Why Outsource Your Accounting

December 7th, 2010 by Doug Boswell No comments »

Accounting is a core business function. Without , a business is sure to fail. With , a business might survive. With managed by a Profit Center Expert, a business is certain to succeed.

You’re probably already familiar with the bleak forecast for new small businesses. While failure rates have decreased considerably in the last few years, recent studies from the Small Business Administration (SBA) indicate that one third of new employer establishments fail within the first two years, and 56% fail within four years.

Poor financial management is often cited as the reason for most small business failures. Often the business owner or a member of the business team manages this crucial function because they want to maintain complete control of their business, they’re afraid that outsourcing the would be too expensive, or a combination of the two. What they don’t realize is that outsourcing is a useful management tool that can save a business both time and money while preventing potential failure. And when you outsource to the right accountant, it can be the difference between base survival and profitable success.

The Benefits

There are countless benefits you enjoy when outsourcing your . Here are just a few:

Save Yourself Time. You’re in business because you’re good at what you do. Your expertise involves the product and/or service you offer. And we’re guessing your expertise is not . So if you, or anyone on your team, spend time managing your business’s finances, that’s time that could be better spent building your business.

In order to be competitive you must constantly be looking for ways to improve and expand your products and/or services, better market your business, and stay ahead of your competition. When you and your team focus time and attention on the , that’s time not spent on these crucial tasks. When you outsource the to a trusted professional, you can use that time to make your business the best it can be.

Save Yourself Money. We all know time is money. The average small business owner spends over 10 hours personally, each month, for the business. If your average billing rate is $50 per hour, you may be spending more than five hundred dollars’ worth of your time! Chances are you easily can pay for a good accountant and then some with all that money.

Gain Access to Valuable Accounting Expertise, Equipment, and Technology. Reputable accountants have the expertise to not only save you money, but to make your business more profitable. In addition to that, they have access to equipment and technology that most small businesses can’t afford. They will use their resources to your advantage and save you the time and headache of doing it yourself.

Gain Access to Profit-Building Information. A truly valuable accountant is also a Profit Center Expert. They analyze financial data in order to assist you in making profitable decisions for your business. A Profit Center Expert can inform you which products and/or services to expand, which to eliminate, whether your marketing attempts are successful, where you’re loosing money, and where to cut back in order to save and redirect funds in order to become more profitable.

Call us for a free, no-obligation consultation. We can customize a package of services that is competitively priced and designed to save you time, energy, and headache. We offer the following services:

Accounts Payable

  • Input vendor invoices to payable system
  • Classify invoices to the proper G/L account
  • Request and maintain vendor W-9 information
  • Maintain vendor master files
  • Respond to vendor inquiries about payment status
  • Retrieve copies of payments as necessary
  • Prepare and file required 1099 forms
  • Process requests for stop payments when necessary
  • Cut checks to vendors based on due dates or client instruction
  • Reconcile vendor statements to accounts payable ledger
  • Reporting to organization on detailed aged payables and cash requirements
  • Process year-end 1099 forms

Accounts Receivable

  • Prepare and mail billings as needed (all billings provided to client for approval prior to mailing)
  • Record and account for revenue
  • Input receivable transactions into the system
  • Prepare and deliver periodic statements
  • Issue client-approved credit memos and refund checks
  • Maintain subsidiary receivables ledger
  • Process client-approved adjustments
  • Apply cash received to customer accounts and resolve “short pays”
  • Perform low-level phone collections as needed by client

Cash management

  • Process daily sales and deposit reports
  • Verify daily deposits and report variances
  • Reconcile and verify credit card deposits
  • Reconcile monthly bank statements

Journal entry and general ledger

Account reconciliations

Payroll

  • Time cards, after approval, will be scanned and uploaded prior to payday
  • Complete payroll while client prints, signs and distributes paychecks
  • Prepare employee earnings statements complete with current pay period and year-to-date wages, taxes, and adjustments
  • Prepare department summaries of month-to-date payroll data in addition to customized reports specific to client
  • Prepares timely and accurate notifications of tax liabilities and deposits
  • Completes year-end W-2 forms
  • Respond to requests for employee verifications
  • Process and submit garnishment payments
  • Respond to employee payroll inquiries
  • Prepare and file new hire reporting to state
  • Prepare, file, and pay all federal, state, and local payroll taxes
  • Reconcile health insurance payments and make payroll deductions when required
  • Prepare necessary HR reports such as turnover
  • Allocate payroll expenses for multi-store employees
  • Prepare and process payroll accruals when necessary

Monthly Closing

Fixed assets & depreciation

Monthly financial analysis and reports

Yearly Business Assessments

Don’t wait another day to partner with a Profit Center Expert (PCE) and make your business more successful. Do what you love to do more; let your PCE take care of the rest. Call now for a free, no-obligation consultation.

10 Important Small Biz New Year’s Resolutions

December 1st, 2010 by Doug Boswell No comments »

The approaching new year provides small business owners with an opportunity to reflect back on the previous year and make an objective evaluation of the state of their business. Everyone should conduct this exercise, but however it turns out, what’s done is done, and the only thing to do is to move forward and onto greater success and/or to make the appropriate course corrections to improve their operations and change their fortunes. Here are ten improvement projects every entrepreneur should undertake.

1. Develop a Strategic Plan
An extension of your original new company business plan, the strategic plan is it’s annual revision based on the realities and discoveries that have occurred over the past year. You won’t be able to get where you want to go unless you know where you want to be. Be sure to let your employees know as well.

2. Constantly Promote Your Business
You can’t execute just one marketing effort each year and expect your business to grow. Plan marketing efforts quarterly or even monthly and plan time for follow through and tracking of results. 

3. Survey Your Employees
Sometimes the biggest employee dissatisfactions are the easiest things to fix. Know what changes your employees would like to make in their work lives, and do your best to improve the quality of their work life, as this will usually have a positive impact their productivity as well.

4. Create action plans for each person in your organization
Make sure every employee knows how his or her job relates to the company’s overall vision, and that each has individual objectives and goals with measurable standards and timetables.

5. Survey your customers and your suppliers
Maybe the way you are doing business is costing you relationships with suppliers and customers. Know what will make it easier for them to do business with your company.

6. Produce only the key indicator reports from your business performance measurements that you need to run your business
Don’t waste your time and staff time compiling reports you never use. Know what you need to know to run a successful business, study those reports every month, and use them to take action.

7. Determine your level of compliance to all applicable human resource laws
Unless you have an HR department, you are likely unaware of all of the compliance laws regarding employees that can put you in serious legal trouble. Have an audit done by an outside professional and prevent problems that could result in million dollar lawsuits by unhappy ex-employees.

8. Know your top 10 customers well
List your top ten customers by sales and let everyone in your organization know who they are. Are they in a particular geographic region, of a particular type, and what is similar about them? What more can you do for them? Where can you find more just like them? Do everything you can to build on those relationships.

9. Get a coach or mentor, or join a business support group
Build accountability into your own personal planning by asking others to help you turn your dreams into reality. Enlist people who you can trust to give you objective feedback and create deadlines for your planned successes.

10. Make a list of the year’s accomplishments and celebrate your successes with your employees
Don’t forget to acknowledge and celebrate each of your milestones as they are achieved throughout the year. The best part of creating a plan is to know when you’ve reach your goals, allowing some time to pause and appreciate the accomplishment, and begin to create your next set of goals.

Profit and Growth Expert

November 23rd, 2010 by Doug Boswell No comments »

We trust that if you were forming a team for an upcoming golf tournament, you would want to recruit an expert like Tiger Woods.

Although we may not be the golfer Tiger Woods is, we do take our job as your Profit and Growth Expert just as seriously. While our goal is not to minimize your golf swings, we do aim to maximize your profit dollars. This entails a monthly analysis of your financial results, consultation in areas of profit improvement, and the implementation of strategies designed to lower your tax liability.

Together, we will examine past experiences, determine where you want your business to go, and discuss how that can happen. That’s our role as your Profit and Growth Expert.

Your Own Accounting System

October 17th, 2010 by Doug Boswell 7 comments »

You want an system that gives you peace of mind while increasing your bottom line. We’re guessing that you also want to reduce taxes, improve cash flow, and manage your business more profitably.

That’s what we do best! Work with us, and select the system that best suits your business’s needs:

  1. Receive training to use a system exclusively designed for your business, OR
  2. Have us completely manage a custom-designed system at an affordable cost

What Can We Do for Your Business

Wholesale / Retail / Service
Have complete control systems for Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and Inventory.

TV / Automotive / Furniture
Properly account for Contracts in Transit, Bank Reserve Accounts, and Flooring of Products for Resale (inventory financing). Maintain control of income and expenses.

Manufacturing
Control Raw Materials, Direct Labor, Work in Progress, and Finished Goods. Keep expenses categorized into Manufacturing and General Overhead areas.

Construction
Easily track profits or losses on each job in progress. Control cash flow based on percentages of completion. Minimize losses from under-billings created through change orders.

Professional
Control expenses and income for year-end savings. Take advantage of conversion from cash-to-accrual . Manage Accounts Receivable and improve Collections.

Food / Cafe / Beauty
Utilize a combination of Cash and Accrual statements. Have a low-cost, low-maintenance system.

Enjoy an system designed specifically for your business that shows where you stand at all times. Simplify the books that maintain all your financial data:

  • Cash Receipts
  • Deposits
  • Charge Accounts
  • Credit Purchases
  • Cash Purchases
  • Bank Reconciliations
  • Depreciation
  • Adjusting Entries
  • Inventory Control
  • Reconciliations
  • Income Statements
  • Balance Sheets
  • Individual Accounts Receivable Records
  • Individual Accounts Payable Records
  • Payroll Journal
  • Individual Payroll Records
  • Property, Plant and Equipment Records

Incredible Benefits You Will Enjoy

Your system will be tailored to your business. You can do it, I can do it, or we can do it together.

Your bookkeeping/ costs will be substantially reduced.

Your personnel will be free to produce more profits for you.

We can help you acquire funding for your business through financing, investors, and other means.

You will receive properly-designed financial statements that will allow you to manage your business efficiently and help you better plan for the future.

Choose from hand-posted or computerized programs specifically tailored to meet your needs.

Streamline the task, and free up your valuable time. [Consider this: the average small business owner spends over 10 hours personally, each month, for the business. If your average billing rate is $50 per hour, you may be spending more than $500 of your time per month.]

How Would You Describe Your Business?

  • Steady and stable
  • Growing fast
  • Hanging in there
  • Brand new

If your business is steady and stable or growing fast, then congratulations! But IT IS POSSIBLE for your business to improve and generate more profits!

If you’re just hanging in there, you can turn things around . . . FAST!

If your business is brand new, don’t make expensive mistakes that will mean be the difference between success and failure!

No matter which of these groups describes your business, you can benefit from these small business services that can save you both time and money!

Bookkeeping for Profit & Growth

September 29th, 2010 by Doug Boswell 1 comment »

Too often business owners are so preoccupied with select parts of the process that they don’t realize just how valuable all that financial information can be. Some business owners focus on preparing the yearly tax statement. Others may worry about that and their cash flow. And others still may just balance their checkbooks. If you choose to have us do your , we can do all that and more. And most importantly, we can help you become more profitable.

It really is quite simple. First you need a reputable accountant, what we like to call a Profit and Growth Expert, to determine your business goals. These goals may include, but are not limited to, growth expectations, marketing plans, profit margins, and overall labor expenses. We ask important questions like, what do you want? And why do you want it?

Here is a technical way of looking at bookkeeping:

Bookkeeping: The practice involved in the systematic recording of transactions affecting a company, beginning with the data-entry process and ending with the preparation of financial statements. The art, practice, or labor involved in the systematic recording of the transactions affecting a business.
http://www.know-.com/glossary/index.php?terml=b&termid=29

In layman’s terms, bookkeeping is the practice of determining which numbers are important to you and your business. Once that’s decided, we can set up a customized system that will organize the information you want and need. This is how we will come up with Your Accounting System.