When you start a company you're not thinking about the skills and talents your employees will need years down the road. You're focused on survival, and that often means hiring just about anyone who will take the leap of faith with you at the pay you're able to offer.
Typically a business owner hires a person they know and trust, maybe a sister or a neighbor, to do their bookkeeping. This person may not even have a bookkeeping background, they just have a greater aptitude for it than the owner.
Are You Ready to Bolster Your Accounting Staff?
As the business grows, the needs and requirements of the business exceed the expertise of the original bookkeeper. As transactions get more complex, the books can get messy. And while the bookkeeper focuses on keeping up with the basic tasks, the big picture details go unattended.
No one is managing cash, monitoring profitability, or building relationships with lenders-no one is paving the way for growth. Even if the owner knew how to present the business to a bank or investor, the numbers might not be reliable. It can end up literally handicapping the entire organization.
Help for the Business Owner
In fact, many owners don't consider themselves knowledgeable in finance or accounting, and don't have a formal background in it. This can leave them poorly equipped to properly supervise a bookkeeper, much less train them. In addition, they may not be able to handle issues like forecasting, controlling costs, and analyzing profitability.
A Qualified CFO or controller can help in two important ways:
* He or she can train and support your existing accounting staff, so that they operate at their best. This could include creating procedure manuals, turning some processes over to automation, and reorganizing books that are disorganized presently, so that the bookkeeper can start over fresh.
* In addition, the CFO or controller can perform tasks that the business owner or bookkeeper are not qualified to perform, such as preparing and analyzing financial statements, putting together business plans, making out budgets or making cash flow analyses.
It takes unnecessary pressure off the business owner, who is freed up to focus on running the business. And the bookkeeper tends to thrive with training and clear expectations in place.
Efficient Processes Increase Your Bottom Line
How your accounting operations are run makes a direct impact on how profitable and able to grow your company is. As an example, when you process accounts receivable efficiently, you collect payments more promptly, cash flow comes in more evenly, and banks can see your business has more credible.
If you don't think your accounting staff can take your company to where it should go, perhaps it's time to call upon a professional accounting service.
About the Author:
About the Author: Margot Brandlin writes for OWL Bookkeeping and CFO Services. Owl Bookkeeping supplies Businesses in Minneapolis Quickbooks implementation and training.
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