As the owner of your business, your primary concern is around budgeting, maintaining, growing and safeguarding your cash. We can put in the necessary steps to ensure that you have strong controls over this most precious asset.
Cash Flow
The primary concern of most entrepreneurial businesses relates to ensuring sufficient cash flow exists. Cash, due to its liquid nature, is the riskiest item a business deals with.
We can help create policies, procedures and other templates to ensure that you have strong controls over cash and to ensure that you are tracking it effectively.
Some examples of these services include:
- Bank Reconciliations– Does the information in your bank account match what is showing in your receipts and accounting system? If these differ for any reasons other than timing, there is the potential for fraud/theft.
- Aged Accounts Receivable– Are you tracking if your customers are paying on time? Do you continue to provide services/products to customers who don’t? Do you want to reward those customers who do pay on time? We can help create templates that will show your outstanding receivables and help you keep on top of those customers who are not paying on time.
- Budget/Cash Flow Projections– Do you know if you are going to have enough cash to cover your bills? Do you want to estimate how your company is going to perform in the future based on foreseeable events? We can help you forecast what your cash needs will be in the future. In addition, we can create templates such that we can make changes to the document as new information becomes available and circumstances change. We can track actual results to what you budgeted and help determine the root cause of why results did not match budget. This information can be parlayed to help future results.
- Reduce Expenses– Are you paying too much for products/services? Or paying for things that your business doesn’t require? We can help perform analysis to help you identify those costs that don’t provide any value to your business. Alternatively, we can provide cheaper solutions to help maximize overall cash flow and business success.
- Cash vs. Debt Balance– Are you holding too much in cash? Are you aware there is an optimal amount of debt you should carry to help the business thrive? We can help you find the balance between the two to help your business. In addition, we can help you in your relationship with your Banker to help negotiate favorable terms.
Financial Analysis
We will use your financial results to help drive performance. We can identify certain trends to determine how you are performing with previous results and how your results match with competitors/industry best standards (where information is available). We will create templates to compare year-over year results and month to month comparisons. We will determine the causes of fluctuations in accounts to help you better manage your business.
We will identify key ratios that you should track and explain the importance of why these are determined as key. In addition, if you have a bank loan, the bank will likely have ratio covenants you must meet in order to qualify for the loan.
Most importantly, we will teach you to perform this analysis yourself such that you will not rely on us for this in the future, although we are always happy to help.
Non-Financial Performance Measures
We can help establish metrics that may not be financial in nature, but are good measures of future success.
Some examples include:
- New Customers– Are you tracking how many new customers you add per month? Are you setting goals of what this number should be and methods to make it happen?
- Quality of Product/Services– Are customers happy with your products/services? Do you have methods to track this? Are you getting negative reviews on social media (a significant concern of modern businesses)?
- Web Site Traffic Results– Where applicable, are people visiting your web site and making online purchases? What is the rate of success (e.g. the ratio of a person visiting the web site that leads to a sale)?
- Competitors– When available, how do you compare to your competitors? Are there practises you could learn from them and incorporate in your own business to help drive results.
- Public relations– Are you getting involved in the community or with local business chambers? Are you volunteering? Getting involved can help increase the presence of your business and build goodwill.
- Others– We can identify and apply other metrics specific to your company.
Staffing Levels
As the leader, you only have so much time and brain power in a day to commit to less significant tasks. Based on the size of your business and your personal time commitments, it might be time to bring on an additional employee(s). We will analyze your current business structure and make recommendations on whether an employee should be hired and whether that would be a part-time or full time employee(s). There are several government programs available (assuming you qualify) that can subsidize this hire.