Setting Up Operations

Part 6: Setting Up Operations

Once the business itself is set up, you must get your operations up and running. This your opportunity to make final tweaks that you believe will help your business run smoother. If you can make your operations effective, any unforeseen errors or setbacks will be less detrimental.  Errors are bound to happen but with proper planning, you can easily react to them.

This part can be executed alongside the previous section.  While Part 5 covers more legal aspects, there is a lot of overlap between the two.  You can also look ahead to Part 7 and begin marketing.  This can be especially useful if you have the ability to secure future business prior to opening the business.

To Start Off:

Find and secure a business location, even home offices need good design.

• The Downtown Development Authority works with a local real estate agent to maintain a list of available properties.  Visit the website to learn more.

Fulfill Your Staffing Needs

• Identify the “ideal” employees or contractors that will best fit the available roles.
• Recruit, interview, hire, and train employees.
  • It can be hard to know what to look for in an employee if you’ve never hired one.  Read articles like this one from Entrepreneur.com on recruiting and hiring top-quality employees.
  • It is important to find individuals that will advance your business. While it may sound obvious, a single employee can bring great benefit or detriment to your business.  In fact, one bad hire could cost your business an average of $17,000.  
• You also have some leeway here in regards to what roles you want filled whether it be accounting, marketing, management, day-to-day operations etc.
  • Read up on when you should hire another employee (or your very first one!) and consider all of your options before hiring. 

Fill out all employee-related paperwork.  This is an extremely important step especially if you will need employees from day 1.  You will need to fill out many forms at both state and federal levels.  Be extremely careful when filing the paperwork - you do not want to miss any documents.  There are fees and penalties associated with not filing or filing late.

• File a Form I-9: Employment Verification Form for each employee.
• Account for payroll taxes (the IRS has more information about this on their website).
  • The IRS also maintains an Employer’s Tax Guide, which provides all information related to federal tax filing requirements that may affect your business.         
• Make sure to budget for all employee benefits you have to offer.  You are required to offer the following benefits:
  • Social Security
    • You are required to fill out a Form W-2 for each employee, which can be found here.  If you use an accounting software like QuickBooks, you can just file from there directly
  • Workers Compensation
  • Disability Insurance
  • Leave Benefits
  • Unemployment Insurance - in Georgia, employers pay the entire cost of unemployment insurance
• Georgia Dept of Revenue has a website that lists out business taxes.  Find the Georgia Employer’s Tax Guide here.

Identify and set up any needed technology, such as:

• Point of Sale Systems (POS) - this is the equipment that will help you make a sale to a customer. 
  • For example, Square can be as low as $60/month
• Email - Separate from personal email is recommended.  You can purchase an email that uses your domain name as the address (such as yourname@yourcompany.com).
  • G Suite, for example, charges $6/month/user and offers the Google interface you might already be familiar with.
• Phones - Separate from personal is recommended
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System - Although you may not need this right away, as your business grows, it may be useful to look into a CRM system, which helps manage and store customer information.
• Billing and Payment Systems - Billing and payment systems can automate the process of billing your customers and paying your suppliers.  Do not mix up billing and payment systems with a basic accounting system.  Accounting systems help track income and expenses and may not include sophisticated automation for billing, especially if you use Excel for accounting.  However some accounting systems will offer billing software, which can be very helpful.

Ensure your technology systems are secure with your information or customer information

Depending on the business type, identify and partner with the right suppliers.