Moving to a new place can be both one of the most exciting times in your life and one of the most nerve-wracking. Part of the process involves updating your contact information with the many accounts that you have with different companies and institutions. You need to move your cable TV service. You need to update your credit card information. You need to update your WHOIS information.

If you are a service provider who requests the mailing address and other contact information from your customers, it is in your best interest to make the “change address” function as seamless and easy to do as possible. If your website is already set up with a self-serve function, that can be a huge plus for consumers. However, there is one other element that should be included.

Customers always appreciate it when they can post-date their account changes to some point in the future. By doing so, they can take their time to update their addresses days, weeks, or even months ahead of their actual moving day. That removes one more stressor from the process of moving from one home to another; that’s one fewer thing crunched into the day or two it takes to move.

Even if you don’t offer a self-serve function on your website for account updates, it is important to have this kind of feature implemented in your CMS solution. A customer should be able to call in advance and have the mailing address updated for a future date.

Just as there are so many articles on how to start a business, how to set up a business, and how to run a business, there is the other part to the life cycle. It may not be a bridge that you want to cross for some time, but you may get there eventually.

When you do, you need to make sure that you go through the proper steps of closing a business. Remember that this is quite different from selling a business to another owner, resulting in a whole other set of official forms and documents.

For businesses based in the United States, the IRS website has a checklist for closing a business. This checklist not only includes some of the necessary steps, but it also has many of the government forms too. These include filing your final employment tax form, issuing final wage to employees, reporting your final capital gains or losses, and reporting your corporate dissolution or liquidation.

As always, it is best to consult with a professional if you have any questions whatsoever. You want to make sure that you do everything right so you don’t have something come back to bite you years down the line.

It goes with the territory. When you go into business for yourself, you take on a world of additional responsibilities. Let’s say that you have already registered for a business number (which includes registering for a GST number), but you’re moving your office or store to another location. How do you inform the Canada Revenue Agency of this change?

In the instance of a business registered in British Columbia, the easiest solution is to go through the OneStop Business Address Change Service. When you through this online service, you effectively inform multiple government agencies of the address change all at once. That makes the process much faster and more streamlined. The service allows you to change your address for GST/HST, payroll, import/export/MCIT, corporate income tax, WorkSafeBC, and other agencies.

If you want to use the OneStop Business Address Change Service, however, you will need a BCeID. Thankfully, the registration process for that is also available online. The five step process takes about 15 minutes, assuming that you qualify and have all the necessary information in front of you. After that, you can take your BCeID and use it with the OneStop service described above.

Make sure that you keep your records up to date! This includes informing the appropriate governing agencies and organizations of any changes, including changes to your mailing and business address, in a timely fashion.

Most businesses seem to understand the importance of having a presence on the web. Many of them understand why they should have a website and why it is important to have their basic contact information on that site. They might also engage in Facebook, Twitter, Google Local, Yelp, Urbanspon, and any number of other networks.

However, far too many restauranteurs don’t seem to understand how many web-savvy users decide to use the Internet. Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to offer PDF versions of the menu through the site. This way, potential diners can download the menu for later viewing.

That said, it is equally important to have a non-PDF version of the menu available on the website. Some computers and browsers can sometimes have trouble opening PDF files hosted on the web. Further still, more and more people are surfing the web on their smartphones and tablets; viewing PDF files on these devices is far from ideal.

Yes, it may take a few more minutes of your time, but it is important to have a “regular” (non-PDF) version of the menu on every restaurant website. This can also help potential diners with copying and pasting the text as needed.

As you may already know, Canadians all across the country will be heading to the polls on Monday, May 2 to elect a new federal government. This includes not only the prime minister, but also the candidates for each of the individual ridings.

What does this mean as a small business owner? During a recent visit to Pho Thai Hoa in Vancouver, we noticed that there were political posters on the windows and doors of the Vietnamese restaurant. They were endorsing a particular candidate from a particular political party.

While there is certainly nothing wrong with being vocal about your political views as an individual, it may be questionable whether a business should be taking the same approach. Is the assumption that the owner(s) will be voting for this candidate or will the entire staff be voting this way? Is the business encouraging you to vote the same way?

Whatever the case, the explicit endorsement of a particular candidate may win over fans who have similar political views, but it may also have the opposite effect on potential customers with differing views. Whether or not you choose to have posters and pamphlets for a candidate is completely up to you, but realize that there are both pros and cons to doing this when it comes to the long-term success of your small business.

One of the bigger business stories to emerge last week came when Cisco announced it was ending its Flip Video camera department. As you may recall, Cisco bought the Flip Video business from Pure Digital in 2009 and it seemed like a good move at the time.

The Flip Video (which spawned the Flip Ultra, Flip Mino, Flip UltraHD, and Flip MinoHD) looked like it could be very successful, providing a very easy and accessible way to record relatively high quality video. Cisco built up the software and brought a lot of marketing muscle to the table, but it did not really do enough in terms of innovation, especially in the face of the smartphone and other competing devices.

Cisco is a company that has always specialized in networking products, both under its Linksys brand name and as Cisco infrastructure. The Flip Video represented an entirely different line of products, approaching consumer electronics with no direct link (no pun intended) to networking. And that might have been one of the reasons why Cisco ultimately had to close the division.

Perhaps one of the take home lessons from this news is that, as a business, it may be better to stick with what you know, master that niche, and do positively everything you can to be a leader in that field. At the same time, you can’t exactly blame Cisco for looking to expand into the increasingly popular (and lucrative) world of consumer electronics.