Starting up any business is tough. Starting up and being profitable is even tougher. While you may have the best idea or service imaginable – the “best thing since sliced bread” – so many factors weigh into the success of a company, some of the greatest inventions never take flight.
One of the main factors is managing the business itself. Operational procedures are just as important as the product, and uninformed business decisions can lead to disaster.
Often, companies will start up, and think things are running smoothly, but the bottom line is always negative due to operational expenses. The fact is, many entrepreneurs are unaware of the total cost for running a business – they don’t know how to factor their company’s overhead.
Enter MyOverhead.com, a web-based program that allows companies to instantly calculate their overhead costs including rent, utilities, equipment, insurance and even employee salaries and health benefits. To begin, a company enters all pertinent information into the system, and the initial calculation gives the exact overhead and burden costs, not an estimated guess. From this point, the company knows their overhead, and can now make many business decisions based on this number. When something changes, such as new equipment or hiring an employee, a company can quickly update those fields, and immediately calculate the new overhead.
“This is an invaluable tool to figure out our financial status,” said one Akron, Ohio, office manager. “In a nutshell, the program tells you exactly how much money you need to bring in to cover your costs. With this in mind, we can estimate every job we take based on that number.”
“In addition, when unexpected expenses or delays occur, you can go into the system and change one number and it automatically recalculates,” she added. “You don’t have to start over from the beginning, like in some programs. It literally takes about two seconds.”
When prices change, such as an increase in materials or payroll, a company can quickly update those fields, and immediately calculate the new overhead cost. The same is true for any variation, be it operational or an unexpected circumstance. The program is created to adapt to any situation or business type.
“The program, just like the economy, is totally flexible and while many of the standard settings applied to us, we were able to customize it for our needs,” added the office manager.
The system is created with a template listing pre-determined items that are classified as overhead, such as: advertising, insurance, office supplies and rent. There is also a separate listing for items that fall under the burden category, such as labor expenses, worker’s compensation and health benefits, to name a few. If there is an expense specific to a particular business that does not exist in the program, users can create new entries. The system can be adjusted at any time.
“MyOverhead.com eliminates all of the guesswork. It provides companies with an accurate overhead cost,” said Mark Lallemand, spokesperson for My Overhead Corporation. “Companies need to be aware of all the costs involved in running their business. Our user-friendly program will calculate these operating costs so that it can be easily updated as expenses in your business change.”
MyOverhead.com also allows companies to make well-informed business decisions. Potential costs, including a new employee or computer network, can be entered into the system to see how it will affect overhead and/or burden.
MyOverhead.com will benefit virtually any business,” said Lallemand. “No matter what the industry, this program will establish the correct selling price for a company’s service or product, which will include all their cost of doing business.
“Many small business owners and self-employed workers don’t have the time or expertise to properly manage their finances. Computer programs exist, but are often just as difficult to operate. The MyOverhead.com service is easy-to-use and requires basic computer knowledge,” added Lallemand.
Lallemand said companies need to ask themselves a few basic yet crucial questions about their business’s financial standing: Do you know how to apply your company’s overhead to make your business successful and profitable? Do you know that your company’s overhead is constantly changing? Do you realize what your “break-even” cost is for your business to stay afloat? If you don’t know the answers, or are uncertain of them, you’re not maximizing the potential that could be realized in the business.
“I simply ask most business owners if they have any idea how much it’s costing to run the company,” said Lallemand. “Some can’t even give me a figure, but what worries me most is that so many companies simply guess. The fact is a high percentage of companies don’t realize the cost of sustaining their business. This is especially prevalent in start-up businesses, which is why so many of them fail in the first year. When you think you know your overhead, but aren’t close to the correct number, you have a false sense of profit.
“Some companies don’t even know if they will make a profit this year, let alone how much,” added Lallemand. “When you can accurately calculate your profit for the year, you can better manage your business and make major decisions for its growth. Also, companies don’t realize how quickly and often the cost of doing business changes.”
Business owners nationwide have used MyOverhead.com and found the results invaluable. While calculating overhead is the initial product goal, the service provides peace-of-mind in knowing your finances are accurate.
“Before using MyOverhead.com, we thought we knew how much it costs to run our day-to-day operation,” said one Iowa-based business owner. “It didn’t take long to realize just how wrong we were.
“An effective manager has to know where a company’s finances stand at all times. The MyOverhead.com system does just that, even when individual business costs change,” he said. “We not only increased our bottom line as a result, but the confidence it gave our company allowed us to bid and take-on larger projects.”
What makes the program unique is that a company is able to enter and lock numbers into the system. “Instead of bidding against other companies, we bid as low as we can and still know we can make a profit,” he added. “This is important because it lets us know our bid numbers are not just competitive, but profitable and practical.
In this case, once a “break-even” figure has been established MyOverhead.com can be used to test potential outcomes of a business decision such as a bid on an electrical job. It’s like a built-in negotiator. As different numbers are punched in, the profit will increase or decrease with each change. Then the company knows how differently the job will lay out with time constraints and workload. Also, if there are companies who can beat this price, it will tell you whether it is financially beneficial for your business to compete with their numbers on a particular bid.
“Once we receive a job, we don’t have to be worried about the numbers, and every expense, because we have confidence in our bid. This peace-of-mind lets you manage labor, timescale, schedules and specs, rather than constantly worrying about whether you built in enough money to make a profit. Now our job managers can better supervise and complete the job at hand,” added the Iowa business owner. “Also, we’re able to maintain a high level of quality in our jobs, where we may have otherwise taken shortcuts because we lacked confidence in the bid. When jobs are done with quality, clients are happy, and we keep getting work.”
The Iowa business owner said MyOverhead.com provides a secondary deep bench. “Because of the structure and nature of how it is setup, it provides us with a level of expertise we may not be able to produce in-house cost-effectively. We still have people here to manage finances, but if we use this service, coupled with the estimator, it provides us with a secondary back office. We draw on the knowledge and research that is already established in MyOverhead.com. We don’t have to re-invent the wheel or design our own programs.”
For many companies, this will help bring their office up to speed. “It’s taken us out of the old pencil and paper days of trying to calculate overhead,” said the Akron, Ohio, office manager. “It’s revolutionized the way overhead is calculated for us. The simplicity of using the system was just astounding. I’m not a computer wiz, but the MyOverhead.com system was extremely easy to use.”
“It is a user-friendly program that has made my experience gratifying, convenient and a positive resource for my company. We have a team in the office that is responsible for maintaining the system at various levels. Some people deal with taxes, while others deal with payroll, so logically, they are responsible for updating that part of the MyOverhead.com system,” added the Iowa business owner.
The system is self-contained, and requires no outside tools beyond a computer. Plus, the MyOverhead.com staff provides a high level of customer service.
“Any time we have a question or need help, the MyOverhead.com staff has been there for us,” he said. “They have been friendly since the very beginning, and it truly feels they’ve structured their business to specifically help you be successful.”
One company in Cincinnati, Ohio, has benefited so much by the MyOverhead.com calculating system that they see it not as an outside contracted service, but as a member of their team.
“MyOverhead.com has been such an instrumental member of our team, assisting our staff in looking at overhead in another way. It has made our company take a hard look at how we compile information in regard to overhead,” he said.
MyOverhead.com contains other helpful tools to aid companies on various business decisions. For instance, there are reports that not only summarize current overhead, but also history reports, which are very useful for long-term comparison of the status of your business. There is a burden calculator to help evaluate payroll and employee status by creating reports concerning all wages and benefits for active and inactive workers. The MyOverhead.com calculating system can virtually create any detailed overhead report summarizing items that are of major concern or interest to your business. All reports can easily be printed for use away from the computer.
In addition, there are a number of calculators: a separate “break even” calculator to help project minimum work volume requirements; a future projection calculator to explore every aspect of overhead scenario, present and future; a profit multiplier which gives the proper figure to multiply by for any given percentage of mark up; and a project completion calculator for the number of workers and days necessary to complete a specific project.
New services will be added to MyOverhead.com in the coming months. Forthcoming features will be available and specifically customized for the following industries: retail, manufacturing, real estate, and a “unit” system for companies with various divisions.
Accessible from any online computer, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, members can log in to this secure (SSL, 128-bit encryption), password-protected Website and have immediate access to their business.
For more information about MyOverhead.com, to take a free tour of the product, or to purchase the service, visit www.myoverhead.com, email customerservice@myoverhead.com, or call (330) 633-4880.
The MyOverhead.com Affiliate Program
Companies interested in the MyOverhead.com service likely know and correspond with other companies of the same industry or make-up, sharing similar needs. Therefore, MyOverhead.com offers an affiliate program to member companies, giving them the opportunity to generate an ongoing stream of income, with really no obligation or commitment.
The only requirement for this unique program is to “copy and paste” a link from MyOverhead.com to your own web site. This unique link will be specially coded to track orders automatically. The company offers a tiered commission system based on the number of subscriptions sold by each company.
“We pride ourselves not only on customer service, but entering into a working relationship with our clients,” said Mark Lallemand, spokesperson for My Overhead Corporation. “This program further encourages that relationship and is a risk-free opportunity for companies.”
