Jerry Mills

Hiring and firing employees if very costly. Good companies keep good employees with good management practices. Managers can contribute to retention efforts by improving overall job satisfaction. When companies lose good employees, it not only affects productivity, but also morale. Managers can make a difference through effective management-employee relations.

A vital aspect that many companies often overlook in running a business is the area of gross profit optimization. This is what is left over after costs associated directly with the sale of a product or service, such as materials and direct labor, are paid for. This is an extremely important number for every business to manage, as it impacts both the likelihood of reaching breakeven and the amount of profit that is earned beyond breakeven.

Benjamin Franklin is credited with the adage, "In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." That statement is as true today as it was when he wrote it more than 200 years ago. We can add another truism for today's business owners: You will exit your company one day in the future.

Occupational fraud and abuse is real even though we would like to believe otherwise. Organizations incur costs to produce and sell their products or services; these costs run the gamut: labor, taxes, advertising, occupancy, raw materials, research and development-and, yes fraud and abuse.

A typical organization loses five percent of its annual revenue to fraud, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners' (ACFE) 2010 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse. The median loss caused by the occupational or employee fraud cases in the 2010 study was $160,000. Nearly one-quarter of the frauds involved losses of at least $1 million.

Matt Bud of FENG, gave some of the wisest counsel that I have heard in his August 2009 editorial. He said:   "Friends, it really isn't all that hard to know you didn't start in your first job out of college as a Controller or Chief Financial Officer. The other technique is saying "prior to 1985 I worked at the following 4 companies," but not give the years you worked there.