to set rates to exclude coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and can vary premiums only by geographic location, age, and tobacco use.
• Going into effect right now is a ban on lifetime limits on coverage, and on “rescission” (canceling policies already issued) except in cases of fraud.

Other stuff small businesses need to know:

• Part-time employees will be counted toward the 50-employee minimum (pro-rated)
• You will have to report the value of an employee’s health care plan on W-2 forms
• If you earn (as an individual) more than $200,000 a year, or are a couple earning $250,000 or more, there will be  a  3.8% surcharge on investment income to help pay for the bill
• This SHOP exchange will handle individuals as well.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects the number of people getting insurance through the new marketplace to start around 8 million in 2014 and to grow to 24 million in 2019.

Questions? Have a point of view on this? Please leave it in the comments.

The information cited here is the WhiteHouse.gov report, with recent updates included from CNN.com. http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/cea/Health-Care-Reform-and-Small-Businesses
http://www.CNN.com

These posts were no accident.

We are currently working on some features that will makes Billing Manager  will not work with IE6.  Its time to upgrade to get the most out of the Billing Manager.  You will also benefit with other web sites you use, many are discontinuing IE6 support as well.

If it were me, I would first download Firefox and start using it.  You can install Firefox without changing your Internet Explorer version.   Then, when you are comfortable with Firefox, upgrade Internet Explorer. You will end up with 2 excellent browsers on your system. This is only a suggestion, its OK to just upgrade Internet Explorer.

If you are using a Macintosh, then you are already covered.  The new features work fine with Safari and Firefox.

Online tools for strong offline relationships with John Jantsch
Wednesday, February 24 at 10:00am PST

Learn how to leverage social media and other Web tools to build stronger relationships with local customers, suppliers and prospects. John will cover how to create local communities with online groups, and how to access local bloggers and media to raise your brand awareness. He’ll also advise on how to use online communities to create offline events, mine social media platforms for local leads and how to enhance local search engine placement for your business.

Register here

Turn Clicks into Conversations and Relationships with Brent Leary
Wednesday, March 10 at 10:00am PST

Learn the tools and techniques needed to turn content into conversations, conversations into exchanges, and exchanges into long-lasting customer relationships. Brent will teach social listening, automating content creation and distribution, and steps for enhancing the customer experience with your company by facilitating opportunities for customers to connect with each other.

Register here

Find more free webinar events

If you go, share your thoughts or learnings with other Billing Manager  users. Leave them in the comments.

Information you should know: The deadline to send independent contractors and employees their 1099-MISCs and W-2s is Feb 1st.

For you do-it-yourselfers, we know it can be a headache to gather all the payments, worker info, and do the calculations between year end and the deadline  (QuickBooks definitely helps with some of this remember). But, the 1099-MISC is especially troublesome if you’re filing manually because the IRS requires using a special paper form with red-boxes, which can only be ordered in packets of 25 or more – not very practical for those of you with just a few contractors!

We’re happy to share an easier way to finish these forms quickly and easily. A new service from our friends in TurboTax called Quick Employer Forms provides step-by-step guidance to prepare 1099-MISC, W-2 forms and e-file for only $2.95 each.

Bonus: If you finish your forms before 6:00AM PST on Jan 28, they will even mail them to your contractors and employees by the deadline. We hope you like it!

Check it out.

1. Increase your reoccurring invoices and thus your profit. Learn how here.

2. Call a customer just to see how they are doing.  If you wait for customers to call you it’s like giving a 2 year old a can of red paint and putting them in a white room alone. When you check back later, you never know what surprise you are going to get!

3. Start using twitter and say hi to us. Your customers are on it, so should you be. Create an account and then update your status with 140 characters. Use @IntuitInvoice in your update to tell us hello! We’ll start following you back!

4. Relax. When your head is full with a to-do list your creativity decreases. (Proven fact! at least on the Billing Manager team). Take an hour and go for a walk, get inspired and energize

5. Check out the new Intuit App Center. This contains lots of business apps that help you run your business better. Most of them have free trials (and some are even completely free!!). Examples include web conferencing, email marketing, expense management.

6. Participate in the Love a Local Business campaign. This monthly contest awards local business big money just having loyal customers. Submit a story about your favorite local business (or get your customers to submit on behalf of you!).

7. Spend money. Yes, it may sound counter-intuitive but keep listening. If a new customer brings you $100 of new revenue…then you should totally fine paying up to $99 to get them in the door. (Now hopefully you pay a lot less than $99, but as a business just starting out, getting customers is the first task you have in front of you!)

8. Be inspired. Watch David Weekly (founder of PBwiki) talk about how to give your ideas ex-lax. It’s a funny and motivating talk!

9. Zen your desk. With a clean and pristine environment you can be more effective and organized. Take 20 minutes…dust it out.

10. Comment on this blog. What other things did you do today?

On December 5th we’ll be down from 8am PST to 5pm PST. This is a long time and we apologize for the inconvenience.

During that break, we’re taking steps to ensure we don’t have to go on break again.  As counter intuitive as that may sound, the team is working hard to ensure that our performance and uptime is best in class. To make that happen, there is a one time tradeoff off for an extended period to rejuvenate.  (We’re basically giving the app a boutique style spa treatment).

But wait…it gets better! We’ll also be releasing some highly requested features! You asked for it and we’re delivering.

But you’ll have to wait until Dec 6th to find out what these features are.   I know, we can’t wait to tell you either!

Thanks again for your patience.  We appreciate it.

As I’ve ramped up on Billing Manager, one thing I’ve been focusing on is speaking with customers and learning what you like and don’t like about Billing Manager.   The goal of this is to figure out what we need to start working on now and also what else customers want to see from our invoicing app.  If you’ve got feedback you want to share or are willing to meet over the phone or in person (if you’re near Mountain View, CA, consider this an invitation for lunch at our campus), go ahead and reply to this post and we’ll arrange something.

There’s a lot more to come, so expect and introduction to our development team and to hear about what we’re working on to make the product better.  Happy Friday.  Cheers!