Math in the Life of an Entrepreneur
             The entrepreneurs that I choose to work with were my parents. They have owned two of their own fast food restaurant for seven years. The name of our two restaurants is Sneaky Pete's. It is a fast food chain out of Birmingham Alabama. My dad originally worked for Wilson's sporting goods for thirteen years. After that he worked for several other corporations until he decided to leave the corporate world and start his own business.
             Our restaurants are small and we have an accountant that helps do a lot of the paper work. One of the main things that my they have to deal with is the payroll. My mom prepares it herself each week with the aid of payroll software on her computer. Our employees are paid by the hour. They start off at minimum wage until they have proven themselves as an asset to the business. If they work over forty hours during the week then, they will receive time and half for the hours they worked over plus their normal wage for the first forty hours. In her records she keeps an on going individual earnings record on each employee. She must adjust the records each week accordingly to each employee's earning for that week. She also keeps track of their gross earnings for tax purposes.
             When she writes the checks she uses software to help figure up the deductions that must be taken out of every employee's check. These deductions are FICA, state unemployment, federal unemployment, and Medicare. Each quarter we have to pay equal to the amount of state and federal withholding that were deducted form each employee. Along with this we have to pay royalties to the franchisee each quarter.
             To help keep the business organized and well managed my parents use several spreadsheets weekly and monthly to keep an eye on the financial status of the business. Fist they prepare a weekly and monthly sales verse expense spreadsheet. This helps them analyze all the money they hav...