The extra work load from running two businesses instead of one kind of hit home today, when the checkbook for The Kennel arrived in the mail. It’s not just that I’ll be using it to pay bills, but I also have to deposit receipts and keep track of cash flow and reconcile bank statements.

I have to gather payroll information from the employees of the new company and make sure they’re paid, and then I have to pay the payroll taxes. I’m already doing all this for one company, with ten employees. Now I’ll be doing it for a second, with three.

Construction workers like to be paid weekly, while kennel workers apparently prefer to get their checks twice a month. This means different tax rates and different pay schedules and I just know I’m going to end up rifling through Circular E every two weeks trying to figure out how much to deduct from all those paychecks.

I had such a smooth system going, and we were supposed to be getting help with the new stuff. The help didn’t come through, and now nothing is going all that smoothly.

Do I dare complain? I don’t. (Except here.) I can moan a bit, and I can tell people to back off me so I can get my work done. I’ve always done that, but now I can do it twice as often, and with twice as much conviction.

We also have 91 permanent tenants at The Kennel, and 38 temporary ones. I’m getting some help with billing them monthly and collecting the rents, but there’s still plenty for me to do. This is a kind of business I know nothing about, and it’s also totally new to everyone else I work with. The potential for disaster is huge, and the margin of error is tiny.

But I can’t complain, can I? I’ll be getting a retirement nest egg out of this some day, without putting in any money of my own. Unless you consider time to be money, that is. If time is money, I think I’m putting in a full share. And liking it. Whether I like it or not.

Little glitches keep coming up. The trauma I mentioned in passing in yesterday’s entry has to do with credit. We are a new company with no credit history, and yet we have to set up open accounts with suppliers of various kennel-related items (specifically beer, wine and snacks). I hope the suppliers are willing to accept the fact that the same people who own the kennel also own a successful construction company, and that we’ve been paying our bills on time for thirty years.

I also hope they realize that if we can pay for lumber and hardware, we can probably pay for Bud Lite and Cheez-its.