Five Legal Must-Know Tips for Your New Small Business

Successfully running a small business requires managing employees, pleasing customers and working with suppliers. However, you can do all these things and still be in violation of the law. Below are five legal tips that every new small business owner should take to heart.

1. Properly Register Your Business’s Name

One thing you should not overlook protecting is your business’s name. If you don’t properly register your business’s name, you could be putting yourself at risk. While it is not required for a sole proprietorship, it is still a very good idea. It will keep you legally covered from possible challenges to your ownership of the name as well as help safe guard your trademarks.

2. Understand and Keep Track of Your Business’s Accounting

As a small business owner, you can’t simply task your business’s accounting to an employee. If someone cooks the books at your business, you will certainly be held responsible. Your financial livelihood and the fate of your business could be ruined. Instead, you need to stay on top of your business’s accounting at all times. This means being educated on the subject yourself. If you don’t know how it works, you won’t be able to know where your money is going.

3. Make Sure Your Business Is HIPAA Compliant

Due to a healthcare law, HIPAA, business owners cannot send employees’ private health information through certain modes of communication that are not deemed to be secure. This means if you send this information through something like Hotmail, you and your business could be in trouble. You have to make sure that you use HIPAA compliant modes of communication. If you send information through email, you must utilize a HIPAA compliant email application. This will ensure the utmost security of private health information. But email isn't the only means of communication. If you use your cell phone, you must use a HIPAA compliant text messaging application.

4. Check Your Contracts

Most legal problems in the business world boil down to one thing. That is contracts or the lack of them. For all business relationships, whether it is your relationship with employees or someone else, you need to make sure that the proper contracts exist. They also have to be extremely specific and free of vagueness.

5. Make Sure You Have a Sexual Harassment Policy in Place

If you don’t have an actual policy for reporting and dealing with sexual harassment in your business, your business can certainly be put through a lot of pain in the future. Be proactive and develop and institute an actual plan before any problems ever develop.