A business decision rarely stays inside one subject.
Starting a business of any form raises questions about accounting, banking, finance, insurance, taxation, and compliance. Sourcing or importing a product involves trade finance, HS codes, customs valuation, logistics, and supply chains. Building a startup or SaaS product requires finance, project management, business processes, technology, and increasingly, artificial intelligence.
Business Novice exists to explain these connections in clear language.
Hi, I'm Abdur Rahman
I'm the founder and primary author of Business Novice.
I hold a postgraduate degree in Accounting and describe myself as an accountant by education and professional experience. I also hold the Project Management Professional (PMP)® credential from the Project Management Institute (PMI)®.
My work and interests have never stayed confined to accounting alone. Over time, they expanded into finance, insurance, taxation, personal finance, investing, international trade, supply chain management, company formation, SaaS development, artificial intelligence, and business automation.
I'm naturally interested in how systems work — and how they can be made clearer, faster, and more useful. That curiosity eventually led me to build businesses and software products of my own, including Duty Calculator. Founding and building them gave me firsthand experience with the gap between understanding a business concept and actually turning it into something that works.
How I Got Here
My foundation was accounting. It taught me how to read transactions, financial statements, costs, assets, liabilities, cash flow, taxation, and the financial health of a business. But real business questions rarely end with an accounting entry.
Understanding finance led me toward banking, insurance, savings instruments, personal financial planning, and stock market investing. Working with business transactions introduced me to trade finance and the systems that move goods and payments between buyers, sellers, banks, carriers, and governments — which in turn led me into supply chain management, cross-border logistics, HS code classification, customs valuation, and clearance procedures.
Entrepreneurship added another layer entirely. As a founder, I had to think about business structures, company formation, taxation, operating processes, project execution, technology, and product development — including how LLCs and other company types are established in the United States, and how the right structure depends on ownership, taxation, liability, location, and business activity.
Earning the PMP credential gave me a structured way to organize all of this: scope, risk, stakeholders, resources, schedules, delivery methods, and business value.
More recently, artificial intelligence has changed how I approach nearly all of it. I've built a strong working familiarity with applying AI to finance, research, workflow design, business process automation, decision support, and agent-based systems. For me, AI isn't a separate topic — it's becoming another operational layer across accounting, finance, project management, customer service, compliance, analysis, and business administration.
What I Know — and Where My Limits Are
I don't claim that one person can be a specialist in every part of these fields, and laws, taxes, financial products, customs rules, and company-formation requirements change between jurisdictions and over time. Where a subject requires regulated, licensed, or situation-specific advice, I'll say so, and readers should consult an appropriately qualified professional.
With that said, here's where my knowledge is strongest:
Accounting, finance, and taxation. Accounting principles, financial reporting, business finance, personal finance, taxation, insurance, savings instruments, and stock market investing — with a focus on explaining not just what a term means, but how it affects an individual, investor, founder, or business.
International trade and supply chains. Trade finance, supply chain management, cross-border logistics, HS code classification, customs valuation, and documentation and clearance processes — because a classification, valuation, financing, or documentation decision can quietly change the total cost or viability of an international transaction.
Business formation and entrepreneurship. The formation of LLCs and other U.S. business structures, and the practical questions founders should weigh before choosing one — plus the reality that forming a company is only the start; running one needs financial controls, repeatable processes, execution, compliance, and a workable revenue model.
Project management. A formal PMP®-grounded perspective on how businesses plan, organize, execute, monitor, and improve their initiatives.
SaaS, AI, and automation. Firsthand experience building SaaS products, and a particular interest in AI applications in accounting and finance, business process automation, AI-assisted research and analysis, intelligent workflows, AI agents for defined business functions, human oversight of automated decisions, and agentic transformation within organizations.
The Gap I Found
There's no shortage of business and financial content online — the problem is that most of it is disconnected. Accounting sites explain accounting. Investing sites discuss stocks. Incorporation services promote LLC formation. Logistics sites cover supply chains. Technology publications talk technology.
But founders and everyday readers don't experience these subjects separately. Someone trying to start an export-import business may need to understand company formation, banking, trade finance, HS codes, customs valuation, taxes, logistics, insurance, pricing, and cash flow all at once. A founder considering AI automation has to think about more than the technology — process design, project management, cost, data quality, employee roles, risk, and expected business value all come with it.
I also found a second problem: beginner-friendly content is often too shallow, while technically accurate content is frequently too hard for a newcomer to actually use.
Why I Paused, and Why I'm Back
To bridge that gap, I set out to write about the topics I was learning firsthand. I bought the businessnovice.net domain back in 2017 and published my very first article not long after.
After 2021, I paused publishing for several reasons. I'm back now, with the intent to keep publishing articles that growth-oriented individuals and entrepreneurs need to understand, explore, and apply to build better businesses and achieve sustainable growth. Along the way, Business Novice may bring on other writers and editors to help carry that forward.
How Business Novice Will Address the Gap
The mission is straightforward: to help readers understand business, finance, trade, technology, and AI well enough to make more informed decisions.
A few principles guide how I try to do that:
- Start with the fundamentals. Articles don't assume readers already know the terminology — key concepts are explained before moving into comparisons, calculations, or advanced applications.
- Connect related decisions. When accounting, taxation, legal structure, finance, technology, or supply chains affect the same decision, the article explains how they relate.
- Provide practical context, not just definitions. The goal is to explain the factors to consider, the questions to ask, the risks to weigh, and the next step to take — not to repeat what a search engine already gives you.
- Separate facts from judgment. Official requirements, data, calculations, professional interpretation, personal experience, and editorial opinion are never presented as if they're interchangeable.
- Use reliable sources. Where appropriate, articles draw on government agencies, regulators, standards bodies, financial institutions, original research, and company documentation.
- Use AI responsibly. AI may assist with research organization, analysis, editing, or workflow efficiency — but it isn't treated as an authoritative source or a substitute for verification and human judgment. I remain responsible for everything published under my name.
- Be transparent about commercial relationships. Business Novice may earn commissions when readers use certain links. Affiliate relationships are disclosed and never determine an article's conclusions.
- Correct and update. Material errors get corrected. Articles covering changing rules, rates, products, or procedures are reviewed and updated as needed.
(These principles are also maintained in full in our Editorial Guidelines.)
Who Business Novice Is For
This site is for people who want practical explanations without being spoken down to — new and aspiring entrepreneurs, startup founders, small-business owners, finance and operations professionals, importers and exporters, people learning accounting and taxation, individuals managing or investing their own money, founders weighing a U.S. LLC or another structure, teams exploring AI and automation, and anyone new to a subject but serious about understanding it.
What You Can Expect to Find
Business Novice publishes across accounting and business finance, personal finance and savings, insurance, taxation, investing and the stock market, business formation and U.S. LLCs, startups and SaaS businesses, project management, trade finance, HS codes and customs valuation, customs clearance, supply chain management, cross-border operations, AI in finance and business, business process automation, and AI agents and agentic transformation.
That shows up as foundational explanations, step-by-step guides, decision frameworks, comparisons, reviews, calculations, checklists, case-based discussions, and practical examples. We'd rather publish one carefully researched article that actually answers your question than several rushed posts that only fill a publishing calendar.
Invitation to Learn With Me
Business Novice is built on the belief that being new to a subject isn't a weakness. Every accountant was once new to accounting. Every investor once placed a first investment. Every founder once had an idea they didn't yet know how to execute.
The important thing is to start with reliable information, ask better questions, and keep learning.
If you're trying to understand a financial decision, build a business, manage an international transaction, improve a process, or figure out how AI fits into your organization — Business Novice is for you.
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Let's turn complicated business questions into practical next steps.