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 With the AT&T U-verse, you will be getting a digital TV with 170 digital channels, a high-speed and continuous internet connection, plus an integrated home phone service. With all these services from one the best telecommunications companies, you don’t have to worry about getting the quality services that you need and deserve. AT&T is for you, giving you all the telecommunication services you need and much more in just one and relatively cheaper billing statement per month.

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]]> http://www.creationmag.com/going-with-a-bundled-plan/50/feed 0 http://www.creationmag.com/how-file-a-workers-comp-claim-valid-claim/45 http://www.creationmag.com/how-file-a-workers-comp-claim-valid-claim/45#comments Sat, 11 Feb 2012 10:51:15 +0000 baem http://www.creationmag.com/?p=45 Workers’ compensation is for people to be physically or mentally injured or ill, made while in the labor market. This can include any complaint that is caused by negligence or willful misconduct. It can also handle all actions that result in illness or injury that will be another employee or a person caused in the workplace. Harassment, violence and crime can also be included. Once a workplace illness or injury happens, you should inform your employer and see a health professional. Once you determine what your injury, how you kept from carrying out your required duties and work, and if there is a direct result of the workplace or the workplace of employees was possible to form CA-1 for traumatic injuries or form CA-2 completed for diseases. Fill in only the employees of these parts forms and turn them over to your employer, who fill out the section supervisor. Once the form filled out and signed by all parties, you must return it to your local workmans comp center.

Medical Records

Most people have the privacy granted when it comes to their medical records. However, once a workers’ compensation claim is filed, is that veil removed for privacy. After the form is submitted, you will need to give your consent to the Workers’ Compensation representative handling your claim. If you do not want your medical records release, you can request that they be kept secret, even though a judge has the last word on whether the release of your medical records crucial for determining the validity of your workers’ compensation claim have. If the judge rules that you must release your records, then you need to decide at this point, if you release the records and forward with your claim or remove your expectations and keep your records private to.

Payment

If your workers’ compensation claim accepted, your claims administrator to pay all costs associated in connection with your injury or illness, including doctor visits, lab tests, hospital stays and therapies. In most cases, your employer, you choose your primary treating physician, although in some cases may be able to stay with your original doctor. The doctor will determine how long your disability, you are to think of the work accepted by a follow-up appointment 30 days after the request. More dates will follow in the diagnosis and treatment of your disability. Your doctor may also find that you are permanently disabled due to injury or illness at the workplace. If so, you may receive additional compensation on your age, occupation, date of disability and the type of disability.

The beauty of this process is; how long you want to spend on doing this activity is totally up to you. As we review this process, I will explain the variables of this system so you can make the necessary decisions where needed. Remember, this is only a tool to help you make decisions about a business purchase; it is not a sure-fire foolproof system. I will just lay it out for you and you make your own decision as to the validity of this formula for analyzing a business purchase that you may want to make.

The Sanity check requires two mathematical formulas, which require dollar amounts or other numbers to be entered in each formula. The math is calculated and then the results are compared against the purchase price. If it doesn’t work out the way you wanted, you have the option of then going back and change some of the numbers and do the calculation a second time.

The two formulas are:

1. SP + WC – BF = CR

Sale Price + Working Capital – Borrowed Funds = Cash Requirement

2. SDE – FMW (FO) – DS – ROI = Extra Profit/Loss

Sellers Discretionary Earnings – Fair Market Wage (for the owner) – Debt Service – Return on Investment (Cash Requirement x Interest rate -Stated as a Percentage) = Extra Profit/Loss

Since each item in the formula needs to have a dollar amount determined, we will define the terms and then discuss how the dollar amount is derived at.

Terms Definition:

Sale Price: The price that is being asked for the business or the price the buyer is thinking of offering. Depending on when you do this analysis. If you are trying to determine an asking price you would calculate all the other numbers in these two formulas to determine what should be your offering price. We will do examples to make this clear later in this article.

Working Capital: The short-term assets minus the short-term liabilities is the accounting definition. The simple explanation would be the amount of money necessary to be invested by the buyer to run the daily operations of the business, once purchased. This would include monies tied up in inventory, and accounts receivables. Money invested to pay the landlord’s or utility company’s deposits. Also included is the money spent on the business purchase to cover the loan origination costs and purchase escrow fees when buying the business. It is the total funds invested into the business to keep it running. The down payment given to the seller is not part of this number, since it is included as a separate item.

Calculation notes:

1.	Cost of inventory:		$_________________  (+)

2.	Accounts receivable:	$_________________  (+)

3.	Landlord deposit:		$_________________  (+)

4.	Utility Deposits:		$_________________  (+)

5.	Escrow fees to purchase:	$_________________  (+)

6.	Loan origination costs:	$_________________  (+)

7.	Short term liabilities*       $ _________________  (--) 

Total Working Capital	$_________________

* Short-term liabilities are defined as liabilities that are to be paid off within 1 year – accounts payables and the part of any notes payable that are to be paid within 1 year.

Borrowed Funds: The loan made for a business purchase from a bank or private party. The private party can be the seller or some friend or relative who might be willing to make a loan. This is borrowed money that must be paid back to someone at some time in the future.

Cash Requirement: This is the invested cash required to both buy a business, and working capital-to run the business. The amount of cash needed to make the business purchase and run the operations of the business after deducting all borrowed funds, regardless of source.

Sellers Discretionary Earnings / Owners Total Benefits: This is the total of all the non-business related benefits going to a business owner or his family on an annual basis that have been paid for, by the business. Included in this is definition are taxable profit from operations, unreported cash income, owners salary, salaries to non-working family members, any amount over the fair market value of salaries paid to working family members, family auto expenses, family telephone, family office expenses, health and life insurance for any or all family members, pension plan/ profit sharing contributions paid for the benefit of family members. This can also be stated as the reason why most people go to work everyday; they get family support for working.

Calculation notes:

1.	Taxable profit from operation			$_________________  (+)

2.	Cash						$_________________  (+)

3.	Owners Salary					$_________________  (+)

4.	Salaries of non-working family members		$_________________  (+)

5.	Amount over the fair market value of wages 

of working Family members		             	$_________________  (+)

6.	Family Auto Expenses				$_________________  (+)

7.	Family Telephone Expense			$_________________  (+)

8.	Family Office Expense				$_________________  (+)

9.	Health and Life insurance of

Any/all family members				$_________________  (+)

10.	Pension plan/profit share family members	$_________________  (+)

Total Seller Discretionary Earnings:		$_________________

Return on Investment: We need to have this stated as a dollar amount in Formula two. ROI is calculated as follows:

Cash Requirement X “a Percent” – the greater the risk, the higher the percent

First we must determine what the interest rate return we wish on our investment. This is a very subjective percentage and a change in this number can change the whole result of this analysis. If it is of any help, many financial investors in “Corporate America” feels they need to get a 20% return on their invested capital. Companies do not always make money and therefore the possible loses are built into the ROI. Some of the reasons are: companies are bought and go broke, overseas competition causing expectations of growth and income not to be met, and lastly government regulations periodically close whole industries. These are just some of the many risks involved in owning a business.

Putting your money in a bank has little risk, because the Federal Government insures your deposits in the bank. The stock market has a lot of risk that many people do not fully understand, causing them to accept a long term ROI of 10-13% from mutual fund investments. A 95% drop in stock prices like the dot.com stocks or what happened when we had the oil embargo in 1992 are indications that the stock market can be a much higher risk than people realize.

I personally feel that owning your own business and buying real estate are much lower risks, providing a much higher return. The proof of this can be found in the number of people who got rich in real estate and the over 25 million small business owners across this country.

Figure out what ROI you want and insert this number as .20 amount to represent 20% or .06 to represent 6% ROI. This is an annual return on invested money.

Once you have a percentage return on your investment we need to multiply it by the Cash requirement in order to come up with a dollar amount return needed. This restated is Dollars invested x percentage (stated as a decimal) = Dollar return on investment.

Examples:

1) Investment of $50,000.00 @ 6% Return On Investment (ROI) would be calculated as follows: $50,000.00 X .06 = $3,000.000 (Dollars return on investment)

2) Investment of $50,000.00 @ 20% Return On Investment (ROI) would be calculated as follows: $50,000.00 X .20 = $10,000.00 (Dollars return on investment)

Debt Service: The reason we need this number is because this is a financial expense of owning a business. It is not an operating expense of the daily business operations but if you have debt, in your business, you must be able to make the payments, out of the business operations profit. Usually this payment is mostly interest and a smaller portion is the principal reduction of the loan balance.

Most professionals deduct the whole payment when doing this analysis, because the business must generate enough profit to make the whole payment. My personal preference is to just deduct the interest portion and to add the principal portion of the payment to working capital amount needed. This counts as more money being put into the business just like financing inventory and/or accounts receivables.

For simple one-hour analyses it is not worth splitting up the payment. In the case of a very large principal reduction payment it could be unreasonable to not split it up. It is up to you. You can always try it both ways, since this is a process to raise your understanding, not to come up with a fixed answer of, yes! it is a buy or no! it is not a buy.

Fair Market Wages: This is an amount that the new or old owner would be paid, if he were an employee not the owner. If the owner were the company salesman and also the company bookkeeper working a total 60 hours a week, a reasonable salary would have to be determined for each job. As an example only, lets say that an outside salesman, in your industry, could make $40,000 per year. And a bookkeeper usually charges $15 per hour. The salesman might very well work 50 hours at this job to earn this salary. If a bookkeeper would work 10 hours per week doing the bookkeeping that would mean 520 hours per year (10 hours x 52) times $15.00 per hour which comes to $7800 per year for the bookkeeper. The two Fair Market Salaries would come to $47,800 ($40,000 + $7,800).

Sometimes the market salaries are not so easy to figure. Lets take an owner who owns a 99-cent discount type store. This shopkeeper works 70 hours per week behind a counter in the store. You can hire a counter person for $7.00 per hour so this becomes (70 hrs x $7.00 per hour x 52 weeks).

Then you start discussing that this $7.00 per hour counter person would not be able to do the buying. You might want to figure a purchasing agent’s salary. This can be done or you can just do simple numbers, leaving the salary only based on a counter person’s wages.