Is Your Accounting Staff Capable of Taking You Farther?

by: MargotBrandlin
Total views: 31 | Word Count: 480

When your company is just beginning, you're not necessarily thinking about the talents and skills your employees are going to need in the years to come. At first, you just focus on surviving, and that sometimes means that you're willing to hire just about anyone who will work at the pay level you can afford.

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.

It may be that profitability is being neglected, that your cash is not being managed. Or, you may not be building relationships with top lenders you need to. In short, you're not making means available for your business to grow. Even if you as the owner know how to present the business to an investor or a bank, your numbers might not be reliable if they haven't been done properly. This can end up literally negatively impacting your entire organization.

Hold on, There's Help for the Business Owner

Many business owners don't have an accounting or finance background themselves-leaving them ill-equipped to properly train and supervise a bookkeeper, much less tackle the bigger issues like cash forecasting, cost control and profitability analysis.

A Qualified CFO or controller can help in two important ways:

* By training and supporting your existing accounting staff, so they can operate at peak performance-this might include creating procedure manuals, automating some processes, and cleaning up books that are in disarray so that the bookkeeper can start over with a fresh slate.

* By performing financial duties that fall outside the expertise of the bookkeeper and the owner-this might include things like preparing and analyzing financial statements, creating business plans, defining budgets and performing cash flow analysis.

This can take pressure off of the business owner, who is then able to have the time and energy to focus on running the business. The bookkeeper in turn tends to do much better once trained properly and with clear expectations to follow.

Efficient Processing Adds to Your Bottom Line

Efficiently running your accounting operations directly impacts your profitability, in your favor. For example, if you process accounts receivable effectively, you can collect payments much more promptly, which in turn means that your cash flow is much more even. This in turn means that your bank sees this and you have much more credibility with them.

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 and works for OWL Bookkeeping and CFO Services. Owl Offers Businesses in Minneapolis Quickbooks training and implementation.  

More Articles from: Bookkeeping