Is Your Accounting Staff Able to Take You to the Next Level?
When you’re just starting out, you’re not necessarily thinking about what your employees are going to bring to your business long-term. You simply want survival at first, and sometimes that means that you’ll hire anyone who can do the job and is willing to work at what you can afford to pay.
Typically a business owner hires a person they know and trust, maybe a sister or a neighbor, to do their bookkeeping. This person may not even have a bookkeeping background, they just have a greater aptitude for it than the owner.
Have You Outgrown Your Accounting Staff?
As the business grows, the needs and requirements of the business exceed the expertise of the original bookkeeper. As transactions get more complex, the books can get messy. And while the bookkeeper focuses on keeping up with the basic tasks, the big picture details go unattended.
For example, profits could be ignored, cash not managed. It may also be that you’re not building relationships with lenders you need to. In short, you’re letting opportunities for your business to grow slip away. If you as the owner know how to present the business to an investor or bank, your numbers might still let you down if they haven’t been done properly. This can negatively impact your entire organization.
Help for the Business Owner
Many business owners don’t have an accounting or finance background themselves-leaving them ill-equipped to properly train and supervise a bookkeeper, much less tackle the bigger issues like cash forecasting, cost control and profitability analysis.
If you hire a qualified CFO or controller, this can help you in two ways:
* The CFO or controller can support and train your existing accounting staff, so that they can operate at optimal levels. This might include putting together procedural manuals, automating some processes, and reorganizing disorganized books, so that the bookkeeper can have a fresh start.
* By performing financial duties that fall outside the expertise of the bookkeeper and the owner-this might include things like preparing and analyzing financial statements, creating business plans, defining budgets and performing cash flow analysis.
This can take pressure off of the business owner, who is then able to have the time and energy to focus on running the business. The bookkeeper in turn tends to do much better once trained properly and with clear expectations to follow.
Efficient Processing Adds to Your Bottom Line
Your accounting operations directly impact the profitability and growth of your company. For example, when you’re processing accounts receivables efficiently, payments are collected more promptly, cash flow evens out and banks view your business as being more credible.
If you don’t think your accounting staff can take your company to where it should go, perhaps it’s time to call upon a professional accounting service.