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Owning a small business is challenging, so let us help guide you with helpful resources, articles and small business tips to keep your business running smooth.
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Customer Spotlight: Phillip Ashley Chocolates Optimizes Operations with Finli
If you think chocolate is simply chocolate, you haven’t yet met Phillip Ashley. Founder, CEO & Master Chocolatier Phillip Ashley Rix started his...
Customer Spotlight: Eternal Aerial Arts Flies with Finli
Eternal Aerial Arts, based in Houston, Texas, was born out of Owner & Instructor Peggy Ployhar’s love for the craft. After her daughter started...
Customer Spotlight: Chiao Hsin Chinese Language School Goes Digital with Finli
The Chiao Hsin Chinese Language School, a nonprofit organization, has been operating for 32 years, offering an after-school program where students...
New Law on Cash Deposits 2021
As of January 1, 2022, mobile payment apps (Venmo, PayPal, Cash App etc.) will have to report transactions of more than $600 to the IRS (Internal...
The Biggest Tax Change for 2022 that Small Businesses Need to Know
by Meg K. Wheeler, CPA and Financial Literacy Coach They say nothing in life is certain besides death and taxes. That might be true, but what is...
Small Business Spotlight: Alonzo Martial Arts
If you’re like many entrepreneurs, you have enough to worry about on a day to day basis to run your business. Figuring out how to collect payments...
What Small Business Empowerment Means to Us
Mission statements like “uplifting communities” and “empowering small businesses” get thrown around a lot. But how many companies back their words...
Four Ways Finli Powers the Small Business Community
Finli wants your business to succeed. And when your business succeeds, the small business community also wins. Our comprehensive digital payments...
What to Look for in a Next-gen Payments Platform
If you’re a small business owner, you might be on the lookout for a payments platform. Of course, some solopreneurs and freelancers still insist on...
The Power of ACH Payment Processing for Small Businesses
ACH payment processing is a simple way to save money when you get paid and help you grow your business. What Is ACH Payment Processing For Small...
The Best Payment Processing Software for Small Business and How to Eliminate Multiple Vendors
Ninety-three percent of today’s small business owners report using at least one type of technology platform to help run their business, with the...
Cash Flow Guide for Small Business – Why is it so critical?
Many small business owners check on their financial bottom line from time to time—not a bad habit to have, especially if you do it regularly. But...
The Best Payment Options for Small Businesses: Side by Side Price Comparisons
There are seemingly endless apps and services available aimed at small businesses in need of collecting payments. But business owners beware:...
The Most Important Thing Small Business Owners Need To Strive For
You are a small business owner and as such, you are on the lookout for ways to help your business thrive and achieve long-term success. You might...
Peer-to-peer Payment Apps and Tax Implications for Small Businesses
Like death, as the old saying goes, tax is one of life’s unavoidables. This is true for freelancers and small business owners as much as it is for...
The Cons of Paper Checks: 4 Benefits of Switching from Paper Checks to Digital Payments
If you run a small business and accept paper checks, you might be wondering why you should switch to a digital payment system. If checks have been...
6 Reasons to Switch to Online Invoicing
If you’ve been sending your clients paper invoices up until now, you may be considering switching to a digital invoicing system. Sending online...
5 Ways to Streamline Online Invoicing
As a self-employed business owner, invoicing your customers probably isn’t high on your list of favorite activities. Maybe your current system feels...
Freelancers: Not Getting Paid? Here’s the Solution
We’ve had our ears to the ground about issues that impact freelancers since Finli started, and understand the rich upsides - as well as the...
Inflation is Real & Likely Hurting Your Business: Here’s Some Help
For a while, predictions about inflation were everywhere but it was anyone's guess as to how they would impact us all. Today? Inflation can no...
5 Tips for Dealing With Customers Who Won’t Pay
If you’re a small business owner, you’ve been there. You complete a project for a customer and issue your invoice. Time flies by, and the payment...
A Guide to Small Business Payment Options
Introduction You run a small business, and you need to collect payments. What are your options? This article provides a guide to the different ways...
Text Your Next Invoice: Why SMS Digital Invoicing Will Be a Game Changer for Small Businesses
Introduction Today, life happens in text messages. We use texts to communicate with family and loved ones, keep up with friends and coworkers, and...
Quick Tips to Streamline Your Small Business Payment Collections
Small business owners are adept at being Jacks and Jills of all trades. They know how to perform their given service (e.g. sewing or tailoring,...
Struggling with Your Small Business’ Cash Flow? 4 Ways to Take Control
If you own a small service-based business, you’ve probably felt the squeeze of cash flow. It can be incredibly stressful to manage your income and...
How to Collect Payments from Customers: A Guide for Small Businesses
Get paid on time and in full so you can run a thriving service business. Collecting payment from customers can be one of the most exciting parts of...
Why Your Small Business Needs Digital Waivers
As a small business owner, you’ve likely already considered the various ways you can make your business go digital. From your payment processing...
Do You REALLY Understand Your Digital Sales Marketing Cost and Impact? We Are Guessing No…
Does the joke about a boat being a hole in the water you throw money into apply to your digital sales marketing costs? In this case, the hole is the...
It’s Okay to Change Your Mind and Your Business Model – Here’s Why
As a small business owner, you may have developed a great business model and dream of running a thriving business. Yet, statistics show that only a...
Psychology of the Paper Lover: “If It’s Not Broken, Don’t Fix It.” Are You Sure It’s Not Broken?
How Finli Can Help Small Businesses Simplify and Reduce the Costs of Getting Paid for Their Services Nothing is as damaging to businesses as...
What Is a Blue-Collar Entrepreneur?
Entrepreneurship Redefined When you think of a business owner, what are your initial thoughts? Mark Zuckerberg? Steve Jobs? Jeff Bezos? What...
How to Start Your Business the Right Way
Remember Michael Jordan’s lesson when starting your new business Back in 1993, Michael Jordan shocked the world by retiring from professional...
Finli is Leading the Next Generation of Payment Platforms
Introduction Melody and Dave need a new payments app. They run a small professional coaching business. Initially more of a side-gig, they now...
Could You Save Time & Money by Using a Digital Payments Solution?
If you own a services business, you can probably relate to our customers who came to Finli wanting to learn how to create invoices for free. Many of...
Housekeepers: Here are 4 Benefits of Sending Out Invoices
If you run a housekeeping business, how do you manage your payments? If you’re like many housekeepers, you might verbally tell your customers how...
New Features Update – Enhanced Invoicing Interface, Mobile Responsiveness, and More!
We’re excited to announce a few great updates to make the invoicing process simpler with more flexibility than ever. A powerful & simple...
Lori Shao: Her Journey From Immigrant to CEO
One American Dream My parents and I immigrated to the U.S. in the summer of 1991. I still remember spending our first night in a beat-up, two-door,...
Venmo Vs Stripe Vs Zelle
Why Some Payment Methods Might Cost You (and Your Customers) The peer-to-peer(P2P) transactions space is on fire with services like Venmo and Zelle...
Finli: A Payment Tool for Coaches
A tool to simplify invoicing and payments for coaches Growing up in Illinois, my afternoons were always filled with sports. I was one of the lucky...
The Data Shows it’s Time for Service Businesses to Accept Digital Payments
Payments have been evolving for a long time, but never more than in the past few years. As digital payments solutions have taken center stage, cash...
Adding The Finli Web App To Your Phone’s Home Screen
Small business owners are frequently on the move so it’s no surprise that a lot of Finli invoicing gets done on mobile devices. Using...
The Payment Stream Revolution for Small Businesses
Stacy’s tutoring business is in need of a digital payments solution. She currently works with over fifty students and receives several forms of...
What is Payment Digitalization – and Why Does Your Small Business Need It?
“The next 5 years will be more disruptive than the last 15. This is NOT business as usual. A lot of technology that came in three years ago doesn’t...
2021 Coaching Trends and Advice for 2022
Coaching is a rapidly evolving and expanding industry. In 2019, the estimated global total revenue from sports coaching was $9.3 billion U.S....
How to Start a Business from Your Side Hustle
The Great Resignation is upon us (and has been since June of this year), and while the state of the pandemic remains in the balance, one thing...
Ask a Finli Expert – How Can I Keep Up with Cash Payments?
Question Received: Hi Finli Experts, I run a daycare and I accept payments however they come - cash, check, credit & debit card....
Find Out Whether You Qualify for Facebook’s Fast Track Invoice Payout Program in 2 Minutes
Facebook is rolling out a Fast Track Invoice program on October 1, 2021. You’ve probably heard about it because they are dedicating $100...
The Real Cost of Past Due Invoices
When you run a small business, you’re an essential part of your community. Having personal relationships with your customers can make it hard to...
Why Pay with ACH?
More and more people are paying their bills through ACH, which isn’t surprising given the number of advantages it has over more traditional forms of...
3 Ways to Protect Your Small Business From Another COVID Surge
For small business owners, these past few months have been nothing short of a torturous limbo. For a couple of weeks in the summer, it looked like...
4 Ways to Attract Qualified Employees without Breaking the Bank
As the pandemic eases its grip on the US population, millions of workers are quitting their jobs. This has created a severe labor shortage; a...
How to Raise Prices Without Upsetting Your Customers
The inflation rate is the highest it has been in over a decade, and small businesses are bearing the brunt of the consequences. One way to rescue...
Why Small Businesses Need to Steer Clear of Venmo
In case you haven’t already heard, Venmo made some pretty big changes to their fees recently, and it’s bad news for small businesses. As a...
4 Ways Finli Beats Venmo, PayPal, and Square
You’ve probably heard of Venmo, Paypal, and Square, especially when small businesses everywhere have started to offer digital payment options. The...
3 Foolproof Ways to Boost Your Small Business Revenue This Summer
Consumers spend the most money in the summer. Here are three easy ways small businesses can take advantage of that and translate that into...
How to Collect Overdue Bills (Without Losing Customers)
We’ve all been there. Your customer forgets to pay their last bill, and now you’re short a couple hundred bucks. Is there a good way to collect this...
Why Small Businesses That Do Not Digitize Will Fail
Small businesses are digitizing nearly every aspect of their operations, from communication to payment collection, but they aren’t digitizing just...
7 Benefits of Using Finli For Small Service Businesses
Interested in Finli but not sure how exactly it’d be able to help your business grow? Here are seven benefits our small service businesses have...
How to Hire Your First Employee in California
Hiring in California can be a lengthy and confusing process. We wrote this step-by-step guide to detail everything you need to know before you hire...
New Features: Custom Fields and Attachments
Every small business has different needs, and their tools should reflect that. That’s why we worked on our new customizable fields and attachments...
How to Grow Your Martial Arts Business | Ultimate Guide
So you’ve started a martial arts studio. Now what’s the next step? Are you thinking about how you can enroll as many students as possible? Or how...
How Small Businesses Can Recover From the Pandemic
The pandemic has taken a toll on businesses everywhere, but there’s good news: 72% of small business owners feel optimistic about the future of...
The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Tutoring Business
Want to start a tutoring business but not sure where to start? In this comprehensive guide on how to start a tutoring business, you’ll learn...
7 Mental Health Tips for Small Business Owners
Happy Mental Health Awareness Month! It’s been a stressful past year, and running a small business has never been an easy feat to begin with. In...
Financial Literacy Terms Small Business Owners Should Know
What exactly is financial literacy? Put simply, financial literacy is the combination of financial, credit, and debt management knowledge that will...
The A-to-Z on Different Payment Methods for Small Businesses
As a small business owner, you work hard, and the money you make should belong to you. So why does it not feel that way? There are so many hidden...
3 Reasons You Should Consider Subscription Payments
When you think of subscription services, you may think of companies like Netflix, Spotify, or Hello Fresh. They’ve cemented their place in our lives...
How After-School Programs Can Prepare for Reopening
As the owner of an after-school program, you’ve been through a lot this year. From completely shutting down to scrambling to make most of your...
Customers Are Raving About Our New Pay-by-Link Feature
At Finli, we help small service businesses streamline the way they collect payments and run their business. From martial arts studios to dog...
4 Ways to Grow Your Tutoring Business
So you’ve set up your tutoring business. First of all, congratulations! Tutoring has been around for as long as there has been formal education, but...
4 Ways Finli Can Streamline Your Tutoring Business Today
When it comes to managing your small business, there are a few buzzwords that are always touted as magical time and effort savers: “digitization,”...
Make Payments Easy for Your Martial Arts Studio
Small businesses struggle with payment collection and payment options in a uniquely frustrating way. Class-based businesses like martial arts...
Using Invoices vs. Webpage Payments For Tutoring Businesses
Whether you run a dedicated tutoring business that supports your family, or you tutor in your free time to supplement your income, it’s pretty...
Why Organizing Your Martial Arts Student Data is key
When you first started your martial arts studio, you probably knew every parent and student by name, and remembered what classes they attended. You...
4 Ways Businesses Are Using Our Scheduling Feature To Save Time
Building a successful business starts as a labor of love. Your business is like a child. And just like a child, you want to surround your business...
I’m Ready To Automate My Business. Where Do I Start?
https://vimeo.com/515698708 Transcript: Congratulations! It’s a huge first step and investment in your business. We’ve seen clients that say we...
What Are The Pros and Cons of Autopay?
https://vimeo.com/515698894 Transcript: With autopay, you set it and forget it It depends on the type of business and the services offered. Let’s...
How Can I Split Payments For Families With Divorced Parents?
https://vimeo.com/515699055 Transcript: With the rise of the modern family, the request to split payments is on the rise. You may have...
What is ACH?
https://vimeo.com/515699312 Transcript: ACH is an acronym for Automated Clearing House, also known as e-check, which is a fancy phrase for the...
Finli Testimonial: Greg, Martial Arts School Owner
https://vimeo.com/516877184 Finli Testimonial: Greg, Martial Arts School Owner
Using Venmo For Business – What You Need To Know
https://vimeo.com/515698188 Can I Use Venmo for Business? Transcript: Venmo is created for people to transfer money to other people they know....
10 Ways To Get New Customers Today!
Thinking of ways to get new students or customers? Check out these 10 tips! 👉 Climb to the top. Make sure your site comes up 1st on...
New COVID-19 Grants & Resources For Small Businesses
As we continue to navigate the ever-changing pandemic and resulting regulations that impact small businesses, we want our customers who we consider...
How Small Businesses Get Creative During COVID-19: An Interview with our Founder
If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that small businesses are so resilient. Forced to close their doors due to COVID-19, many digitized...
3 Reasons You Should Offer ACH Payments TODAY
There's so many payment terms out there, you'd be forgiven for not knowing exactly what ACH is, or why it's such a great way to get customer...
What’s New at Finli
As the pandemic continues to have an impact on our livelihood, the team at Finli continues to adjust our offerings so that we can deliver the best...
How to Increase Revenue Reaching New Customers Online
Monetizing Online Classes The best way to make money offering online classes is to switch your existing customers from an in-person to a virtual...
You’re Looking To Reopen, But Are Virtual Classes Here To Stay?
Over the past few months, we’ve seen the coronavirus come, seemingly go, and then return once more in some states. Educational businesses felt the...
Updates to Finli’s Grant
A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed, publicized, and aided our Finli Grant initiative. We are proud to announce that the Finli Grant...
Exploring The World Of Martial Arts For Your Children
Lori Shao • Aug 30, 2019 Last week we suggested a few different after-school activities to keep children stimulated (and supervised) until...
Grandparents Day: Not Just Another “Hallmark Holiday”
Chelsea LaFerla • September 7, 2019 Contrary to popular belief, Grandparents Day is not a commercial holiday created to generate greeting...
How Can Digital Payments Benefit Your Education Business?
Alicia Ng • January 15, 2020 Working in the education business is incredibly rewarding as you get to impact the lives of students as they...
Zoom Tips & Tricks We’ve Heard From Our Customers
As we’ve all started to migrate online for school, martial arts classes, tutoring, and more, we wanted to share some tips from our clients on using...
A Guide To Holding Any Kind of Class Virtually
Getting set up virtually can be daunting! Scroll down for a step-by-step guide and tools to get you up and running. And for some inspiration, check...
Small Business COVID-19 Resources
Please see below for some resources we've compiled for small businesses as well as some guides to holding your classes virtually. Resources for...
COVID-19 Best Practices, A Note From Our Founder
Like many of you, I am also a small business owner with questions. How long will this pandemic last? How long will it take for the economy to bounce...
What is Social-Emotional Learning and how does it help students?
Lori Shao • July 12, 2019 This week, Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) made headlines as the House of Representatives approved $260 million in funding...
The Tax Credit That Helps Cover Summer Camp
Lori Shao • July 19, 2019 With one in five parents in America spending more than $3000 for summer care (and 12% spending more than $4000), we...
The State of Early Child Care and Education in California
Lori Shao • July 26, 2019 This past week the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at UC Berkeley and the Economic Policy Institute...
What Is An ABLE Plan and How Does It Help Families?
Lori Shao • Aug 02, 2019 Among families saving to send their kids to college, 529 savings plans are one of the most popular options. For those who...