It’s easy to get so wrapped up in the daily grind of running a company that you skip business performance reviews. But the goals you set for your business at the start of the year won’t do much good if you don’t check whether you’re meeting them. The key to success is setting clear goals and checking year-to-year performance carefully,...
Finance & Operation Resources
Best Business Legacy Planning Tips
While everyone needs an estate plan, it is even more vital for an entrepreneur. Indeed, it's too tempting to focus on growing a company while neglecting to consider what may happen to their business if something were to happen to them. The single biggest risk to any venture is a death, explains FE partner Drew Lyon in an interview with...
Defining ROI for Your Small Business
Return on Investment (ROI) is one of the most important tools in a business leader's tool kit. By understanding ROI or return on investment, business owners and project managers can make more effective decisions for a business. From deciding whether to offer a specific new product or service line to determining how to best utilize the marketing tools at your...
Three Tips for Small Business Tax Preparation
Tax season is upon us. Is your small business ready? Tax season can be stressful, and it often seems as though it adds a lot of work for small business owners who are already balancing many different priorities. From dealing with human resources (HR) to marketing and operations initiatives, it seems easy to let tax preparation fall by the wayside....
Four Benefits of Hiring an Outsourced CFO During an Economic Downturn
During an economic downturn, finances are every small business owner's top concern. Consider, for example, the financial crisis of 2008. It brought the U.S. banking system to its knees and led to the loss of millions of jobs. Now, more than 10 years later, we're aware that history has shown that beyond a certain level, debt burdens become too heavy...
Build a Small Business Budget in Six Easy Steps
Operating a successful business is no easy task. It requires a great deal of time, energy, and extensive planning. One of most intimidating, yet essential, tasks that a business owner will undertake is the creation of a business budget. Even the most seasoned entrepreneurs dread it. Even so, they understand that creating and sticking to a business budget is critical...
Free E-book: Cloud-Based Accounting Software
In this e-book you will learn: Why online accounting software is such a game-changer for small businesses The pros and cons of each of the 11 most popular accounting enterprise resource planning (ERPs) Which applications are best suited for your business and why The best application add-ons to help you further customize your accounting Detailed and unbiased user insight Download...
Bookkeepers of the Future
Why are bookkeepers important? Bookkeepers have always been an integral part of successful, growing businesses, but their value is often discounted. To someone without an accounting background, the profession may seem straightforward and fairly static. While it is true that the foundations of performing the business' accounting rarely changes, the bookkeeping profession has been constantly evolving and expanding. This is...
Income Statement Confidence
In financial reporting, there's nothing simpler than an income statement, or P&L (profit and loss statement). Without good, clear, bookkeeping and an income statement, it is hard to have the confidence to act and make the best business decisions. Get the scoop on putting income statements to work for you.
15 Critical Questions to Answer Before Talking to a Business Investor
Developing your idea - answering the must know questions One of the biggest challenges that new company founders come up against is knowing what questions to prepare for when raising money. This can also inform how you build your pitch deck to take to business investors. It isn't easy to get ready for these sessions. What you can do though...
Cash Flow Forecasting Template
Forecasting your cash flow can be a daunting adventure, one fraught with mistakes, uncertainty and confusion. It doesn't need to be. We've put together a cash flow template for you. Any business can use our template to get a handle on their cash flow on a week by week basis. This cash flow template will help you to foresee issues...
Taming the Beast That is Financial Reporting
The journey to understanding - Part II In the first part of this series we looked at the sources of financial data that your business generates, how to see them, and most importantly how to understand some of the errors that are inherent within it. In this post, we'll dive into analyzing your data to understand how you can derive...
Realizing the Importance of Cash Flow
Do you have a cash flow problem? Many early stage companies become hyper focused on metrics that drive revenue, such as sales and marketing. Although these areas are important, the financial metric of cash flow should be watched carefully, especially in the early days of a company. According to a U.S. Bank study, 82 percent of business failures are due to...
Taming the Beast That is Financial Data
The journey to understanding Getting a handle on the financial data that your business produces is a monumental task, but once done, decisions with financial implications can be made with confidence and understanding. Making sense of your financial data is a long journey that requires diligence, patience and persistence. When engaged successfully your financial data can help you make more...