As a business owner, making money is a top priority. However, many entrepreneurs need help with figuring out how to pay themselves properly without putting their businesses at risk.
How you pay yourself depends on your business entity and IRS rules. However, knowing the steps to follow can help you avoid common mistakes and pay yourself fairly.
Determine Your Needs
As a business owner, you must balance your personal and business needs. As it expands, finding ways to pay yourself a salary or other compensation for all the hard work you put into your business is crucial.
There are no set rules on how to pay yourself as a business owner. Still, it’s essential to understand your options to choose the suitable compensation method for your unique situation. In addition, you’ll need to consider the legal structure of your company, your business’s finances, and IRS rules.
One of the most popular methods for paying yourself is to take an owner’s draw, a form of compensation that lets you withdraw money from your business account each month. While this method can be more flexible than a salary, you should remember that it comes with tax implications, so it’s a good idea to speak with an accountant to ensure you’re making the most of your available resources.
Another common method is to pay yourself a fixed percentage of your business’s profits, making it easier to motivate yourself to continue working in your business. It also allows you to adjust your compensation as your business grows. However, it’s important to remember that this method can be more expensive than other options.
Set a Budget
There are many different things to take into consideration while creating a budget. It includes determining how much you should pay yourself as a business owner, ensuring you have enough money in the bank to cover expenses, and spending only what you can afford.
The first step in creating a budget is to look at your past revenue and expenses. It will allow you to estimate your future income and expenditures accurately.
This data is essential because it will help you determine how much you should pay yourself as a small business owner. It will depend on your company’s structure, such as whether you’re a sole proprietor or a partnership.
You’ll also want to consider fixed costs, which are expenses that don’t change from month to month. These include things like rent, salaries, insurance, and employee benefits.
Once you’ve identified your fixed costs, subtract that number from your total revenue to get the total amount you should be paying yourself. It should be enough to meet your personal needs and your business’s financial goals.
It would be best if you also made it a point to set aside a bit of extra cash for unexpected expenses. It will prevent you from being forced to cut back on your operations if something goes wrong, such as equipment breaking down or inventory being damaged by floods.
Create a Schedule
Running a business is a stressful job that requires you to pay yourself well enough to maintain a household and provide for your family. However, income from your business is essential for your mental health and can help you decide your future goals and priorities.
Creating a schedule helps you prioritize your work and life tasks, keep track of deadlines, and ensure you don’t miss important events. It also enables you to achieve a healthy work-life balance and maintain good communication between you and your employees.
To create a schedule, list your work tasks and responsibilities for each day, week, and month in one place. It will allow you to get your day started quickly and eliminate distractions.
To keep up with your daily work and obligations, you can also include personal errands, family events, or doctor visits in your agenda. It will also reduce stress and make your life easier as a result.
A schedule can also be customized to include specific shifts most appropriate for certain employees based on their core strengths.
Employees who feel valued in their work roles are less likely to leave a company or ask for time off. Having a clear and organized schedule for your team members makes it easy to honor their requests and avoid double-scheduling or over-scheduling. It can also help you retain good relationships with workers who can step in on short notice, such as former employees or interviewees who didn’t make the cut.
Set a Goal
As a small business owner, you’ll have a lot on your plate, so you need to set clear goals that push you to succeed. Goals should be SMART, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
When setting a goal, it is essential to consider whether it will help your business improve its long-term profitability. It is also a good idea to break these goals into short-term objectives, which can be broken down into actionable steps.
If you use a traffic light system to indicate your progress on each action item, seeing what action you need to take next will be simple. It will help you avoid feeling overwhelmed with tasks vying for your attention and ensure that you take the most effective actions at each stage of your goal-setting process.
As a sole proprietor, you may pay yourself an owner’s draw or salary from your business profits. However, it is essential to determine your expenses before deciding on a compensation amount. It will give you a better idea of how much money you need to meet your business and personal needs.
You should be able to establish a reasonable monthly salary or owner’s draw from your business. Calculate your living costs and your business’ performance numbers to determine your needs.
