It’s that time of the year when jump scares are common, there’s undoubtedly another Halloween movie coming out and you stock up on way too much candy for the little ones who ring your doorbell on Oct. 31.

Sounds like a ghoulish-good time, but you know what’s really, really scary? When one of your customers had a bad experience returning an item.

Okay, okay – I know this might be a stretch, but bear with me here while I tell you more about how you can improve your return policies without losing potential sales. And along the way, we’ll have a ghostly good time.

As the leaves are starting to fall, and families in our corner of NC are preparing mountain drives to see the changing colors, the narrative of our books is starting to reach the concluding point of the year. In my office, my current project is almost scary to say out loud, so I'll write it instead. I started my first book this summer, and am working with my editor to come out with a comprehensive guide to new business owners looking to start their own business, filled with memories of my own pitfalls and successes. I'm not going to pretend it is all roses, and I'm not someone who glosses over failures to make myself look like a constant success, but I am a believer in sharing our successes and failures for the greater good.

Businesses who sell products and services online—as well as their brick-and-mortar counterparts—ought to know more about the very important CLV, or “Customer Lifetime Value.”

In short, CLV tells you what you can expect from an average customer over the course of your business relationship. It’s not intended to show one moment in a buying cycle; rather, it encompasses the entire timeframe someone is a customer.

By now, there’s nothing new about creating an attractive and well-functioning website to garner sales. However, the difference between the business that barely sells what it can to the one in which inventory is a constant need because sales are robust, is vastly different.

Here are four ways to drive more traffic to your website.

Intuit QuickBooks has several new features recently introduced to help you streamline your workflow, so let’s get right to it.

Business owners—from the solopreneur to the largest size business—can realize some tax savings when it comes to accounting for the mileage you drive, although the rules can be a bit confusing. Here’s what you need to know.

Despite the heat this summer, the Certum Solutions team has heard so much about Pickleball, the court sport that is all the rage. That got me to thinking: Playing pickleball is similar to running an e-commerce business.

The last several years have been challenging, to say the least. The global pandemic arrived quickly, leaving many businesses unprepared to pivot quickly enough to address the needs of their customers. It didn’t matter if you had a brick and mortar location and/or sold your products and services online. We all faced issues in continuous operations, working remotely, and giving customers what they needed to survive.

Each month, Certum Solutions presents feature highlights in QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Online Advanced, and other products in the Intuit ecosystem. If these updates are helpful to you and your business, please drop us a note to tell us how you are using them, and what you’d like to see us cover in the future

When it comes to a loss, there is no commonality. You could operate your business out of a warehouse or manufacturing plant, or maybe your company is on the 12th floor of an office building. Whether you’re hit by a hurricane, earthquake, or tornado—or you’re the victim of a massive fire—no one I know has ever said they were 100% prepared for the potential loss of business, let alone your livelihood.

There are many reputable QuickBooks Solution Providers (QSPs) that offer excellent services and support. Currently there are approximately 350 in the US alone! The best provider for you will depend on your specific needs and requirements. It is recommended that you read customer reviews and consider factors such as expertise, customer service, budget, location, and industry specialization. Ultimately, it is important to choose a provider that aligns with your business goals and can provide the level of the specific services and support you require.

Between big summer blowouts and back-to-school sales, retailers are slotting in time for the biggest shopping season of the year: the winter holidays. Even though it’s still July, it’s exactly the right time to start thinking about Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and year-end celebrations that drive an influx of cash flow for many product-based businesses.

Between Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2022, 52 million consumers worldwide spent $7.5 billion with independent brands through Shopify’s ecommerce platform alone. With the right tools, your small business could be benefitting from that big spending.

QuickBooks Online is continuously evolving to meet the needs of small businesses, and July 2023 brings some exciting updates to the platform. Hot off the presses, these are the latest features and improvements to four areas of QuickBooks Online. Don’t break a sweat this summer; take advantage of the updates to make the most out of your software.

Is it possible to turn your hobby into a business? Possibly, but there are some definitive IRS rules you need to be aware of—and income you need to report on your tax return. Hobbies are near and dear to us. They help us get through stressful times and reflect our passions. In my own case, I love growing my own vegetables and raising chickens, so if I were to really pursue making money from my hobby, I might open up a roadside vegetable stand, or have a booth at the local Farmer’s Market to sell vegetables and eggs.

One of Certum Solutions’ niches is working with nonprofits — and that includes working with non-for-profit entities. Unless you’ve sat on a charity or church board, been involved in a community fundraiser, or have been employed by these types of organizations, it is probably hard to figure out the differences when it comes to accounting and bookkeeping.

Buying decisions can sometimes be a mixed bag. From time to time, business clients ask us whether it’s better to buy a car versus leasing a car. While the answer is often based on an ROI and tax savings, there are often other non-business factors as well that lean to, for example, how emotionally you’re tied to a certain car.

Having a staff can be one of the most rewarding parts of running a small business — and one of the most stressful. The updates to QuickBooks Online this month take away some of the stress by making it simpler to manage, pay, and support employees. Other big updates in June include an increase to $5 million in QuickBooks Checking and QuickBooks Money accounts that’s FDIC-insured, streamlined user management, and a new tax feature for solopreneurs.

How many times have you heard “The Future is Here?” Well, this time, it’s really here, and any business with an e-commerce site can now take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) in a number of ways.

If AI still feels somewhat mysterious and robots seem like something you may only see in “The Jetsons,” the still-recent introduction of AI-content generators make AI attainable and actually affordable, even for the smallest business.