Now that Congress has passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and is now waiting for President Obama to sign it into law, many small business owners are wondering, “How is this bill going to affect my bottom line?”

For starters, the bill does not require any business to purchase insurance for its employees, but does encourage small businesses to provide coverage.  For small businesses that do provide it’s employees with coverage, they will receive a tax credit worth 35% of a business’s hearth care costs through 2013, and half of those costs for the next two years, provided firms buy the insurance on the new insurance exchange that will begin operating in 2010.  Small Business Majority founder John Arensmeyer, predicts that the cost for insurance for small businesses would drop 20% to 30%.

CNN states, “Small businesses have shed an estimated 1.6 million jobs this year. That leaves the remaining staffers to pick up the workload left behind — and even bosses are pitching in. With their employee rosters cut to the bone, business owners are going back to the basics, re-learning to do tasks they may not have handled in years.”

When small businesses are started, business owners handle everything from emptying the trash to ordering the paper. As the business grows owners and mangers focus on the overall well being of the company but this does not mean they should only know how to operate their business on paper; in fact business owners and mangers need to know how to physically run their business, stepping in from time to time. “In a small business — if the business is a successful business — you probably always have the manager rolling up their sleeves.”

Due to the current economy slump many businesses, especially small businesses, have drastically cut down on Business Travel. A recent study by Oxford Economics, “found a link between travel and corporate profitability. Each dollar spent on travel by a U.S. company can generate an average $3.80 in profit and $12.50 in increased revenue.”

Next time you are debating visiting a current client or a potential client remember, “cuts in business travel that would generally be (considered) penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

For years, small businesses competing with big corporations have encountered many problems while trying to penetrate into the target market. The Small Business Web is helping small businesses better compete with Google’s of the world. “The Small Business Web is a movement to bring together like-minded, customer-obsessed software companies to integrate our respective products and make life easier for small businesses. While there are many products available for small business owners on the Web, the approach we’re taking is to use each others APIs to provide a high-level of integration between these applications and create a more seamless experience for our customers.”

Business Week states, “The Small Business Web represents a fundamentally different way of doing business, where potential competitors open themselves to collaboration.” Maybe collaboration is the key to your success!

The Wall Street Journal reports, “Despite the economic slowdown, downsized small businesses are offering rewards to remaining employees to boost morale and compensate them for doing additional work. Employers are sponsoring office sports teams, hosting postwork social hours and permitting flexible work schedules. In return, some are seeing savings on overhead costs or increases in revenue.”

Therefore if you have noticed that your employees are on edge, why not help boost their moral by sponsoring team activities outside of the workplace and put their minds at ease. And with them not having to worry that they are the next to go, they will work hard and help increase your revenues.