What services are provided by a small business accountant?

Source: https://tinyurl.com/yd35u7dp

Written by: Erasmus Pretorius

One of the questions I get asked most when I am speaking to a new or prospective client, is what additional services do we offer our clients, apart from the traditional accounting services of keeping your books and finances organized

A Good Accounting Team and its Accounting Services

The truth is, a good accounting firm will offer a number of different accounting services that are included in what most people consider traditional accounting. You see, as an accountant, I get to see the core numbers for a business. I get to see where the business is bleeding cash, or missing out on revenue. I get to see which processes are working, and which aren’t. I get to look at businesses at the kind of granular level that most people don’t ever see. And because of that, I, as an accountant or as part of a team of accountants, can provide valuable advice to an owner or to a business’s management team.

What most people understand as additional services are, in fact, the core services for any good accounting team. What I am going to try to do here is give you an overview of what services are offered by an small business accountant.

1. Tax Returns and Strategy

Everybody knows that small business accountants do tax returns. That’s just common sense. But we do much more than that. You see, we do the tax returns for hundreds of businesses so we have to know the tax code, inside and out. We have know what’s changed, what’s in for a certain year and out the next. And, even more than that, we need to know how that affects your business. So if there is any coming change to the tax code, we know about it first and we can help you to plan accordingly.

Oftentimes we get clients that come on board and they’ve never had a proper accountant do their financials for them. And what we see a lot of the time is that they are missing out on valuable information about tax exemptions or tax breaks for their business that can even be the difference between the success and failure of the business. So that’s probably one of the key accounting services that we offer as accountants for small businesses, the ability to create a clear and effective tax strategy for you.

2. Debt Planning and Reduction

Debt planing, credit card management and debt reduction are other key areas where an accounting company can help a small business. One of the biggest challenges today for any small business is obtaining cost effective financing, and then managing that debt. The great advantage we have as accountants is that we have a working knowledge of most of the financing services that are available on the market, and we can help you choose the financing model that works best for your business.

For some clients one of the first things we do is advise them to adopt a debt restructuring strategy that drastically reduces their monthly payments to service their debt, which then frees up their cash flow.

3. Operational Bookkeeping and Payroll Management

We find that one of the biggest challenges for any many businesses today is managing their payroll, especially if the business has only recently started to take on employees. So that’s another key area that we get to provide consulting and advisory accounting services to small business. In fact, it’s probably a good thing to talk to your accountant before making any new hire, first to make sure that your business is in line with current employment legislation, and second, to make sure you take all the associated costs for a new hire into account when you are deciding on salaries and benefits.

4. Management Consulting

Management consulting for small business includes all of the items above, but I think it’s important to mention it here again because it provides an important context for an experience that is common to most small business owners; they often struggle to find somebody to whom they can turn to when they need advice.

I speak personally when I say that one of the main reasons to hire an accountant (or an accounting firm in most cases) is that you have somebody who you can go to when you need advice. Most times when a business owner asks us for advice, we’ve seen a similar situation before at other business and we can provide him or her with relevant and practical advice based on what we’ve seen that works.

5. Business Development and Valuation

One final accounting service that an accounting team can offer that I think is important to mention is in business development and valuation. There comes a time for most business owners when they need to think about selling their business, either because they are reaching retirement, or because it’s part of their business plan and they are ready to move on to the next project.

Again, remember that your business won’t be the first business that we would have offered this service to, so we will know how and were to go to build your business’s value so that when it comes time to sell all or a part of it (maybe you are ready to take on a new partner) you have all the information you need.

In conclusion

In conclusion, along with the core accounting services we offer, accounting firms provide a number of key additional services that you as a business owner should take advantage of to stay financially organized, tax compliant and help your business to grow. You shouldn’t look at your accounting firm as merely an outsourcing cost for bookkeeping, but as a key business partner. It’s what we like best about being accountants here at The Accounting Team. we get to use our knowledge and our experience to help your business grow.

Erasmus Pretorius is a Chartered Accountant and CEO of The Accounting Team. He has been helping small business grow since 2001.

Why The Coronavirus Pandemic Should Motivate You To Start A Company And Eight Excuses That No Longer Matter

Written by: Bernhard Schroeder
Spource: https://tinyurl.com/ybuz78h5

What were you born to do? Were you born to be an accountant, a marketer or a project manager? Probably not. And who started the company that you are working for? The people that started the company at some point became entrepreneurial and asked themselves, “Why am I working for this person or company?” So, is this the right time for you to start a company?

Just like Uber, Slack, Square, WhatsApp, and Instagram were created coming out of the last recession, there will be many innovative companies spawned from this coronavirus pandemic. Quite a few talented people are being furloughed and, like you, they might be re-examining what they really want out of life. And there is reason to be optimistic. The good news is that more people are now actively seeking to become entrepreneurs. A new report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), sponsored by Babson College and Baruch College, finds that 27 million working-age Americans, nearly 14%, are starting or running new businesses. And Millennials and Gen-Z are driving higher interest in entrepreneurship as 51% of the working population now believes that there are actually good opportunities to start companies. So, why haven’t you considered starting a company?

There are several reasons for you not being more entrepreneurial but none of them are valid. Start to identify what is holding you back by examining and then mitigating the reasons/excuses listed below.

Fear of failure. While starting a business could be risky, so is thinking that you will have a company(s) that will take care of you and offer you employment for 30 years. Nothing in employment is guaranteed, you have to perform and get better at whatever you do or you will be replaced. Well, if that’s the case, that sounds riskier then starting a company where the control is in your hands. Life is an adventure, working for someone else for 30 years is not.

Few resources to start a business. People like to believe have little to no money to start a business. They also do not know where to find the capital they need to start a business. So even if they want to start a business, the lack of capital is a huge stumbling block for them. Well crowdfunding exists today where you can raise money through pre-sales of the product or even get investors. And other cloud based services like Shopify for e-commerce, etc. allow you to get up and running for very little money. There has never been a better time to start a company.

Don’t know anything about entrepreneurship. You may have never been exposed to entrepreneurship so you simply don’t consider starting a business. You can change that by joining other networks of entrepreneurs or adding more entrepreneurs to your network. The more you meet and learn from these people, the more normal it will seem to start your own company. The more knowledge you acquire, the lower your risk factor.

Entrepreneurship can be stressful. Starting and managing a business can be very stressful. It typically means understanding the market, developing the right products that will address the needs of the target market, and possessing the skills needed to jumpstart and run the business. However, working in a job or career where you have different people managing you to their expectations is also stressful. Most people in life want the freedom of choice to determine the shape of their lives and what better freedom than to create your own company and be responsible to you.

You love your job. You may actually love your current job, and there’s nothing in the world you want to do but work in your current job. You already feel that the corporate world gives you the challenging, exciting environment that you crave. There’s no reason to resign and start a business because you have already found the perfect job. Right up until the company is merged or sold and you need to start proving yourself all over again after ten years of hard work. If you love “what” you do, then you can do the same thing for yourself inside your company.

Starting a business is hard work. There are people who work 16 hour workdays, or work in two or three jobs (aside from their full time jobs). But despite the hard work and the long hours they put in, they still have barely make enough to live comfortably. They are living paycheck to paycheck. If they are already working that hard to earn a decent livable income, they think that starting a business requires double that effort, which they don’t want. Not true. It’s not about how many hours you work but the quality of those hours. And if you are going to work hard anyway in your career, might as well work for yourself. Plus, when you work on your own company and its something you love, it does not feel like work.

You fear selling. Whether you work in a service-oriented business or producing a product, being in business means selling. And, while you may not be in sales, whether you realize it or not, you have been selling your whole life. At a minimum, you have been selling you and perhaps even selling your companies products or services. At networking events, you are selling your company. When you truly care about your company and your products or services, it will feel less like selling and more like helping people.

Security of a steady paycheck. Starting a business can seem daunting. Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down. This means that there might be days of strong revenue, but also days when cash flow is extremely tight, especially during a down economy. There are people who cannot live with the downs and ups of running a business, and instead prefer the stability and security of a job and a regular paycheck. The real issue is that unless you work for the government, there is no guarantee of jobs for life. Do you wonder why so many companies are started in a recession? They are started by people who got laid off from their jobs.

Assume you will have a long and great life. And that you will work 30-40 years doing things you love. If you are going to work that long at something you love, might as well do it for yourself. The freedom and reward for building a great little company is amazing.

How Can a CFO Help in a Time of Crisis?

Source: https://tinyurl.com/y7228mum

Written by: Bill Palmer,

The current economic uncertainty has many businesses closely evaluating their current and future staffing needs. While some positions are being cut, especially in the hospitality and travel sectors, many businesses are strategically hiring financial professionals into executive leadership positions during the downturn.

Companies that previously had tasked their CEOs with handling finance functions are now hiring dedicated CFOs (or outsourcing CFO roles to reputable third parties) to ensure they will be able to weather the new economic storm. With ambiguity over how long businesses will need to keep their offices and storefronts closed paired with unpredictability in the stock market, business owners and CEOs are feeling increased pressure to make critical strategic financial decisions for the health of their organizations.

An experienced CFO can provide multi-scenario modeling to aid in tactical decision-making, offer an unbiased financial perspective, act as a confidential sounding board for the CEO, and handle negotiations with essential parties to benefit the overall organization.

Modeling & Planning

Unlike accounting, which is fundamentally about the past, finance is focused on planning for the future.

Seasoned CFOs can use current financial indicators and their previous experience to model and plan for the various scenarios that a business may face in the coming months and years. These plans can inform critical decision-making related to spending cuts, rightsizing the labor force, and timing planned business investments. CFOs can forecast the short and long-term impacts of these decisions to better position the company in response to economic shocks.

With new federal and state business relief packages being rolled out, new employee protections being passed, and additional financing options being offered by payment processors and vendors, an experienced CFO can help navigate the myriad options available to aid businesses in this difficult time.

In this way, a CFO not only mitigates the effect of a downturn of a business proactively but can also help right the ship when the company is struggling in a sea of a difficult financial conditions. 

 
Perspective

A consulting CFO is a neutral, independent voice in the room. Experienced CFOs typically follow the facts without pushing a personal agenda or engaging in office politics anyways, but consulting CFOs are even more likely to provide an unbiased perspective. Business owners and executive leadership teams can be reassured that a CFO consultant is acting in the best interest of the company and its stakeholders (owners, employees, and investors) rather than for job protection or other personal agendas.

Outsourcing the CFO role also provides an experienced and confidential sounding board for the CEO, which is especially important in family-owned businesses. While all business owners and CEOs feel some measure of emotional isolation, family businesses exacerbate this situation by adding personal relationship dynamics into the mix. Business leaders at family-owned companies may find themselves needing to balance family relationships and business success, especially in times of crisis. In this scenario, a CFO can provide the confidential conversational space that a CEO needs to make difficult decisions and prioritize the health of the business. Additionally, a consulting CFO can even act as a scapegoat for unpopular but necessary decisions, allowing the CEO to preserve existing internal relationships.

Third Party Negotiations

Because of their experience a CFO can also add credibility to the perceived quality of management and build bridges with capital providers to gain acceptance of forecast projections and strategic plans. The result is a company with less perceived risk and a higher perceived value, which is crucial in establishing mutually beneficial financial solutions while working with external parties.

A consulting CFO has credibility with lenders and personal relationships with banks to facilitate negotiations with these key players. The scope of a CFO’s experience will also aid in negotiating with third parties like landlords, vendors, and customers through difficult times when financing and payment options may need to be changed.

The impact of COVID-19 on latino-owned businesses

Testimonial Lore Greenberg, Feeling Fabulous

The Top 10 Mistakes That Keep Women Entrepreneurs From Scaling to $1 Million

Written by: Julia Pimsleur

Source: https://tinyurl.com/y9ub38yv

Though women own 40 percent of U.S. businesses, making 'real money' is oftentimes more the exception than the rule. Here are some things getting in our way.

Where are the million-dollar women? In 2018, just 1.7 percent of women-owned businesses generated more than $1 million in revenue, and the challenges are even greater for women of color entrepreneurs. Why is it that even though women own 40 percent of all businesses in the U.S., making "real money" is more the exception than it is the rule? What's getting in our way when it comes to business ideas that make bank?

As a scaling coach and founder of Million Dollar Women, I work with hundreds of women across the country who are scaling up, and I interviewed dozens of successful female CEOs who built multimillion-dollar businesses from scratch in my book. In my experience, here are 10 of the mistakes that tend to get in our way.

Mistake #1: Doing it all yourself

Any entrepreneur who reaches $1 million in revenue likely knows how to delegate, and they usually have one or more full-time staff members, off-site contractors, virtual assistants and/or interns. In my experience, many women tend to be hesitant about delegating, in part due to perfectionism. Even when they know they’re stretched too thin, many women avoid delegating — they're afraid the job won’t be completed correctly, they don’t want to spend the money or maybe they don't have as much relevant experience in management. As a recovering perfectionist myself, I believe that until women learn to become “delegation ninjas," it's difficult to focus on work and effectively scale ups. In the Million Dollar Women community, we call this a shift from being the do-er to being the leader. 

Mistake #2: Lack of internal systems and processes

The secret to scaling up isn't usually about doing more of what you're doing and working longer hours. (You probably already work too much.) It's about working smarter, not harder. Finding the right internal systems and processes for your finances, marketing, sales and operations is crucial. While it can seem challenging to carve out the time to get these right, having good systems helps allow for rapid growth. To reach $1 million in revenue and beyond, we need to fine-tune the “moneymaking machines” at the center of our businesses. This means having a proven strategy, a sales playbook and functioning sales funnel, the right team and software the automates much of the work. 

Mistake #3: Not busting limiting beliefs

A quote often attributed to Henry Ford says it best: “Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right.” We may think we're making rational decisions all day based on facts and figures, but in reality, our subconscious tends to drive the show. Many entrepreneurs think ramping up sales is the ticket to rapid growth, but without the right mindset, many entrepreneurs lack the belief in themselves required “go big.” In my view, it’s rarely competence holding women back — instead, it's confidence and a mix of beliefs about money, whether they deserve success and the fear of the potential sacrifices involved in going big. A powerful mindset is important because it's the foundation on which you build your mansion, and it's the number-one thing the women I interviewed for Million Dollar Women underscored as critical to their success. Replacing limiting beliefs with empowering ones can make it possible to truly embrace success. 

Mistake #4: Not understanding the scalable part of your business

Being able to identify the scalable part of your business can mean the difference between hitting a plateau and the “hockey stick” growth that we all aim for. It can also help make your company attractive to investors because your company could feasibly grow X times bigger without having to hire X times as many staff members (or spending X times as much on marketing or infrastructure). It takes approaching your company with that lens of “What is scalable, and how do I productize my services so I can charge more and reach more customers?" 

Mistake #5: Not working with coaches, mentors and advisors

In some ways, women aren't taught to invest in ourselves — we're taught to put other people’s needs in front of our own. But in my view, the fastest way to scale your business is to learn from people who have been there, done that and can show you the way. Of course you can find your way to success on your own, but it could take significantly longer. And more than 50 percent of small businesses go out of business within the first five years. Having the right coach or entrepreneur program is the way to make sure you avoid the crash and burn scenario and are on track for high growth.

Mistake #6: Insufficient financial know-how

Finances tend to be the “Achilles heel” of business for many women entrepreneurs I know, and this can result in not poor financial planning or management and running out of cash. We don’t need to have finance degrees or MBAs to run our businesses, but we do need to educate ourselves in order to create a cash runway, steward our money better and effectively raise capital when necessary. 

Mistake #7: Not having a cash runway

I recall one of my advisors telling me, “You can be low on cash for a long time, but you can only run out of cash once.” Many businesses fail or start sinking simply because they run out of cash. In my research for Million Dollar Women, I learned that women are twice as likely as men to shut down their businesses because they run out of cash. I made some errors in the early days of one of my businesses that almost cost me the company, so this one really hits home. You can better avoid this issue by working with an advisor on your cash flow projections or finding a great accountant who can walk you through your numbers. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or say you don’t understand, and be sure to look at what you owe and what is owed to you on a weekly basis so you can have a healthy cash balance.

Mistake #8: Good on vision, bad on execution (and vice versa)

Every entrepreneur has a different skill set. Some are excellent when it comes to having a vision for their company but not so good at execution. Some are excellent at getting things done but lack the mindset for big-picture planning. Both are essential to your business success, so figuring out your strengths and hiring for your weaknesses (or creating an advisory council to help you) is imperative. Without good vision, how can we create one-, three- and five-year plans for our businesses? And without good execution, how can we build the systems and hire the teams that allows us to keep scaling up? Successful entrepreneurs learn to work on the business not just in the business (or during the work day) and to make strategy a priority. They learn to both “plan the dive and dive the plan” — in other words, take time for planning and make sure everyone knows their role in executing on that plan. 

Mistake #9: Improperly tracking marketing spend

One of the dangers of running out of cash (see #7) is runaway marketing spend. Between bidding on Google search terms, trying Facebook ads and other online and offline marketing, marketing is one biggest expenditures for fast-growing companies. There was a time at Little Pim where we didn’t track where our customers were coming from and didn’t know which marketing channels were performing and why. Eventually, we started keeping a closer eye on our marketing spend — that way, we were able to avoid falling into the money pit that marketing can be and begin getting excellent ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). We implemented what I call the "75/25 marketing budget rule" (part of the "moneymaking machine" we built that I referenced in #2). Figuring out which marketing channels work for you and rigorously tracking your spend is a key part of scaling up.

Mistake #10: Not investing in networking or personal growth

I snuck two mistakes into this last one. We don’t know what we don’t know, right? So the only way to learn what we don’t know is to surround ourselves with people who can help us stretch to the next level. Make time for personal and business growth, whether it’s reading business blogs and books, attending conferences, joining organizations for entrepreneurs, watching videos or finding the right coaches and mentors. I did all of these, and most of the women I've spoken to who make it to $1 million in revenue and beyond did some combination of the above. Make time for your business and personal growth, and it should pay off in spades.

If any of these resonated with you, now you know what to work on in 2020. Remember that "you can only grow your business as big as you grow yourself" — so here's to a year of exponential growth.

Careers advice: stop telling women to talk like men – ask men to talk more like women

Written by: Kayleigh Dray

Source: https://tinyurl.com/y7dq9tpg

A viral Twitter thread has explored an “unpopular opinion” about women in the workplace, and it makes a lot of sense.

The year is 2020, we’re all in lockdown due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and we’re using social media more than ever . As such, the internet is absolutely full of so-called “unpopular opinions” – perhaps more so than ever before.

One such “unpopular opinion” growing in popularity, however, is Dr. Charlotte Lydia Riley’s commentary on women in the workplace. And it’s one which we here at Stylist can 100% get behind, too.

“Apparently an unpopular opinion, but I don’t hate that I say ‘does that make sense?’ all the time in a professional context,” she writes, in a Twitter post which has been shared almost 20,000 times in under 24 hours.

“It lets other people into the conversation and gives them the chance to ask questions. Maybe sometimes feminised speech patterns are… good? Helpful?”

Continuing her train of thought, Riley adds: “I’m not keen on the way that all these things relate to language in a way to tell women to be more declarative, more dominant, more loud and assertive. Maybe it would be better for men to, I don’t know, listen more? Ask more questions? Leave room for doubt?”

It’s an opinion which is shared by author Ruth Whippman, who recently penned a careers advice piece for The New York Times entitled: ‘Enough leaning in. Let’s tell women to lean out.’

In the piece, Whippman further explores the idea that the assumption that assertiveness is a more valuable trait than, say, deference is itself the product of a “ubiquitous and corrosive gender hierarchy.”

“Until female norms and standards are seen as every bit as valuable and aspirational as those of men, we will never achieve equality,” she notes.

“So perhaps instead of nagging women to scramble to meet the male standard, we should instead be training men and boys to aspire to women’s cultural norms, and selling those norms to men as both default and desirable. To be more deferential. To reflect and listen and apologise where an apology is due (and if unsure, to err on the side of a superfluous sorry than an absent one). [And] to aim for modesty and humility and cooperation rather than blowhard arrogance.”

Of course, gender shouldn’t be a factor in whether or not a person can be a great leader – a person’s leadership abilities should depend on their individual strengths and personality traits.

However, there’s no denying that women have been repeatedly told to embrace those traits which are still traditionally viewed as being more “masculine”: strength, courage, independence, and assertiveness. However, research has repeatedly shown us that those traditionally “feminine” traits (empathy, sensitivity, caring, and compassion) should be nurtured by all genders, as they lay the groundwork for better leaders.

Indeed, a 2017 study looking into personality and leadership identified the key characteristics of effective leaders (emotional stability, openness, sociability, methodicalness, and good communication skills) and found that women score higher than men in four of the five traits – thus concluding that women “are better suited for leadership than their male colleagues when it comes to clarity, innovation, support and targeted meticulousness.

The research, led by professors Øyvind L. Martinsen and Lars Glasø from the BI Norwegian Business School, assessed nearly 3,000 managers in the private and public sectors and pinned down the following personality traits of effective leadership.

• Ability to withstand job-related pressure and stress (leaders have a high degree of emotional stability)
• Ability to take initiative, be clear and communicative (leaders are outgoing, with a high degree of extraversion)
• Ability to innovate, be curious and have an ambitious vision (effective leaders have a high degree of openness to new experiences)
• Ability to support, accommodate and include employees (effective leaders display a high degree of sociability)
• Ability to set goals, be thorough and follow up (effective leaders are generally very methodical)

Women ranked higher in initiative and clear communication, openness and ability to innovate, sociability and supportiveness, methodical management and goal-setting. The one area the study showed men to be stronger in was dealing with work-related stress; Glasø said the findings suggested that “female leaders may falter through their stronger tendency to worry – or lower emotional stability.”

However, he pointed out that the trait did not invalidate the other areas in which women excelled, saying: “This does not negate the fact that they [women] are decidedly more suited to management positions than their male counterparts.

“If decision-makers ignore this truth, they could effectively be employing less qualified leaders and impairing productivity.”

Martinsen said: “These findings pose a legitimate question about the construction of management hierarchy and the current dispensation of women in these roles.”

This evidence seems to prove that promoting “feminine” qualities such as deference, humility, cooperation, and listening skills will be beneficial to pretty much everyone – particularly businesses.

In the words of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter: “We need to reshape our own perception of how we view ourselves. We have to step up as women and take the lead.”

Of, to put it plainly, if we can disregard outdated stereotypes, learn from ourselves and from those around us, then we’ve got this.

Images: Getty