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Survey: Small businesses had a good year in 2015

GLENVIEW - Suggesting positive news for the economy, it was at least a good year for most small businesses in 2015, according to the November 2015 SurePayroll Small Business Scorecard survey.

According to the survey, 38 percent had a good to great year and 12 percent had their best year ever. A total of 36 percent had an average year, while 11 percent had a below average year and 3 percent had a bad year.

Optimism among small business owners about the economy is up 3 percent from a year ago, 5 percent from two years ago, and 8 percent from three years ago.

Steady growth is a theme for small business owners at the moment, as 54 percent say they expect a certain percentage growth every year, compared to 28 percent who said they expect it to stay the same year to year. Just 18 percent said

it's too hard to predict.

"I don't think we can say we're seeing any kind of a boom period, but definitely a positive trend, and our data is coming from a diverse set of businesses," said SurePayroll General Manager Andy Roe.

SurePayroll works with a wide swatch of clients that were included in their survey, which represented businesses ranging from financial planners and insurance agents to dental and legal practices to manufacturers to restaurants to real estate to child care.

"Their challenges and successes varied," said Roe. "Some faced stiff competition in their industry or tax increases, others are located in areas driven by the energy industry so you saw a challenge with low oil prices. Finding talented new hires also continues to be a challenge.

"On the flip side, many of the success stories we heard about had to do with having a great team, bringing in more skilled employees and being able to pay them more. Just like they do with bringing on and retaining new clients, a lot of small business owners take pride in the people they're able to hire and keep with the company."

Looking forward to 2016, small business owners talked about revenues growing while needing to manage expenses, and the implementation of new technology and equipment as possible themes.

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