It’s Payroll Time (Part III)

Alrighty! So as promised, I asked around in search of the two questions: “How do you interpret deductions remittal dates?” and “Is vacation pay mandatory?“

The answer to interpreting deduction remittal dates, I pretty much realized was a silly question. For new or regular remitters, your deductions should be in the hands of the cra on or before the 15th day of the month AFTER the month you made them (confusing sentence but I swear I got it from a government site). That means, that if the next 15th is May 15th, you should be submitting your April 01 to April 15 and April 15 to April 30 pay periods (If you work with biweekly pay periods starting at the beginning and middle of each month). You are also able to apply for different periods such as quarterly or accelerated. For those who pay out a lot of salary, they usually opt for the accelerated option.

Is vacation pay mandatory? After much much interrogation of just about everyone I knew, I resorted to calling the CRA at 1 800-959-5525. However, their line is pretty much busy 100% of the time. A better place to call with friendly service is the Employment Standards Board or ESB at 1 800-663-3316. They offer 24 hour service on all sorts of questions. So what was the answer? It is YES. Even if you are employing a part-time working, vacation pay is absolutely necessary and should start to accrue after 5 days of employment. So there you go! Thanks to my helpful friend Elaine at ESB, that is the information I pass on to you. Happy payrolling!

What makes you different?

So I guess this is a little bit of old news, but on April 24th, I sent my poor partner (which I love to boss around) to an event called ”Marketing Essentials For Small Business Owners” which is hosted by a success coach named Sue Clement. She always gives out good advice and the time I got a chance to meet her, she was really sweet and kind. Anyway, it was an opportunity to learn and to network so, naturally, I sent my social butterfly of a partner to go in my stead since I had class at BCIT that day.

The content was nothing out of the ordinary and nothing my partner and I had not heard during our time at the Sauder School of Business at UBC. The networking was also a bit hard to do, considering most people came in groups and rarely detached themselves to mingle.

However, there was one thing that really got imprinted in my head. At one point my partner text messages me and asks, “What makes us different?” My brain scrambled to use marketing jargon in fancy sentences that sounded important but were really not. Apparently, this question had been posed to my partner by a curious man that had sat beside him during the lecture. My partner obviously had learned well from our commerce program and regurgitated the exact same senseless but fancy sentences that made the other nod in satisfaction and return to the ongoing lecture by Sue. It was then that I realized Jive had been so desperate in getting new clients that it really had no direction.

Our only competitive advantage at the time is low cost, however, as most business men know, this is not a sustainable way of differentiating yourself amongst competitors. For new businesses like mine, you must remember that no matter how desperate you are at trying to find clients, you have to have a direction, otherwise all your efforts that are directed at no particular audience will seem like a lot of work for little results.

Never underestimate the power of a good target audience and a sustainable competitive advantage. As for Jive, my partner and I sat down and re-thought about our vision and mission statements as well as our competitive advantage. We figured something out, but it’s definitely a secret. You can also never underestimate the power of first mover advantage .