What does a career woman with a checkbook, an examiner for an auditing firm, or the bookkeeper of a fledgling souvenir shop have in common? Accounting. Accounting is an integral part of business. Fortunes are made, lost, risked, or gambled away on the advice of accountants. Profits are effectively used or woefully mismanaged upon the counsel of financial managers. There is no denying the importance of accounting, particularly when it comes to recording how much or how quickly a business has grown. At the individual level, you use accounting to make personal financial decisions - calculating varying rates of car payments, for example, or assessing how long it would take to pay off a house mortgage. At a macrocosmic level, financial professionals use accounting to gather information, track transactions, plan purchases, or control finances. This section can help you navigate your way around the complex world of accounting. Whether you are running a business or are simply ringing up purchases from a grocery counter, you can use the articles below to better your understanding of accounting and accounting practices. Accounting Payroll Is your firm up to speed when it comes to getting salaries into employees' pockets? Or is your company frequently swamped with complaints about wrongly computed deductions, unpaid overtime, and improperly withheld taxes? Payroll is a tricky aspect of business, and it does not matter what kind of business it forms a part of. Whether it is only for a handful of workers or for a multi-national corporation numbering 20,000, there is nothing simple about the payroll system. As a matter of fact, payroll departments the whole world over often find themselves facing issues of varying importance from ensuring that staff are paid on time, contractual obligations are fulfilled, and all withholding duties are met. Payroll administration goes well and beyond payroll processing. It involves, among many others, financial management, constant and consistent monitoring for fraud and unauthorized disbursements, safeguarding assets, eliminating errors, and reducing the potential for errors. This section contains a horde of information about payroll - from generally accepted accounting principles and compliance with controls inside and outside the system to tips for improving payroll functions. Advertising Can you sell ice to Eskimos? Convince a movie mogul he needs to buy a new Lear or another Cessna? Talk Kate Moss into insuring her cheekbones to the cool tune of $5 million? With effective advertising, you can! Advertising is only one of the numerous marketing tools firms use to catch the attention of prospective clients. The more effective the advertising, the more interest a product or service generates. However, advertising goes beyond the creation of ads, billboards, and infomercials. It involves research-intensive processes - from identifying target markets, for example, and evaluating test subjects' response to formulating a product's selling points or branding slant. In the old days, the focus was simply delivering the message to as big an audience as possible. Today, trends have changed. Companies spend on customer profiling, response tracking, and the utilization of newer methods, such as niche marketing and email advertising. Learn more about advertising as you read the articles below. Branding What's in a name? The answers might surprise you. A name could make or break companies and mean the difference between worldwide recognition and small-town fame. Would Xerox have captured as much audience if it had been named Photocopier? Would Google have become the household name it now is had it been named Searcher? Naming companies, products, and services is only one aspect of branding. Branding is one of the most - if not the most - vital element of any business. Forget product distribution, location, or pricing. A product's brand is its definition, the name it identifies itself by and with. A brand distinguishes a product, service, or company from everything and everyone else. With good branding, you can exponentially increase product awareness, thereby chalking up more sales. This section gives the lowdown on branding, and how you can utilize it to sell your product, service, or even yourself! Careers Employment Do you have a job or a career? If you cannot distinguish between the two, then this section is right for you. A job is work that you do to earn money. On the other hand, a career is a job you are serious about, a profession you have been doing for some time and have poured time, heart, and resources into. This section tackles concerns and issues surrounding employment - gainful or otherwise. Whether you want to learn more about job searching, salary negotiation, placement, career planning, salaries, employment agencies, interview questions, skill pricing, or workplace ethics, the articles below can help. If, in the past, there are few employment options to choose from, the field has long since widened. Now, careers and employment options are as diverse as the personality of bosses. Thanks to this evolution in employment options, you now have the option of being a crocodile wrangler, hair boiler, cow hoof trimmer, furniture tester, or even a fantasy broker!