It’s Payroll Time (part I)

So the other day, I decided I was much too broke to endure working for absolutely no monetary compensation. My bank account is quickly becoming non-existent and my stress levels are reaching an all time high. It is time to take some money out of PG (since it is the company that has high profit margins)! The problem is… I recall obtaining a payroll account number… but I have no idea what to do with it! Until now, I have been postponing dealing with the constant letters that are sent to my office by calling into the “telereply” and selecting the “I have no paid employees at the moment” option. All I need to do to make my pay legitimate is to complete a “simple” form that the Canadian Revenue Agency sends monthly. I say “simple” because looking at the calculations for EI, CPP, etc and all the other considerations that must be taken into account, calculating payroll deductibles is not an easy task! For those of you like me who do not have a software that can do this stuff for us or have any real accounting experience, “PDOC” becomes our saviour. PDOC or Payroll Deductions Online Calculator is a quick, easy and accurate way of making all payroll deduction calculations. Great, right? Actually, it is not so great when you realize the page takes an eternity to load! I am pretty sure I “agreed” for an hour! When I finally was able to access it and clicked on “Calculate Gross Income” the page was not found! Talk about professional government site! I needed my money so I called tech support and reported the broken link. The very nice woman put me on hold for about 15 to 20 minutes as her page loaded as well, agreed that there was a possible problem with the site and finally claimed she would get it looked into. That was fine with me, I have a few dollar bills to get me by.

Today, I groggily got ready for class (as usual) and somehow managed to drag myself to school with properly matched shoes and relatively coordinated attire. “Time to get my money!” I thought to myself during the whole morning’s class. Little did I know that what was waiting in store for me was not a lovely properly working site, but a site that was a lot less functional than the day before. I have been trying to get passed the “I agree” a couple of times with the school’s network (which I have been told is actually quite speedy) without avail. When I miraculously get passed the “gateway of hell” I am faced with a new obstacle… an Apache server failure. Great. I am sure I won’t be starving anytime soon, but if the site is still completely disfunctional by tomorrow, I will have to call tech support again and give her a piece of my mind! And for those who know me, giving the lady a piece of my mind pretty much means I will politely ask her to look into it again. Ahh!! Let’s just hope that I can get some money soon, if not, I will be resorting to Mac Donald’s for the next few days for lunch. Who can argue with Mc Deal Meals!?

Hello readers!

What my teachers at UBC never told me was that I would barely use half of what I learned during my four excruciating years there. I graduated eagerly expecting to be making a comfortable salary and have employers fight to have me in their company. Little did I know, fancy titles and high salaries are not easy to come by when you don’t have “connections”. I soon started working for a great little company that I enjoyed very much, but found myself starved for more knowledge and responsibility. I couldn’t bare sitting at a small desk all day doing simple repetitive tasks and making less money than I was making in a catering company before I even graduated. It was time to take action! I decided to start a company. With my super smart and funny UBC friend as my partner, Jive Promotions started. Essentially, the company is a promotional product distributor that serves all of Canada. In the meantime, my dad thought it would be a good lesson to make me start a company with him. In this case, it is an import/export business of machinery. Little did I realize how hard having your own business would be; let alone two businesses! There is so much to learn and so little room for error! With my diminishing savings account and barely any time to work (as I decided to further my artistic abilities by attending BCIT), this blog is meant to share with others not only the struggles and hardship, but also the fun and excitement that comes with starting your own business.