you. Also, if the independent contractor is injured while working for you, the workers compensation appeals board will almost always rule in favor of the employee and against independent contractor status, unless your worker genuinely has her own business. This means you may end up paying huge sums if one of your workers becomes disabled while you dont have insurance. In other words, trying to save a few pennies on this insurance is just not worth the risk.     Once you arrive at a good estimate for your total insurance bill, inquire about deferred payment programs. Most companies that offer them often require that you pay 20% of the total premium up front each year and the balance in ten payments. For purposes of your Profit and Loss Forecast, divide the total annual insurance payment by twelve and enter those figures.     4f.Accounting/Books. You can do your own books if you like working with numbers. Chances are, however, youll be so busy with the business, you wont have time.     One good approach is to budget for a CPA to set up your books initially and to hire a part-time bookkeeper to do day to day upkeep. If you are starting small, your initial cost should be under $500 and your monthly cost under $200 to keep the records up to date and to prepare routine employee withholding tax returns, statements, etc., assuming you close the register each day. Once a year you will pay the CPA another few hundred dollars to review this work and help you prepare your yearly returns. If your business is going to be fairly good-sized from the start, your figures will be larger. programs for small businesses. The program you need depends on how big your business might grow to be, what extra features like statements or payroll you want the computer to provide and so forth. You can research the different programs yourself, but remember to keep in mind the features you may need later on after your business has grown. Or you can look into an outside service, which may recommend a program to fit your business and computer, set up the books and run parallel for a month or two to make sure that you dont lose any data. The systems can be very handy and time-saving if you have no strong attachment to a paper record, or are willing to print out the documents you may want.     When designing a bookkeeping system for your business, remember that it costs a lot of time and money to change it-make sure it really fits you and your business. (See for a further discussion of computers in business.)     Make as good an estimate as you can and enter this figure on your Profit and Loss Forecast. You can take the year total and divide it by twelve, or you can enter the amounts when you think they will be paid.     4g.Interest. This line of your Profit and Loss Forecast concerns the interest portion of the payments you make on any money you borrow. Unless you have an interest-only loan with a balloon payment at the end, your interest payment will vary from month to month even though you pay the same monthly amount.     Example:Joanie Ricardo borrows $50,000 from the bank to open a Gelatos Ice Cream store in Providence, Rhode Island. She agrees to repay it in 36 equal monthly installments of $1,660.80, including 12% interest on the unpaid balance. While Joanies monthly payments remain equal, the portion of the payment that is credited to principal increases every month, while the portion of her payment going toward interest decreases.     But, lets say that you dont know how much money youll borrow at this time. After all, one of the main reasons for doing a business plan is to decide how much money youll need to finance your business. In that case you have three choices: