Is Your Accounting Staff Able to Take You to the Next Level?

by: MargotBrandlin
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When you're just starting out, you're not necessarily thinking about what your employees are going to bring to your business long-term. You simply want survival at first, and sometimes that means that you'll hire anyone who can do the job and is willing to work at what you can afford to pay.

As oftentimes happens, a business owner hires someone they already know and trust, such as a neighbor or sister, to do the bookkeeping for them. Now, it's true that this person might not even have experience in bookkeeping, but they just are more skilled at 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.

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.

However, if you hire someone who's a qualified CFO or controller, this can help you in a couple of 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

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

Bookkeeper and Writer, Margot Brandlin writes and works for OWL Bookkeeping and CFO Services. Owl Offers Businesses in Minneapolis Quickbooks implementation and training.  

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