Category Archives: accounting

Where Are We Going in 2022?

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If you are reading this, you made it through 2021 — the year that was supposed to have been the “rebound year” from 2020’s Covid-19-induced disaster for small businesses. While 2021 was not quite the year we had hoped for in terms of supply chains and freedom from government restrictions and mandates, it wasn’t a complete disaster.

After a less than optimistic 2020, last year ushered in over 4.6 million applications for new businesses. Innovation and sheer willpower helped business owners overcome hurdles and adapt, and they now appear poised to rebuild, reimagine, and prepare for a brighter future.

The pandemic’s bright side was that consumers decided to shop small and shop local, as if they could forecast the coming supply chain issues of late 2021. And this inspired the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to offer a few “top tips” for small businesses in 2022:

  • Keep track of scarcities in the supply chain and get ahead of them by working proactively with your suppliers.
  • Proactively educate your clients about any changes you make or plan to make as the economic landscape changes.
  • Get creative on sales and marketing opportunities. A workforce working almost exclusively from home during Covid created a dynamic digital marketing landscape. Buyers are reluctant to return to brick and mortar shopping, so online and mobile purchasing habits require our selling and fulfillment methods to have compatible strategies.
  • Consider outsourcing. Hiring part-time experienced freelancers can help you avoid the hiring and training costs of full-time employees and skilled outsourced contractors are in abundance.

Perhaps someone you knew joined “The Great Resignation” of 2021. Covid saw workers quit their jobs at record-high rates to seek a better work-life balance. Now, as small business owners, we may need to rethink and rephrase how we attract and retain a workforce that now wants a meaningful life with work, family, friends and self. 

All food for thought as we collectively head into 2022. We wish everyone a healthy, happy, and abundant New Year. We also like to hear your thoughts on where we are going in 2022. Feel free to share your thoughts on our Facebook page.

Accountants As Problem Solvers

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Small business accounting firms might be described as professional teams that allow business owners to concentrate on their business’s financial success without having to first acquire specific knowledge of accounting terms, processes, and theory. In fact, we’re actually Problem Solvers!

So what can a problem-solving accountant do for your small business?

1. Provide strategic guidance and tools. Your accountant can provide owners more time to focus on the many moving parts of a business. Setting professional, financial, personal, and business goals and staying on track with those goals while running a small business is a challenge. Your accountant will provide advice, be a sounding board, and more importantly build a dashboard of tools to measure progress. If things don’t go as expected, we help you troubleshoot the issues, test solutions, and reset key performance indicators (KPIs).

2. Keep an eagle’s eye on cash flow. Cash flow is the number one problem for most small businesses. Seasonal shifts, politics and big government, taxes, supplier levels, and even pandemics can cause a small business to fail. Even successful ones suffer when payments are slow to come in or expenses are too high. Your accountant’s job is to build long term financial strategies and organize cash reserves and a spending plan to assure that you can always make payroll and cover expenses.

It’s not just about cash flow. Your accountant serves as a sounding board — like what to do with spare cash, pay debt or reinvest? — because they can quickly consider the numbers behind the business and how debt might be structured. 

3. Provide tools to keep you in the loop. Your small business accountant can set up cloud accounting software to automate customer billing, pay invoices, and stay on top of expenses because you can manage your finances from anywhere.

4. Make your life as a business owner less stressful. Budgeting can be a nightmare for busy owners; if ignored, they can lead to poor decisions. Your accountant’s rigorous managing of the budget means you always know the real cost of doing business. And, you’ll know what to pay yourself!

It’s important to hire an accounting service that you can relate to on both a business and a personal level. Should you have an accountant that just seems to go through the motions instead of acting as a partner in your financial success, we hope you will call us. If you are already a loyal partner with us, we’re seriously interested in your feedback — seriously — because it’s our mission to build a thriving and profitable client accounting and advisory service firm. We are committed to incorporating first-in-class processes and procedures and using state-of-the-art technologies to benefit client experiences and, as your partner in success, be there as your ProblemSolver-in-Chief.