According to a recent report in USA Today, most of the largest companies in the US are self-insured. They cover their employee’s claims while insurance companies help administer the plans. Starting in 2014, those businesses that are fully-insured, as opposed to self-insured, will have to pay a tax that is expected to add about 2% [...]
It has been slow so long we didn’t think it would ever pick up. Get ready for things to change. McGraw Hill Construction is forecasting that contract activity in the Southeast region will achieve an across the board increase within each of its broad construction categories: Nonresidential, residential. and nonbuilding. The acceleration is expected to [...]
Since the late 1990’s the Veteran’s Administration has been using reverse auctions as a contracting process to promote competition by having the agency buyer solicit bids from multiple sellers. This is different from a standard auction where a seller solicits bids from multiple buyers. In a reverse auction, you keep lowering and lowering your price [...]
Florida Surety Bonds feels it's important to give back to the community as much as possible, even more so around the holidays. This year, the FSB team donated box loads of non-perishable food items and delivered them to Spring Lake Elementary. There, up 60 backpacks will be packed of food for these 60 children who [...]
Your experience, financial capabilities and quality of financial statements can dramatically impact your bonding for the next year! Some people get confused about tax returns, CPA Compilations, CPA Reviews, and CPA Audits. As you plan for your Financial Year-End statements, both the quality and format of CPA statements can impact your bonding rates and stretch [...]
Bonding companies are requiring that year-end financial statements are properly prepared within three or four months of your fiscal year end. Some are also requiring that you provide them with some kind of interim balance sheet and income statement on the percentage of completion basis. Many, many good contractors cannot do that. The hardening marketplace [...]
Maximize your profit by regularly checking your ever-changing break-even point. Indeed, as the construction market changes, you’ll want to manage your break-even point, or it could come back to haunt you - Big Time! Your break- even point is figured by dividing your Total Fixed Expenses by your Gross Profit Percentage. Thus, if your fixed [...]
According to a recent report from the Fed, banks have been easing their lending standards and are experiencing stronger demand in most loan categories in the past three months. About half the respondents reported stronger demand for commercial real estate lending. This is good news in light of the spike in market interest rates after [...]
You may desperately need work, but be careful to avoid bad work. You don’t need to be kicked when you are down. When margins are thin for all the contractors, it is very easy to pick up bad work. It is also very easy to pick up bad work when the owners (public or private) [...]
The ingenious folks at Enron used hundreds of dummy corporations which no one seemed to own, to avoid taxes and hide boatloads of debt. The Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) came up with FASB Interpretation Number (FIN) 46 to avoid this problem in the future. This is a complicated economic test of related corporations to [...]