If you have a small business, the thought of giving some of your employees a credit card for expenses can be terrifying. Sure, they may be trustworthy, but it becomes something you have to monitor, and sometimes the problem can get out of hand and you don’t catch it for months.

One solution would be to use prepaid credit cards for your employees. This way, you don’t have to worry about them exceeding the limit on the card, and it forces you to monitor the situation and pay attention to expenses.

In this economy, you need to use every tool at your disposal to monitor costs. Having your employees fill out reports isn’t enough, as you’re often too busy to look over them closely. With this system you can minimize mistakes.

If you’re a small business owner or a manager in a larger company, this is the question you should be asking yourself. Many of us had to make tough decisions at the beginning of the recession, and now with a possible recovery on the horizon we need to re-examine those decisions.

It may not feel like it yet in your town or in your industry, but there are indications that things are getting better. After a year or more of hunkering down, it is probably a good time to consider what the recession has done to your business and your industry. At some point, whether now or in a few months, business owners are going to have to switch from playing defense to playing offense.

For many of us, hiring freezes, layoffs, salary reductions and furloughs have helped us survive, but they have probably caused collateral damage to the psyche and bank accounts of our employees. Most of them went along with the program because they understood and because they had few options. But those options are coming. More companies are going to start to hire again. This should mean several things to business owners.

I suspect that many entrepreneurs have figured this out already. You have to be nimble in business, and making quick adjustments is critical to success.

This also bodes well for anyone looking for a job. Circle back to the leads you followed six or even three months ago and see if their situation has changed. You might find opportunities where they didn’t exist before as more companies start to play offense again.

I’m a big fan of Forbes Publisher Rich Karlgaard when he’s speaking about entrepreneurship – not so much when he discusses politics or macro economics. So, if you want to start a business, start reading Rich regularly. If you wanted a hint of the economic collapse that occurred last fall, you wouldn’t have been tipped off by Rich.

That said, here’s an interesting idea. Many in this country unfortunately believe that we need to restrict immigration to the United States for talented and educated people, as they might take jobs away from Americans. The truth is that we always have a need for more talented people, and these people usually create even more jobs, either by starting businesses or making their employers more competitive.

When the Blue State Obama Administration thinks of small business, it undoubtedly dreams of promising startups churning out solar panels for office buildings or turbine blades for windmills. If its dreams are serious, the Administration should get behind a crackling good idea proposed by entrepreneur Paul Graham. It’s called the Founder Visa, and the idea is to make it easy for the world’s entrepreneurs to come to the U.S. As Paul Kedrosky describes it on the Web site Growthology: “The particulars are still getting worked through, but it has to do with getting a modicum of [private] funding ($250,000) and approval from an independent board that this represents a real startup deal, not some back-room finagling for a visa, and that’s it: You’re in the country and you’re off and running.”

You can never have too many good entrepreneurs. This is a great idea.