Last week’s article extolled the virtues of budgeting…and the vital reasons why your business – and EVERY small business – should create and operate with
If you’re like a lot of small business owners and entrepreneurs, just the thought of a budget might make you cringe. As a group, we
Policies decentralize decision-making so no one has the power to bend the rules. Policies also promote consistent operations, so the same procedures and protocols are used for all situations. And financial policies promote transparency and accountability.
Tightening financial controls with a few simple procedures will make your assets safer, your accounts current, and gives you the latest financial data for strategic planning.
While we are not CPAs and do not offer tax preparation services, we work closely with a number of CPAs and assist our clients by gathering the information and reports they need for their taxes.
The purpose of closing the books is to make sure that all the financial information about your business is accurate and entered properly.
By establishing accounting policies and procedures, the accounting systems become part of the corporate IP and operate independently of individual staff members.
Check writing is one of the easiest to manage, and one of the most critical since it often has the greatest room for error and, potentially, fraud. We recommend that our clients keep close control over their check books with strict rules and protocols about payables and receivables.
Starting out with a common set of protocols makes the accounting process efficient and manageable for all concerned.
In developing the procedures that make policies a reality, remember that procedures, like systems, need to be well-documented in order to be transferrable, and adaptable.
When it comes time to do that annual or quarterly performance review, you need to apply a set of achievable metrics that truly gauge employee performance.
To use even more advanced accounting KPIs, assess relationship numbers or those variables that are interdependent on other operations within the organization. Relationship numbers include number of sales in the pipeline, billable efficiency, gross margin, and net margin.