A couple years ago, Gallup conducted a survey that categorized employee engagement into three levels. The results showed that, in any given organization, 30% of employees are actively engaged in propelling the company along, half of the employees are just coasting on the efforts of the others, and 20% are actively attempting to disrupt progress within the business. Do you know which of your employees fall into which categories? More importantly, do you know how to improve these conditions?

If you’ve considered the option of working from home or been given the option to do so, here are a few ways to accomplish that.

Using a VPN

You may have heard of VPNs but didn’t know what it meant. Without getting too technical, a VPN allows you to use a computer to connect to your office, with encryption, without physically being there. There are tools that need to be in place to accomplish this. Typically, you’ll need some or all of the following items:

Why are these statistics so significant? For one reason, the employment market is extremely tight right now. In order to recruit forward-thinking employees into your company's workforce and retain them, you need to appeal to the way they work.

82% of surveyed businesses have experienced a noticeable improvement by implementing an automated Accounts Payable process. If your AP department is thinking about adding AP automation to increase efficiency and reduce cost, but isn't sure how to get started, we can help.

Having the right backup solution can save your company from losing important data, having to pay a ransom to retrieve it, or potentially costing your business the valuable secrets that keep it competitive. At the very least, nobody wants to re-key all of their accounting data if something goes wrong after, say, a long period-end process. These are all real consequences that have brought clients to us for help and a plan.

Still, it’s difficult to know how to begin developing a backup plan without some guidance. Here are some key questions we ask when helping customers design a new backup strategy…or evaluate the effectiveness of a current one:

Did you know that...

• ...while 80% of CPAs think their role will change drastically by 2025, only 10% of them view themselves as innovative?
• ...accounting firms with 100% of their clients using cloud computing witnessed a 15% increase in revenue year over year, compared to 4% growth at traditional firms?
• ...over the next 20 years, there's a 97.6% chance of bookkeeping jobs becoming automated and a 93.5% chance of accounting and auditing jobs doing the same?
• ...investments in artificial intelligence increased by 300% from 2013 to 2016, led by large accounting firms?
• ...global spending on blockchain solutions - which will revolutionize how audits are conducted - is anticipated to reach $2.1 billion by the end of 2018?

Owning and operating a small business can be challenging. There are so many moving parts, and you need to make sure every department is running as smoothly as possible. Even if all the wheels are spinning in the right direction, you still have to factor in the parts you can’t control, like getting paid quickly and efficiently.

The fact is, 79% of business owners can’t pay themselves due to late payments, according to Fundbox. If small businesses got paid for all unpaid invoices at once, they’d each be able to pay themselves about $40,000!

Collecting payments from customers isn’t always a timely process. If you’re still managing your invoicing with paper, making the switch to email payments can save you time and help you get paid faster. With email payments, customers can pay you from any device with the click of a button. Here are four benefits of accepting email payments through your ERP software.

We all love a short break in the workday. And we all love thinking about taxes! Okay...maybe not that second thing. Still, grab your warm drink of choice, and let’s play a quick game that tests your knowledge on current sales & use tax regulations. How many of the following questions will you get right?

In 2017, we here at Bennett/Porter took a year off from hosting our annual Connections conference to focus on expanding our software and service offerings. This year we return with   and we invite you and your colleagues to join us.

An Enterprise Resource Planning system with integrated ecommerce is essential for business growth in highly competitive marketplaces like the present one. Both your customers and your business profit when all of your ecommerce and logistical functions connect - and they both suffer delays and higher costs when they don't. Learn how tight integration gives the advantage to your business in our free whitepaper.