CFO Services

Growing businesses often cannot afford a six figure salary plus benefits and bonuses, nor do they require the services of a full-time CFO. Our Part-Time CFO service provides you a professional financial manager who works with you to help guide your business to success.  Here’s what you get with our Part-Time CFO services…

• More time to focus on new services, new customers and other core business issues.
• Better understanding of the financial side of your business. So you have less surprises and more control over the money.
• Improved decision-making capabilities from clearly seeing the hard and true numbers of your business.
• A readily available sounding board to help you with those tough business decisions and help you clarify your business plans.
• The comfort from knowing that a professional is overseeing, protecting and constantly improving the financial side of your business.
• A professional who establishes strong financial controls in your business to reduce employee theft and increase profits.
• Training and managing your accounting staff.
• Improved quality and timeliness of financial information.
• Budget preparation and monitoring.
• Profitability analysis by service or product line.
• Tax saving strategies.
• Trend analysis.
• Assistance in defining long-range plans and the quantification of goals.
• Cash management.
• Liaison with bankers, attorneys, vendors, insurance agents, etc.
• Assistance in obtaining financing from banks, including assistance with negotiations.
• Review/negotiation of insurance policies.
• Development of company accounting procedure manuals.
• Analysis of equipment purchases, expansions, etc.
• Mergers and acquisitions assistance.
• Custom designed collection policies and procedures.

Cash Flow Analysis & Management

A cash crisis can occur in a financially successful business.   It can be exhausting, time consuming and emotionally devastating.   It can even topple your business.   Analyzing your existing cash flow practices, creating a management plan and managing the plan can reduce risk.  Our cash management service allows you to…

• know when, where, and how your cash needs will occur.
• know what the best sources are for meeting your additional cash needs.
• be prepared to meet these needs when they occur, by keeping good relationships with bankers and other creditors

The starting point for avoiding a cash crisis is allowing us to develop a cash flow projection for you. We can help you develop both short-term (weekly, monthly) cash flow projections to help you manage daily cash, and long-term (annual, 3-5 year) cash flow projections to help you develop the necessary capital strategy to meet your business needs.

We also prepare historical cash flow statements to help you gain an understanding about where all the money went.

Creating an accurate cash flow projection is just one of the many cash management services we provide. You also get…

• Help obtaining an appropriate line of credit
• Cash collection acceleration techniques
• Proven effective collection policies
• Proven effective payment policies
• Help obtaining the maximum rate of return on your idle cash

Bank Financing

Seeking a business loan or line of credit without adequate preparation sends a negative message to the lender. It pays to be prepared and organized in your approach to financing.   Acquire your financing BEFORE you need it. Put your best foot forward by allowing us to prepare a winning loan proposal for you. Our proposals have a high likelihood of success because they’re created from the lender’s perspective.

You get the money you need because we know exactly what banks want to see. Even more importantly, we know how to prove to them that you’ll be able to pay them back.

Our winning loan proposals come complete with…

• Executive Summary: Where we concisely state the purpose of the loan, the exact amount of money required, an explanation of what the loan will be used for and why it’s needed.
• Pro-forma Cash Budgets and Financial Statements: We use your data and underlying assumptions to prepare information that your banker can easily read and buy in to.
• Owners Personal Financial Statements: We make copies of the last 3 years of personal tax returns for the bank as well as identify the collateral being pledged as security for the loan.
• Representation: We help substantiate your financial needs/position to your banker in person.

Strategic Business Planning

As with traveling, if you do not know where you want to end up, you are not likely to arrive.   Preparing a strategic plan, documenting that plan and becoming accountable to the plan creates a basis for success.   A Strategic Business Plan is much more than a tool to obtain financing. If you still have all your plans and ideas locked up inside your head, preparing a strategic plan can help you clarify your company’s direction. It can ensure that your key leaders are all on the same page, and keeps both management and staff focused on the tasks at hand.

A Strategic Plan is often needed when…

• Starting a new venture, product or service
• Expanding a current organization, product or service
• Buying a new business, product or service
• Turning around a declining business

The Strategic Plan provides a blueprint, describing your company, its products, the competitive environment, management team, financial health, and business risks.

The plan allows you to…

1. Identify and describe the target customer profile, features, advantages and benefits of your new venture, product or service.
2. Justify that your plans are credible by fully researching the need being filled with your new venture.
3. Develop marketing plans including full descriptions of targeted promotional campaigns with implementation timelines. You also get to examine market conditions, the nature of your customers, as well as your competitors, sales potential, and projected results of your promotional campaigns.
4. Develop staffing plans including identifying the key players, skills, attitudes and expertise needed to build the venture.
5. Develop management plans including full descriptions of management systems and timelines for implementation.
6. Develop financial plans including projected startup costs, operating costs, revenue, profits, and break-even analysis for the first 3 to 5 years.Projected financial plans allow you to effectively predict upcoming problems, or prevent them. In other words, the perspective gained through your Strategic Business Plan can make a significant contribution to your company’s success, and help you get the funding you require. In fact, most lending institutions and private investors will not even talk to you without a solid financial plan.
7. Identify building and equipment needs including vendors and cost estimates.
8. Formulate company milestones including timelines for upcoming products and services in development.

Accounting Set up and Training

Selecting the correct financial software and setting up your chart of accounts and reporting is key to accurate understanding of your business’s financial operations.   A cookie cutter financial set up will not provide easily accessible report so that trends can be spotted and success and failure seen quickly.

We will assist you in

• Selection of your software
• General Ledger formation
• Use of Classes and Profit Centers for quick determination of reviews
• Design custom reports that provide you ready access to status and outcome of your goals
• Provide training for you and / or your staff to properly utilize your chosen system.
• Provide ongoing support and review as required.

Succession Planning

Developing and implementing a well-designed succession plan is essential to the survival of a family business or preparing for a potential sale.   If you own a family business, retirement isn’t simply a matter of deciding not to go into the office anymore. You’ve got some critical questions to answer like…

“What happens to the business when you’re no longer running it?” and
“Will you have enough money to retire?”

The family dynamic complicates the whole transition because of the relationships and emotions involved. Most people are not comfortable discussing topics such as aging, death, and financial affairs.

Comfortable or not, succession planning should be a priority for any family business considering that more than seven out of ten family-owned businesses fail to survive the transition from founder to second generation, typically falling prey either to estate taxes or family discord – or both.

Developing and implementing a well-designed succession plan is essential to the survival of a family business from one generation to the next.

We help you with these key issues –

• Keeping it in the family. Are you going to pass the business on to your family or sell it to a third party? We help you weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each of these options.
• Who’s going to run the business when you’re gone? Management and ownership are not one and the same. You may decide to transfer management of your business to just one of your children but transfer equal shares of business ownership to all your children, whether they’re actively involved in the business or not.
• Minimizing the tax bite. The tax burden when transitioning a family business can be significant. The challenge is that a family business is not generally a liquid asset, but taxes are typically due when ownership is transferred.
• Making it fair. Transferring family ownership often adds a tremendous amount of stress to individual family members. We talk with each of the family members to ensure that they feel they a getting an equitable and fair share of the pie.

What we do for you…

Once we understand how you feel about the key issues above, we begin constructing your succession plan focusing on these 5 issues…

1. Business Valuation
2. Business Restructuring
3. Tax Consequences
4. Retirement Projections
5. Tax Projections

Account Reconciliation

Bank Reconciliation

Reconciling your business checking and credit card accounts each month allow us to keep your bank account, accounting, and taxes up-to-date.

Having us reconcile your account each month allows you to…

• Identify lost checks, lost deposits and unauthorized wire transactions.
• Detect and prevent excess/unjustified bank charges and ensures transactions are posted correctly by your bank.
• Detect and prevent embezzlement of funds from within your company.
• Know how your business is doing? You can’t really know unless all accounts are reconciled and properly accounted for on your financial statement.
• Manage your cash more effectively. Proper management of funds not only saves money, it makes money for you.
• Protect yourself. By timely reconciling and promptly objecting to your bank about any unauthorized, fraudulent or forged checks presented to your bank and paid by that bank, you can relieve your agency of responsibility for the shortfall and transfer the risk to the bank. This reason to reconcile alone should be enough. Crime exists.
• Sleep Better. You will sleep more peacefully at night knowing your bank accounts are reconciled, in balance and that all escrow funds, accounts, checks and disbursed funds are properly accounted for.