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Protect Your Business Assets - Know the Rules

Written by: Deborah Osgood

Article Overview: Today's litigious and highly complex business arena invites competition and challenge. On the one hand, you want to be able to call upon a talented staff or subcontract talent to help you out when you need it, yet employees mean having valid human resource policies and practices in place and subcontract relationships can require savvy negotiating techniques. How does a self-employed, SOHO or small business owner cover his or her assets without putting their lawyer’s children through college?

Protect Your Business Assets - Know the Rules

Today's litigious and highly complex business arena invites competition and challenge. On the one hand, you want to be able to call upon a talented staff or subcontract talent to help you out when you need it, yet employees mean having valid human resource policies and practices in place and subcontract relationships can require savvy negotiating techniques. How does a self-employed, SOHO or small business owner cover his or her assets without putting their lawyer's children through college?

In a recent Wall Street Journal article titled, How to Avoid Employee Lawsuits, Colleen Debaise writes, "Small business owners might be surprised to learn that they are vulnerable to the same worker complaints that plague corporate America. In particular, more employees are suing companies for violating wage-and-hour rules, typically claiming they weren't paid overtime."

In a recent blog posting by Apple Tree Business Services, Steve Feinberg reported that both the IRS and the state labor departments have made recent changes to the criteria used to distinguish independent contractors from employees. The objective is to crack down on many employers who are choosing to avoid certain rules, regulations and costs associated with having an employee versus a subcontractor worker.

These are only two examples of many other situations where as an entrepreneur of any type and size of business, you want to know the rules, practices and legal guidelines to protect yourself, your assets and your business. The good news is that thanks to the Internet, database technology and savvy entrepreneurial strategies that productively address such relevant needs, you can access comprehensive libraries that offer access to thousands of commonly used business documents, contracts and legal forms. For example, companies like Biztree offer over 1,500 of these templates to address myriad issues such as human resources, sales, finance, real estate and intellectual property.

There are other companies like Biztree that offer Internet access to these materials. Some of them allow you to purchase one document or contract template as you need it, and others provide you with a complete package of hundreds of forms to download all at once. While there are pros and cons to each approach, having access to a complete library on your own server allows you to not only use what you need when you need it, but to also educate yourself about documents that you might not have known existed and that offer certain advantages. This may include marketing plan templates, independent contractor agreements and sales proposals, for example.

Additional advantages to this convenient online service include access to document templates in multiple languages. Many ventures today are doing business overseas on a regular basis. Being able to access a form in multiple languages such as English, Spanish, French and Chinese, might just offer that extra negotiation advantage or legal protection required to close a sale and provide the peace of mind you want to know that the deal is solid.

In summary, today's business environment is highly litigious and complex. Using an Internet-based service to access sales proposal, legal agreements and related business documents not only offers you protection and competitive advantages, but is also allows you to focus on what you do best and take advantage of what expert lawyers, consultants and specialized professionals have created without paying professional level fees.

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Article Tags: business documents, legal agreements, sales proposals, templates



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