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From Financial Data to Profit & Growth

August 4th, 2016

Too often business owners are so preoccupied with certain parts of the bookkeeping process that they don’t realize just how valuable their full set of financial data can be; should it be made available to them in an actionable way. Some business owners focus on preparing the yearly tax statement. Others may worry about that and their cash flow. And others might just use it to balance their checkbooks. If you choose to have us do your accounting, we can do all that and more. And most importantly, we can help you become more profitable.

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.

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 the different between the accounting services provided by a bookkeeper as opposed to a Profit and Growth Expert.

Let my firm, Solid Growth Accounting Services, be that Profit and Growth Expert, and advance you from a business that keeps financial records, to one that uses financial data to determine the best path to successful growth and prosperity.

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Posted in accounting, action plans, anaysis, best practices, bookkeeping, business goals, QuickBooks

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Business Profit & Loss

June 26th, 2015

Profit & Loss Dice

As a business owner you must continually focus on managing profit and loss to not only stay in business, but to grow and thrive. Profit is the money left over after paying all the expenses. A loss results from expenses exceeding the amount of sales a company makes in a specific period. Companies must manage their profit and loss statements, also known as income statements, to keep earnings positive, and expenses under control and in line with revenue.

Financial Assessment

Managing profit and loss begins with an assessment of your company’s current financial situation. Review the current profit and loss statement and compare it to the company’s last two or three years of historical data. An accountant can use this information to establish a set of performance benchmarks for the company’s average revenue and expense levels.

Analytical Tools

Have an accountant prepare analytical tools such as an income statement spreadsheet that shows every expense as a percentage of sales. This will allowing you to isolate costs that could contribute to decreasing profits. Perform this analysis for, ideally, three years of historical data. Expenses as a percent of revenue are compared for each year to reveal trends that show expenses raising or falling as a percent of sales over time. Some costs, such as the cost of goods sold, will rise with sales increases because they represent the raw materials and labor used to make the products you sell. Rent, administrative costs and some utility bills should remain the constant, regardless of increases in sales.

Explaining Expense Growth

Your accountant should perform additional analysis to investigate and explain the growth of expenses over time. This can reveal valuable information about the use of resources and their cost oversight. External factors such as the economy and rising prices also can contribute to cost increases. You need to find out which of these factors is involved in order to determine which might be controllable.

Sales Review

Next the accountant should review the company’s sales. Depending on various events and conditions, even when internal expenses have been well-managed and cut as low as possible, the company will still suffer a loss if its sales drop below its expenses in any given period. In this case, the company must make important decisions about how and why sales are generated, but may also need to consider discontinuing certain unprofitable product or service lines, selling off assets to free up capital and discontinuing investments in any projects that do not generate revenue.

 

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Posted in accounting, anaysis, bookkeeping, break-even, cost, Income Statement, P&L Statement, Profit and Loss Statement

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Gross Profit, Profit Margin & Markup, OH MY!

April 27th, 2015

Gross Profit, Margin & Markup

The terms Profit Margin and Markup are often used interchangeably to mean Gross Profit Margin, but they are not the same. A clear understanding and application of these concepts and calculations can provide the information you need to better impact your bottom line.

First of all, a very valuable calculation you’ll want to perform for understanding your business is Gross Profit, and then, the tool that you use to maintain gross profit, called Markup.

The gross profit on a product is:

Sales – Cost of Goods Sold = Gross Profit

To understand gross profit, it is important to know the difference between the expenses we call Cost of Goods Sold and the expenses we call Operational Costs.

Cost of Goods Sold are those expenses that are incurred as a direct result of producing the product. They tend to be variable costs such as:

  • Materials used
  • Labor directly involved in production
  • Sales commissions
  • Packaging
  • Freight
  • Utilities, or power costs, for production equipment and or facilities
  • Depreciation expense on production equipment
  • Machinery

Operational Costs are the more fixed costs such as:

  • Rent
  • Insurance
  • Professional fees
  • Office expenses such as supplies, utilities, a telephone for the office, etc.
  • Salaries and wages of office staff, salespeople, officers and owners
  • Payroll taxes and employee benefits
  • Advertising, promotion and other sales expenses
  • Auto expenses

While the gross profit is a dollar amount, the gross profit margin is expressed as a percentage (Gross Profit as a percent of Sales). It’s very important to track since this allows you to keep an eye on profitability trends. This is critical, because a business can get into financial trouble with an increasing gross profit that coincides with a decreasing gross profit margin.

The gross profit margin is computed as follows:

Gross Profit / Sales = Gross Profit Margin

There are two key ways for you to improve your gross margin. You can either increase your prices, or you can decrease the costs to produce your goods. Or both, if you can.

An increase in prices can cause sales to drop. If sales drop too far, you may not generate enough gross profit to cover operating expenses. Price increases require a very careful reading of inflationary rates, competitive factors, and basic supply and demand for the product you are producing.

The second method of increasing gross profit margin is to lower the variable costs to produce your product. This can be accomplished by decreasing material costs, or making the product more efficiently.

Volume discounts are a good way to reduce material costs. The more material you buy from a supplier, the more likely they are to offer you discounts.

Another way to reduce material costs is to find a less costly supplier. However, you might sacrifice quality if the goods purchased are not made as well.

Whether you are starting a manufacturing, wholesale, retail or service business, you should always be on the lookout for ways to deliver your product or service more efficiently.

And all the while, you also must balance efficiency and quality issues to ensure that they do not get out of balance.

Let’s look at the gross profit of Rapid Printing & Copy Company as an example of the computation of gross profit margin. In Year 1, the sales were $1 million and the gross profit was $250,000, resulting in a gross profit margin of 25 percent ($250,000/$1 million). In Year 2, sales were $1.5 million and the gross profit was $450,000, resulting in a gross profit margin of 30 percent ($450,000/$1.5 million).

It is apparent that Rapid Printing & Copy earned not only more gross profit dollars in Year 2, but also a higher gross profit margin. The company either raised prices, lowered variable material costs from suppliers or found a way to produce its print jobs more efficiently (which usually means fewer labor hours per product produced).

Rapid Printing & Copy did a better job in Year 2 of managing its markup on the products that they print.

Business owners sometimes get confused when relating markup to gross profit margin. They are related in that both computations deal with the same variables. The difference is that gross profit margin is figured as a percentage of the selling price, while markup is figured as a percentage of the seller’s cost.

Markup is computed as follows:

(Selling Price – Cost to Produce) / Cost to Produce = Markup Percentage

Let’s compute the markup for Rapid Printing & Copy Company for Year 1:

($1 million – $750,000) / $750,000 = 33.3%

Now, let’s compute markup for Year 2:

($1.5 million – $1.05 million) / $1.05 million = 42.9%

While computing markup for an entire year for a business is very simple, using this valuable markup tool daily to work up price quotes is more complicated. However, it is even more vital.

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Posted in accounting, best practices, cost of goods sold, markup, profit, profit margin

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2 Concepts for Improving Your Brand

July 19th, 2014

Improving, or repositioning, a brand has a direct impact on the financial performance of a business. Companies that are successful in building their brands enjoy higher customer loyalty and are more likely to attract new customers. An improved brand has a positive impact on profit margins and allows a company to raise its price without becoming less profitable due to a reduction in business. A stronger brand leads to increased market share, revenues and profitability.

Understanding the two concepts of actual value and perceived value, and applying them to your product or service’s brand can help you increase margins for your business and make more money.

Soda sells for 75 cents at the grocery store or $8 at an amusement park. Steaks are priced from $18 at a casual restaurant to around $40 at a fine dining establishment. A cup of coffee can range from one dollar to well over $5. The vast difference in these prices is a result of brand positioning and the value that the brand represents in the marketplace.

If you want to increase prices in your business and make more of a margin on each sale, analyze your brand to see how you can reposition and improve it to be more valuable in the minds of your current and potential customers. Do this by boosting actual value or perceived value.

1. Actual Value

Increasing actual value likely will cost your business more money but will enable you to charge more too if your customers care about the improvements. For example, in the auto business, a sunroof, leather seats and chrome wheels are considered upgrades. It costs manufacturers more to install these, but since car buyers think these features make a car more comfortable, sporty, luxurious, durable or attractive, these add-ons increase the value of the car, and customers will pay more for it.

In your business you are adding actual value when you are paying more on a continuous basis for the cost of materials or labor to improve the customer’s view and desire for your product or service. In the case of the cars, the sunroof, leather and chrome wheels must be added or available every time in order to offer the increased value and capture the added profits that result. Using premium or preferred materials or skill sets rather than just good or good enough materials and labor will allow you to have higher price points if your add-ons are desirable to your customers.

2. Perceived Value

Increases in perceived value are generally more profitable than increases in actual value because you do not necessarily have to spend more money, or any money at all, to achieve increases in perceived value, but you can still charge more for the added value.

Consumers will pay higher prices for attractively packaged products. Making a product package more attractive may not cost more. It can be as simple as using a brighter or darker brand color, a more commanding or refined font or a different shape of bottle. These changes can make a product appear richer or of higher quality, yet the inside product may be the same as a lower priced competitor. It’s all about the perception.

Associations, affiliations and trust also boost perceived value. For example, two identical products may sell for vastly different prices if one is associated with higher professionalism, expertise, style, or just plain fun. For example, if a product is worn, used or favored by celebrities, then it suddenly achieves higher perceived value.

Professional certifications work the same way. A Certified Public Accountant (CPA) may be able to charge a more for bookkeeping and services than an accountant with a degree but no certification. If the CPA is better at the work, it isn’t necessarily due to the certification, but the perception is there for the CPA to leverage.

Protect, build and analyze your brand to figure out ways to boost value for your customers. Whether it is actual or perceived the added buzz and sales can help you reach your annual profit goals faster.

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Posted in action plans, best practices, branding, entrepreneur, marketing, small business, start-up

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10 Accounts Receivable Best Practices

April 22nd, 2014

accounts receivable cartoonProper cash flow management is always important for any organization. One of the most common causes of cash flow problems is poorly managed accounts receivable. Don’t assume that just because a customer purchased your product or services that they will pay you in a timely manner, or at all.

Slow paying customers may require you to draw down your cash reserves, or increase the amount of financing you need to cover your operations. As delinquent accounts get older, the probability of collecting those accounts diminishes. And of course, the more cash you have tied up in receivables, the less cash is available for running your business.

For charities and not-for-profits, slow collection of donation pledges and annual membership dues can put a strain on cash flow. While donations and membership dues are not technically accounts receivable, many of the same best practices can be applied to accelerate collections from your funding sources. Awareness of accounts receivable best practices becomes even more imperative not-for-profit organizations engaging in the sale of products and services to increase funding.

Follow these 10 best practices to improve the receivables process, which should improve cash flow and strengthen the bottom line:

1. Email Invoices
This will ensure your customers receive your invoices immediately, avoiding mail delays. Confirm with your customers which email address they wish you to send invoices to.

2. Shorten Payment Terms
In the days of paper invoices and checks, it was fairly common for businesses to extend credit to customers to allow for mail and payment delays, by granting credit terms, for example “Net 30”. However with the widespread adoption of email communication and electronic payment methods, businesses are now more commonly specifying “Payment due upon receipt”.

3. Have EFT and Other Payment Options
An increasing number of businesses are now paying their suppliers using Electronic Funds Transfer. By specifying on your invoice that payment may be made by EFT, you will enable your customer to deposit payment directly to your bank account. Simply include on your invoice your EFT banking information; bank, branch and account number. Also consider using PayPal and/or credit cards.

4. Establish Credit Policies
If you were going to extend a customer credit, it would be a good idea to assess their ability to pay. The expense of performing credit checks may be more than worthwhile for many businesses.

5. Review Accounts Receivables Regularly
Track the aging of your receivables, and systematically follow-up on any accounts that are past due more than a predetermined number of days. A good practice is to run an aged receivables report from your accounting system on a weekly basis, paying special attention to any receivables that are over, for example, 20 or 30 days old.

6. Use the Telephone
Follow-up unpaid invoices with a phone call if payment has not been received within a reasonable period. Written collection letters and even emails are usually less effective as they do not engage the customer in conversation. The fastest way to find out if there is a problem with a payment is to speak with your customer. Solving the problem in a manner that maintains a good customer relationship is also more likely if there is such a conversation.

7. Maintain a Collections Record
For each over-due account, keep a log of when follow-up calls or emails were sent, along with a record of customer’s responses to follow-up calls. Knowing that, for example, your customer promised to make a payment by a certain date will be invaluable if additional follow-up calls are required.

8. Offer Discounts for Early Payment
Payments are often made first to companies that offer discounts. The popular 2%/10, net 30 Days Terms means that if a customers pays within 10 days they receive a 2% discount, with the total due in 30 days. Try 2%/10, Net 20 Days. A customer may be less inclined to forgo a discount when the payment is due in only 10 more days anyway.

9. Use a Factoring Service
Using a factor is like selling your receivables to a third party at a discount. The costs involved with this method may be justified by greatly improving your cash flow, especially if you have a long collection cycle.

10. Use a Collection Agency
If you are unable to collect, you should submit the account to a collection agency. No one can guarantee to collect your outstanding receivables, but these companies tend to be very aggressive, and since they tend to charge based on the amounts they collect, this is a viable final option. Don’t expect to see any new business from these customers, but then they aren’t the kind of customers you want anyway.

Managing your accounts receivable is normally pretty straight forward as most customers pay on time. However, collection problems can be avoided, or at least minimized, with a strategy that considers the above best practices.

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Posted in Accounts Receivable, action plans, best practices, bookkeeping, cash flow, entrepreneur, factoring, profit, strategic planning

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