Emergencies and Insurance Tips for your Small Business

Insurance (Photo credit: Christopher S. Penn)

Today we’re going to continue our series on preparing and dealing with emergencies. Today we’re going to talk about emergencies related to where you tutor. This could be either your home or an office. If you travel to tutor your students, this won’t necessarily apply to you (just make sure you have some good car insurance).

This could happen in a number of different ways, fire, earthquake or other natural disaster.

Prevention –

Make sure you have a smoke / carbon monoxide detectors in your home. If you’re wondering where the best place is to put your detectors and how many you need in your home, you can find that information below.

http://firemarshals.org/rfsi/smokealarmfacts.html

You want to keep your home / office in good repair. If you even think your roof is leaking, then you’ll want to take care of it before it causes a much bigger and costlier problem. Most electric companies will give you a free energy assessment. These will help you to discover other potential problems (places where leaks could occur).

Insurance –

You’ll want to sit down and talk to your insurance agent. You’ll want to discuss your current insurance policy and you’ll want to explain to them about your business and if they offer business insurance. Once you get a solid quote from them you’ll want to shop around so you can get the best coverage for the money you’ll be spending.

After you’ve updated your insurance policy you’ll want to make sure you carefully document the things you have. You’ll want to take videos and pictures; you’ll want to make copies of the invoice for how much you paid for each of your major items. I usually put this all on a memory stick. You’ll then want to take the memory stick and put it in a safety deposit box at the bank. You’ll also want to make a couple of other copies, give one to a close friend and the other you can keep in your safe. Another option is to save a copy of this on the cloud.

You can find more information about insurance at the following links:

http://www.businessinsurance.org/

http://www.sba.gov/community/blogs/community-blogs/business-law-advisor/business-liability-insurance-%E2%80%93-tips-protecting-

http://www.sba.gov/category/navigation-structure/starting-managing-business/managing-business/running-business/insuranc

Enjoy your Tuesday.