Development of Goals – Effective managers need to set goals to help them stay focused on priorities. Working with an advisor can help the manager keep on target, uncover unforeseen opportunities and threats and reprioritize. Often, one idea out of these sessions will result in several thousand dollars in savings.
Training on Reading Financial Statements – Most small business owners have not developed the necessary skills to understand financial statements or to use them to effectively make business decisions. Training to read a balance sheet, profit and loss, cash flow budget, industry benchmarks, and financial ratios can help you to better understand what the priorities are in your business and will allow you to make better decisions and maximizing your return or investment.
Training on QuickBooks and Bookkeeping – Effective training of your accounting staff can save hours of time each week and professional fees each year. Even an experienced bookkeeper can learn new techniques, improve certain processes and learn from a fresh perspective.
CFO Consulting – Small businesses do not typically have forty hours of work per week to keep a true CFO busy. However, they could use a CFO for a couple of hours per week to provide accounting oversight, help with financing decisions, improve workflow, and review special projects. Outsourcing the CFO requirements to a solid CPA firm can help fill the gap until the company grows large enough to hire a fulltime person.
Competitor Analysis – Keeping an eye on the competition can allow your organization to be quicker to respond to certain opportunities and threats. Understanding things like what new services they are implementing, how they compute their pricing, what percentage of sales are tied up in payroll or material costs and how they get their customers can be extremely valuable.
Tactical Growth Concepts – Business growth comes from a variety of endeavors like the development of a marketing plan, acquisition of a business or new location, hiring of key sales people, etc. A good CPA can help the business owner review opportunities and get a big-picture perspective. An outside person can bring new ideas to the plan and help to fine tune it as well as help set priorities. Oftentimes, a small investment with an advisor before a plan is implemented can save thousands of dollars in wasted marketing dollars, employee training and potential problems.
Networking – CPA’s don’t traditionally charge for helping clients to network with their contacts. CPA’s are often well connected within their communities and can oftentimes be the best referral source for developing new business, building strategic partnerships and saving money on operating expenses.
