Cohen Consulting Group

Five Ways to Rev Up Your Referrals

September 12, 2013 by Mandy Leave a Comment

Man and woman shaking hands isolated on a white background. In the vast majority of industries, referrals are the most cost-effective way to gain new clients and grow your business. When you attract new clients through referrals, your marketing costs are lower, your selling process is easier and more effective, and the referral usually makes for an excellent client. It’s just good business sense to look at how we can proactively increase our referrals. Here are five ideas.

1. Your Email Signature

We know it can be embarrassing or uncomfortable to ask your clients and friends directly for referrals. A great compromise is to add a line to your email signature that takes care of it for you. Here are a couple of wording options:

Your referral is our greatest compliment!

Referrals are the lifeblood of our business. We thank you for yours.

We appreciate your referrals.

Adding one of these lines to your email signature file is a subtle notice to everyone you email that you are open to taking referrals. It’s indirect enough to where no one feels put on the spot, and it takes all of five minutes to implement.

2. Acknowledge Your Referral Sources

When you find out someone has sent you a referral, be sure to acknowledge that person with a thank you note or a gift. (Be sure to check any licenses you hold so you know what restrictions you are under concerning gifts to clients; some industries disallow it.)

You might want to reward your top referral sources with more than a thank you note. If you are not sure who your top referral sources are, we can help you create a report in your accounting system so you can track that information on a regular basis.

3. Set Up a Referral Program

Creating a formal referral program generates several benefits:

It formalizes the process of asking for referrals. This lets clients know you’re serious and interested in referrals.
It gets the word out to everyone without anyone feeling pressured.
It is cost-effective and still far lower cost than using other marketing channels.
It is not too time-consuming and produces results.

To set up your referral program, decide how you want to reward your referral sources. It could be as fun as awarding prizes such as Kindles and tablets to clients who send the most referrals to you. The cost of the prize is a small price to pay for the lifetime revenue of several new high-quality clients. Send a letter or email out announcing the program, and then set up a process for tracking.

If you’re in an industry where prizes and programs are simply not done, then a simple letter requesting referrals will work too. Be sure to include a description of the specific type of client you are looking for; you are far more likely to get referrals when clients know who to look for.

4. Develop Referral Sources

One way to truly quantum-leap your business is to find new sources of referrals. Your clients are a great source, but they each know so many people. If your clients have been with you for a while, your referrals could stagnate because your clients have referred just about everybody they are going to.

Keep your referrals growing by tapping into power partners. These are small business owners that have the same type of client you do, but are not competitive at all. The best way to reach out to them is to send them a referral!

5. Set Up Referral Processes

There’s a lot your back office can automatically do when it comes to referral processes.

You can remember to ask how a new lead heard about you when they first call. Then you can record and track that, so that you will know where your top referral sources are.
You can systematize the thank you notes and gifts so they go out timely and automatically.
You can regularly schedule times with power partner to keep them up to date on your business changes and opportunities.
You can systematize a referral program or related communications to keep everyone informed.

Once you set up these processes and delegate the tasks, you will grow your referrals and subsequently your revenues.

Oh, and by the way, we appreciate your referrals!

Filed Under: Business Development, Business Tips

Five Fall Projects to Refresh Your Financial Results

August 29, 2013 by Mandy Leave a Comment

Autumn Leaves

As we move into the fall season and the final quarter of the year, it’s a perfect time to commit to a project in your business that will help you reach the year’s end in better shape. Here are five ideas:

1. Back-to-School Time

If payroll expenses are one of the higher costs in your business, then it makes sense to boost your team’s productivity and maybe also your own. Fall is back-to-school time anyway, so it’s a natural time of the year to take on a course, read a business book, or hire an organizer to help you get more from your workspace.

If you spend a lot of time doing email, consider taking a course on Microsoft Outlook® or even Windows; learning a few new keystrokes could save you tons of time. If you need more time, look for a book or course on time management. Look for classes at your local community college or adult education center.

2. A Garage Sale for Your Business

Do you have inventory in your business? If so, take a look at which items are slower-moving and clear them out in a big sale. We can help you figure out what’s moving slowly, and you might even save on taxes too.

3. Celebrate Your Results

Take a checkpoint to see how your revenue and income are running compared to last year at this time. Is it time for a celebration, or is it time to hunker down and bring in some more sales before winter? With one more quarter to go, you have time to make any strategy corrections you need to at this time. Let us know if we can pull a report that shows your year-on-year financial comparison.

4. Get Ready for Year’s End

Avoid the time pressure of year’s end by getting ready early. Review your balance sheet to make sure your account balances are correct for all transactions entered to date. You will be ahead of the game by getting the bulk of the year reviewed and out of the way early.

Also make sure you have the required documentation you need from vendors and customers. One example is contract labor that you will need to issue a 1099 for; make sure you have a W-9 on file for them. If we can help you get ready for year-end, let us know.

5. Margin Mastery

If your business has multiple products and services, there may be some that are far more profitable than others. Breaking these numbers out to calculate your profit margins or contribution margins by product or service line can help you see the areas that are adding the most income to your bottom line. Correspondingly, you can determine if you have any items that are losing money; knowing will help you take the right action in your business.

Refresh your financials this fall with your favorite idea of these five, or come up with your own fall project to rejuvenate your business.

Filed Under: Business Development, Business Tips, Money

Budgeting Breakthrough

July 19, 2013 by Mandy Leave a Comment

budget When you hear the word “budget,” what do you think about? Most people would say something similar to “Ugghh!” If you would rather do just about anything besides create a budget, you’re not alone. The word “budget” brings up connotations of endless numbers, constraints, the opposite of freedom and creativity, and hard work, none of which are very desirable.

Yet, the benefits of a budget are huge. Budgets can help you with cash flow improvements, keep you on track for higher profits, and alert you to items that need further action.

From “Budget” to “Profit Plan”

To be successful with budgeting, we need to get rid of all of the connotations that go with the word. Perhaps it might work if we rename “budgeting” to “profit planning.” And then, rather than focus on how little we should spend, let’s start with how much revenue we’re going to make.

Revenue Clarity

It’s simple to create a revenue plan if you go backwards. What revenue goal would you like to hit this year? Just like we would never get in a car without a final destination, a revenue plan gives us a number to aim for in our businesses.

Once you know your number, then we can use averages to come up how many sales or clients we need to generate in order to meet our revenue goal. Here’s a quick example: Let’s say you want to reach $5 million in revenue this year. If you average order is $10,000, then you need 500 sales. If you have multiple products and services, then you’ll need to sum the product of the average sale times the needed number of sales for each line.

From there, you can make marketing and production plans based on the number of sales or clients you need.

Protecting Your Profit

Think of the expense side of your “profit plan” as protecting your profit margins so that you can ensure financial gain from all the hard work you do. Setting budget limits on spending will allow you to control overhead and other items so you can keep more of what you make.

Exceptional Reporting

A great “profit plan” report will provide several things. You can compare budget to actual, or better yet, just be alerted to the accounts showing exceptions. You can also get an income statement that compares the current period with the prior year period so you can see how far you’ve come. One last option is a benchmark report which provides industry averages so you can measure how you fare compared to other companies in your industry.

A “profit plan” is a great tool for your business. If we can help you with the process or provide you with custom reporting, please give us a call.

Filed Under: Budget, Business Development, Business Tips, Money

The Fine Art of Prioritization

June 13, 2013 by Mandy Leave a Comment

checklist Running a business usually means putting in over 40 hours a week. In fact, if you’re the typical entrepreneur, you have more ideas you want to implement than you have time for! That’s when proactive, strategically executed prioritization can make all the difference.

So Hard to Choose

If you have lots of ideas in your head or on your “to do” list that are not getting done, you’re certainly not alone. Here’s a process for helping you decide what to do first, next, and not at all.

Step 1: Write down all your ideas, tasks, “to do’s,” projects, and even items you need to do on a daily basis. Use a spreadsheet and list each item in a row by itself. Later you’ll want to be able to sort the list, so we recommend using Excel or another spreadsheet software.

Once you have everything down on paper, you will be amazed at how much this unclutters your thinking. You will also have all your great ideas captured so you don’t forget them. You might also get very overwhelmed, but don’t stop now. Relief is on the way.

Step 2: Add some information about each item, creating four additional columns:

Is this item about working IN your business (client work, overhead, etc.) or ON your business (new products or new services, developing procedures, hiring more staff, marketing, creating new partnerships)?
Is this item revenue-generating? Or will you lose revenue if you don’t get it done?
Can you delegate this task or does it have to be done by you?
If you were to hire someone to do this task, how much would it be worth per hour?

Step 3: Analyze your choices. Once you have these additional items filled in, you can go wild with opportunities. Here are some very cool eye-opening activities to try:

Separate tasks that are working ON vs. IN your business. There is never enough time to work ON your business, so force it by blocking out a few hours or a half-day a week and do it, no matter what. It might be the best way to make progress in your business.
Sort the list by how much revenue the task could generate or how much potential it has, and decide how to prioritize from there. If you need help calculating the ROI, return on investment of an idea, we can help you calculate that.
Take a look at what you marked “not able to delegate,” and ask “why not?” Does a procedure need to be written? Do you need more staff? Does your staff need training? Or do you need to learn to let go? Whatever it is, and especially if there are a lot of these items, get these roadblocks tackled so you don’t become the bottleneck in your own business.
Sort the list by “column D” above, the market value you recorded for the task. Then ask yourself what your hourly rate is. How many tasks are you doing that are below your hourly rate? Hiring someone to do your lowest level tasks could very well be another item you need to add to your new “to do” list!

This last one is really important, because it can so strongly affect the profitability of your business. The last thing you want to do is go backwards and give yourself a demotion with a pay decrease, but that’s exactly what you’re doing each time you do a task yourself that’s at a low market rate.

Step 4: Prioritize with confidence. With all of this information in an organized spreadsheet, you will gain the clarity you need to make some powerful decisions about how to spend your time.

Time

There’s nothing more precious and scarce than our time. Every day, we have a choice about how to spend it, but too often we get caught up in the urgent, but not important, daily fires. This exercise helps us take a step back and look at what’s important instead of what’s urgent.

Filed Under: Business Development, overwhelm Tagged With: prioritization, time management

Is Hosted QuickBooks Right for You?

June 6, 2013 by Mandy Leave a Comment

clouds If you are currently using the popular QuickBooks desktop software, you now have a fairly new option available to you: hosted QuickBooks. In this article, we’ll talk about what it is, what type of businesses it is right for, and how to get started if you decide it is for you.

A Host of Opportunities

Hosted QuickBooks changes the location of your QuickBooks company file from your local computer to one of the dozen authorized QuickBooks hosting companies. You then access your QuickBooks file through a secure Internet connection. The good news is you continue using the exact same QuickBooks software, screens, forms, and reports that you are comfortably familiar with, so the additional learning curve is extremely low. The two biggest differences are:

You access your QuickBooks differently; instead of accessing your local software, you will access the same version of QuickBooks software via the cloud on a secure server provided by a hosting vendor. You will most likely access your QuickBooks by clicking on a desktop icon or accessing a screen and entering your login information.
The pricing is different. Instead of paying a large software fee at the beginning and then optionally paying for annual upgrades, you pay monthly, like a lease.

There are a few other very minor differences, such as how you back up your file, how you print checks, invoices, and other forms, and how you interface with other software such as Microsoft Outlook® or Word®. At most, the learning curve for each of these minor changes is five minutes top for any user.

Who Benefits

You will benefit from hosted QuickBooks if any of the following are true:

You, your team, your bookkeeper, or your CPA needs to be able to access your QuickBooks files from multiple locations.
You are spending at least one hour per month restoring the file from one location to another.
You have experienced errors in the past from backing up and restoring the company file or the Accountant’s Copy because of passing it back and forth among people who need to update it or to get information from it.
You prefer to save the time it takes installing QuickBooks and applying the upgrades to QuickBooks software. With hosted QuickBooks, the hosting vendor takes care of all of that.
You do not have a recent backup of QuickBooks and forget to take backups on a regular basis. With hosted QuickBooks, backups are a routine part of the process.
You’re great at working on the core items of your business, but want to reduce time spent on IT-related tasks.
You dislike or feel inadequate when it comes to technology, and you agree it makes sense to outsource as much as possible.

Any Concerns

Hosted QuickBooks is great, but it’s not right for everyone. If you feel “safer” with no one having access to your QuickBooks, then hosting it may not be right for you. Although the data centers are far more secure than the PCs in most people’s homes and offices because they have to undergo a rigorous security audit to become a hosting vendor, some people are simply uncomfortable passing their financial data to others. If you want to consider hosted QuickBooks and wonder about security, we’ll be happy to have a conversation with you about that.

Hosted QuickBooks is also not right for people that are using very old software versions because you may be forced to upgrade to a newer version.

Hosted QuickBooks is also not right for people who have much more free time than budget. Although hosted QuickBooks is not particularly expensive, there is a cost outlay that will buy you time savings. If the free time you gain (that you can apply to completing more important priorities in your business) is not valuable to you, then hosted QuickBooks may not be right for you.

Getting Started

Before moving to a hosted QuickBooks solution, your accounting professional will want to ask you questions about how you are using QuickBooks, if they aren’t already familiar with your requirements. Selecting the right hosting solution means evaluating:

What version and line of QuickBooks you are currently using because this has to be exactly matched with the hosting vendor.
What other applications access QuickBooks, such as online banking and payroll.
What add-ons you are using with QuickBooks, if any.
What printers, Microsoft software, email software, and other peripheral needs you have when using QuickBooks.

Once those answers are gathered, your accounting professional can provide you with some hosting solutions, costs, and implementation plans. Most accounting professionals partner with one or more hosting companies so that you can get a seamless one-stop shop experience. You may also be able to benefit from volume or package pricing through your accounting professional.

If you are thinking that hosted QuickBooks might be right for your business, please email us or give us a call so we can talk more about it.

Filed Under: Bookkeeping, Business Development, QuickBooks Tagged With: cloud accounting, hosted quickbooks

Seven Strategies to Put the Spring into Your Sales

May 23, 2013 by Mandy Leave a Comment

Yellow daffodil Spring is here and that’s the perfect time to try something new in your business to make things fresh. Here are seven ideas to try in your business; pick the one that’s most likely to put the spring in your sales.

1. BOGO

“Buy one, get one” or BOGO deals are always hot and never grow old. Even if it’s not common in your industry, see if you can adapt and create a deal like this. The best thing about a BOGO strategy is it spreads more of your product or service around to a wider customer base, which can spur referrals or word-of-mouth, the best kind of sale.

Here’s an example of a BOGO applied to a service: Purchase a seat at a training workshop and bring a co-worker at no extra charge (or charge the price of materials and lunch to cover costs). You can also offer one month free (cheaper than offering 10 percent off on an annual basis) if you have a service that is performed over time.

2. Weekend Sale

Sales can move a lot of people to action. The key is to limit the time that they can get the discount to a very small window. Hold a time-limited sale when it is slow for you (could be during this month when people are hit with tax bills) to boost your volume.

3. Freshen Up Your Displays

If you have a storefront, when is the last time you’ve freshened up your look? Retail businesses work hard at this, but even if you aren’t in retail, take a look at what the customer sees. Is it inviting? Fresh? Pleasant? If not, do some spring cleaning!

If you work from home or have a virtual office, your website is your storefront. See if it needs some spring cleaning so that you look more attractive to your prospects and clients.

4. Introduce New Features

Make a slight change to your existing product by adding a new feature, offering it in a new color, or something similar. It will feel a little fresher to your clients, which may cause an increase in perceived value.

5. Start a New Niche

Once you’ve gotten a couple of clients from a new industry, you’re off and running. You will be able to learn from working with this new industry, and then you will be more valuable to others in that space.

Take a look at your client list, and see where you have just a few clients in the same industry but would like more clients like them. Then go for it!

6. Flavor of the Month Club

Baskin-Robbins used to have a “flavor of the month” so that customers would be enticed to come into their ice cream shops over and over again. You may be able to have an “item of the month” or even a VIP club where your customers get something new each month. Your VIP Club could also include priority treatment with specials or discounts. VIP clubs done right are especially effective in restaurants and retail, but can work in other industries too. The goal is to increase the frequency of visits to your business by enticing clients to become regulars.

7. The Biggest Opportunity of All

We often overlook the top opportunity that’s under our own noses: our current and past clients. They trust us the most, which is the highest hurdle to new business. If you haven’t contacted your top clients in a while, make a point to reach out. More sales could be just a phone call away.

Now it’s time to spring into action on the one idea that resonates most for your business.

Filed Under: Business Development, Money Tagged With: opportunities

Five Places to Find More Profits

February 19, 2013 by Mandy Leave a Comment

It’s always a good idea to be on the lookout for ways to increase your profits, and luckily, there are many ways to do that. One way is to focus on cost-cutting, and here are five places that are good to periodically review for cost-cutting possibilities.

Telephone

Re-negotiating with the phone company every one to two years is a really good idea. Many telecommunications companies will often bargain with you or offer you a new deal just for checking in with them.

Has your business changed? Do you need all those extra features you are paying for? Could you do without those extra lines? Would another phone plan save you money on long distance or international calls?

The risk is low: one quick call will let you know if you can save money in this area. It’s worth it to give it a shot, and while you’re at it, you can call your smartphone provider too.

Travel

Travel is always a great area to look into for possible ways to save. Are all trips necessary and profitable? Are there any meetings that can be done virtually instead of face-to-face? Virtual tools such as GoToMeeting can make travel unnecessary.

What trips can be cut this year? Can the number of people sent per trip be cut? Can travel arrangements be made early to save money? Are booking dates flexible so you can compare and find the lowest rates? Is a taxi or rental car cheaper?

Dues and Subscriptions

Paying our annual dues for the club or association we’ve belonged to forever may be a habit, but is it beneficial for your business? We might enjoy seeing everyone once or twice a year at the meeting, but we may not necessarily have to have a membership to do that. Sometimes paying the guest rate is more affordable than the member rate if we are attending infrequently enough.

Review a list of organizations and publications you and your employees are part of, and choose which ones you are truly benefiting from. If being an officer in one of your organizations is not getting you any new business, then you may eliminate a time drain by bowing out and letting someone else volunteer.

Labor

As your business grows, it can be a challenge to decide who to hire next. The first place to look before you decide should be your existing employees. What tasks are they doing that you are paying them too much for? For example, do you have a manager doing clerical work? If so, you may be able to piece together an administrative job that frees your current staff from all the clerical work they are doing.

It’s worth a look to see where your current employees are being overpaid and find someone to do those parts of the job. You’ll save labor costs and come out ahead in the long run.

Fixed Assets and Equipment

Another place to save money that can be significant is purchases of large items such as furniture, automobiles, and production equipment. It’s a good idea to get three bids from reputable vendors so you have a choice. Going with the lowest bid is not always a good move; going for the highest quality is.

Look in these five places, and let us know how much you find to increase your profits. As always, if we can help, let us know.

Filed Under: Business Development Tagged With: cost, profit, savings

The Entrepreneur’s Paycheck

February 5, 2013 by Mandy Leave a Comment

check As business owners, we may be so busy making sure the bills get paid and the product gets out the door that we may not be quite as proactive about our own compensation. To pay themselves, many new business owners take what’s left after employees and vendors have been paid, and that ends up being their paycheck.

I’d like to propose a whole new way: entrepreneurs should be paid three times, once for what they do, second for the risk they take, and third for the going concern they’ve built. If you’re not getting paid three times, here’s how it can work.

First: Your Services

Just like the employees and contractors we work with, we should get paid for the actual work we perform in our business. Most of us wear many hats in our business, and we should get paid for all those hats!

As your business grows, the tasks you initially performed will be delegated to employees. They would never go without a paycheck, and you shouldn’t either.

The amount you pay yourself should be similar to the market rate you would have to pay someone if you hired someone else to do the jobs you are doing. As your company grows, you will be going up the management ladder and your salary should increase accordingly.

Here’s an aha for some new business owners just starting out: If you have cash flow problems paying yourself or others, then you might have one of two problems: The goods and services you sell may not be priced correctly, or the number of clients you have may need to increase so that you reach an acceptable volume in your business.

Second: Your Risk

After you’ve paid yourself for the jobs you are doing in your own company, there should be something left over: profit. As a business owner, you have earned that profit; it’s your reward for taking the risks that go with business ownership.

If there’s no profit left over, then there could be a number of problems. This is where accounting professionals can help you review the revenues and expenses in your business and see where things are not adding up.

So far, your paycheck and your profits get you paid twice as an entrepreneur, and that’s the way it should be. But there’s also a third way.

Third: Your Going Concern

A third way to get paid is when you sell your business. There are many things you can do throughout the years to boost your business valuation, and the more you can do that, the higher the proceeds will be from your business.

Financial Success

One of the factors that can increase all three forms of compensation is your financial skillset. Building your financial skills by working with accounting professionals can help you price your goods and services accurately, improve your cash flow, hire employees at the right pay rates, and implement many more financial success factors in your business.

When you’re ready to review your entrepreneur’s paycheck, feel free to call on us for expert financial assistance.

Filed Under: Blog, Business Development Tagged With: entrepreneur, paycheck, professional advice

Planning for an Awesome 2013

January 22, 2013 by Mandy Leave a Comment

deskcalendar For businesses with fiscal years that coincide with the calendar year, the slate of revenues and expenses will be wiped clean on New Year’s Day. Starting with a clean slate gives us a chance to reflect on our 2012 results before we enter 2013 and experience the hope that comes with a new year.

Hindsight is always valuable, and we can learn important lessons from our past challenges that we can now more objectively look back on. We can take those lessons and incorporate them into our plans for the new year so that we can continue to learn, grow, and prosper.

To create your plans for an awesome 2013, here is a list of questions and documents to consider in your business.

Revenue Plan

We can make budgeting more fun by looking at the revenue side first.

Are you happy with your 2012 revenue levels?
What new product or service lines can you roll out in 2013?
Are there any product or service lines you should close in 2013?
Should you raise prices?

A revenue plan is useful because it can feed into your annual budget as well as drive your marketing plans.

Staffing Plan

Business is more fun when you have the right team to support your vision.

Is your current team sufficient to support your business goals for 2013?
In what areas do you need more help? Should you hire or outsource?
Are there any team members that are not pulling their weight?
Was there a turnover that you would have rather not had? How can you retain your best talent?

Master Budget

Your revenue plan and staffing plan can feed into your master budget, which can be loaded into your accounting system. Tracking actuals against plan and prior year numbers will help you determine how you’re staying on track throughout the year.

Special Projects Plan

What special projects should you consider for 2013? This might include a move, new fixed assets, or replacing systems and processes that you are outgrowing.

Disaster Recovery Plan

Each year, we watch the news and see people and businesses that were affected by extreme weather events, fires, theft, or other disaster. Are you protected?

Is all of your data backed up to a remote location that is away from your local area?
Do you have the necessary insurance coverage for all areas of your business?
Are you comfortable with the risks you are taking in business and are you prepared for the worst-case consequences of those risks? If not, take action to reduce your risks.

Planning for Awesome

Planning helps you become more successful, and it reduces the risks of doing business. There are many more types of plans, and it’s up to you to decide which ones will benefit your business. If we can help out in any way, please reach out and give us a call.

Filed Under: Blog, Business Development

Five Hidden Talents of Your Accountant

January 8, 2013 by Mandy Leave a Comment

When you think of an accountant’s duties, you might think about traditional tasks, such as tax preparation, bookkeeping, and financial statement preparation. Here are five additional tasks that accountants can help with that you might not think of.

1. Evaluating Current Accounting Employees

How can you know if your accounting employee is a star that does everything right, is organized, and is fast or if you’ve accidentally hired someone who talks a good game but is doing everything wrong, takes way too long based on your size company, or is making unnecessary and costly mistakes? Your external accountant can often help you objectively evaluate your current staff and point out their strengths and weaknesses so you can create the right training programs for them, communicate the right message at review time, or take the proper HR steps you need to. Your accountant can also help to train your bookkeepers so that they are more efficient.

If your bookkeeper is not performing at the level of pay you are providing, it can be an inefficiency in your business. Your accountant can help you make sure you are not over- or underpaying your current staff.

2. Hiring a Bookkeeper

For businesses that have full or part-time accounting staff, your accountant can help you test candidates for technical skills so that you can make a wise hire.

3. Selecting Better Tools

Most bookkeepers that do books for one company do not have the experience that lets them see there may be “a better way” to do what they are doing. Your external accountant can help you find or develop systems, reports, and software to supplement your current accounting system that may save you time and money.

Since your accountant can be working on as many as ten different companies in one day, they have far more experience and expertise than bookkeepers who work at one company at a time. Take advantage of that experience to streamline your workflow and learn lots of great money-saving shortcuts.

4. Identifying Process Inefficiencies and Irregularities

The fresh eyes that your external accountant can bring to your business can often uncover inefficiencies in accounting processes that can reduce your expenses and increase your profits. One opportunity area is listening for the “we’ve always done it that way” answer. When that explanation comes up, usually it means that the person saying it has lost or never knew the reason behind the process, which could now be obsolete.

External accountants have the benefit of seeing dozens if not hundreds of financial statements among their many clients. We’ve often developed the eagle eye of scoping out expenses that are out of line based on other clients in your industry and company size. If you are paying too much for telephone, utilities, and other common expenses, we can bring it to your attention that there may be an opportunity to re-negotiate a contract or look for some kind of error.

5. Strengthening Internal Control and Taking Measures to Reduce Risk of Fraud

Developing checks and balances in your accounting system is essential in businesses where employees handle money and have access to credit card numbers and bank account information. Your external accountant can help you develop internal controls within your accounting system that will work for the level of risk you wish to take in your business. They can also point out reports in QuickBooks or your accounting system that facilitate controls and that can help you review irregularities on a periodic basis.

Tapping into Talent

Next time you find yourself in one of the above situations, think of your external accountant first, and give us a call.

Filed Under: Business Development, Tax Tagged With: accounting