Category: Business Advice

Hiring a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is an important decision for any business. But you may be wondering what size company needs a CFO. Considering the size of your business is a pivotal aspect of deciding to hire a CFO or an outsourced CFO to help you keep up with the financial side of the business.

If you run a small business, you may not need a full-time CFO, but you may benefit from the expertise of an outsourced CFO. For medium-to-large businesses, the decision to hire a CFO becomes imperative to the successful operation of the company.

The financial and tax experts at Cook CPA Group are well-versed in the financial operations of businesses big and small. We created this blog post to help you explore when it’s time to hire an outsourced CFO and what you should know before making the decision.

Hiring a CFO for a Small Business

For a small business, hiring an outsourced CFO can provide the financial guidance and advice needed to make informed decisions about your company. While hiring an in-house CFO seems like the conventional next step, consider the cost-saving advantages of hiring an outsourced CFO.

Your small business can benefit from the expertise of an outsourced CFO to create a budget, manage cash flow, and provide financial analysis to help you make the best decisions for your business.

For small businesses, it may be time to hire an outsourced CFO when the business is growing and you can no longer keep up with the finances on your own. An outsourced CFO can help you manage the finances, provide you with financial forecasting for better margins, and help you meet your financial goals.

Quick Tip: Are you a Sacramento-based small business? Check out 18 financial tips we compiled to help small business owners in the Sacramento area plan for a financially successful year.

Hiring a CFO for a Medium-Sized Business

For a medium-sized business, hiring a CFO is an immeasurable asset. While they can help with the more routine tasks like budgeting, cash flow management, and reporting, CFOs can also help with strategic goal setting.

Traditional business models suggest hiring an in-house CFO to help with this role. However, your medium-sized business can benefit from hiring an outsourced CFO to take on these responsibilities without impacting your bottom line.

Hiring an outsourced CFO is an effective way to reduce payroll costs, boost productivity, and efficiently achieve business goals and metrics.

In addition to routine financial management, an outsourced CFO can create financial forecasts and robust reporting to help you set and achieve your financial goals faster. They can also help with mergers and acquisitions, capital raising, financial modeling, and investor relations.

As your business reaches new financial heights, it’s important you carefully monitor for any risks. Hiring an outsourced CFO can help your medium-sized company with risk management and regulatory and tax compliance.

Read more about the importance of financial risk management here.

Hiring a CFO for a Large Business

Hiring an outsourced CFO for a large business is crucial. While most large businesses have a full-time CFO, it may be wise to consider switching to outsourced CFO services.

There are numerous benefits to outsourcing your company’s CFO role, including increased financial focus, the ability to reach financial goals faster, and a critical eye to financial bottlenecks and operational risks that may be overlooked.

While an in-house CFO may be a financial expert, they may not know their way around a tax audit. That’s why we recommend hiring an outsourced CFO who can work cross-functionally to provide you with financial expertise while managing your tax obligations.

Need more reasons to hire an outsourced CFO for your business? Check out five ways an outsourced CFO can save your business money.

At Cook CPA Group, we have decades of experience helping businesses of every size manage their finances and prepare business taxes to maximize savings. Hiring a CFO becomes an essential step in growing your business, no matter the size of your company.

Schedule a free consultation with us today to find out how to hire Cook CPA Group as your company’s outsourced CFO.

As a business owner, finding time to get your finances in order while keeping up with the demands of daily operations quickly becomes impossible. Between maintaining your books to managing cash flow and expenses, there is just too much to keep up with. Because of this, you may be considering whether it’s time to hire a full-time CFO to manage your bookkeeping, accounting, and financial reporting.

While an in-house CFO makes sense for some large-scale enterprises, an outsourced CFO is often a much better fit for mid-sized businesses. This post outlines the five signs it’s time to hire an outsourced CFO rather than an in-house CFO for your business. Keep reading to see if any of the five signs resonate with you.

1. You Need a Clear Financial Picture

In business, cash flow is king. Understanding the differences in cash flow and revenue on a monthly basis can help you determine your next business move. You can’t expect to take risks or scale your business without knowing the total amount of money coming in each month.

If you find struggle to keep up with invoicing and expenses, it may be time to hire an outsourced CFO. An outsourced CFO can help you determine gaps between your cash flow and expenses, and ensure you stay financially solvent. Additionally, an outsourced CFO isn’t bogged down by daily operations, meaning they can provide clarity around your financial objectives.

2. You Need Help Maintaining Your Books

Along those same lines, it may be time to hire an outsourced CFO if you struggle to keep your financial books in order. Maintaining proper accounting practices and bookkeeping techniques is a significant pain for many business owners. Starting out, you may have felt confident doing your own bookkeeping and accounting, but over time, keeping up with the invoices and monthly expenses became overwhelming.

Finding an outsourced CFO who is also a certified public accountant (like our team at Cook CPA Group) can help you set up or better utilize accounting software. From there, an outsourced CFO can help maintain the accuracy of those books and prepare your quarterly tax filings.

3. You Need Regular and Custom Reporting

A benefit of having a CFO, whether in-house or outsourced, is the ability to get custom and regular financial reports. While many automated accounting software plans offer a reporting function, they’re often lacking in the customization department.

Having a financial pro provide you with detailed financial reporting can go a long way in scaling your business. Hiring an outsourced CFO means getting expert financial advice and detailed reporting to navigate difficult business decisions. Custom reports can include:

• Balance sheet
• Income statement
• Cash flow statement

While your accounting software may provide these reports, the likelihood is that you’re not getting actionable advice on the appropriate steps your business should take. Hiring an outsourced CFO can help you analyze these reports and develop an implementation plan to keep you on the right track to pivot your business for growth.

4. You Don’t Have Time To Do It All Yourself

As a budding business owner, you may have had time to pore over your financial statements and cash flow spreadsheets. But as an established business, you may feel like you need to tack on an extra day or two each week to tackle all your tasks. If this sounds familiar, it’s time to hire an outsourced CFO.

Outsourced CFOs take your tedious financial tasks to give you the time you need to focus on daily operations. Imagine never thinking about bookkeeping or keeping up with cash flow issues again! Now that’s a benefit all business owners can agree on.

5. You Don’t Have the Budget to Hire a Full-Time CFO

One of the biggest signs it’s time to hire an outsourced CFO is if you don’t think you have the budget to hire someone in-house. The benefit of hiring an outsourced CFO is that many offer services at an hourly or set monthly price. Because they aren’t stuck dealing with employees or daily operations, outsourced CFOs focus on just the numbers. Say goodbye to paying for benefits, sick leave, and vacation time!

Hiring an outsourced CFO saves you money without skimping on the results. With curated and tailored reporting and expert advice, hiring an outsourced CFO is the best of both worlds: cost-effective and custom to your business.

Outsource Your CFO Function To Cook CPA Group

If any of the above signs resonate with you, it’s time to hire an outsourced CFO. At Cook CPA Group, we have decades of experience helping businesses like yours increase cash flow, grow revenue streams, and set strategic financial goals.

When it comes to our outsourced CFO services, we leave no rock left unturned. We dig through the financial weeds of your business to identify gaps and opportunities to scale. Our founder, Evelyn Cook, is an expert accountant and finance professional with the strategic smarts to help your business be successful.

If you’re ready to hire an expert outsourced CFO, schedule a free consultation call with Evelyn. You’ll discover how Cook CPA Group will help you save on operational costs while making decisions that positively impact your business finances.

Hiring a CFO is an essential step in ensuring your company’s financial health. However, many CFOs get so bogged down with competing priorities that they struggle with the time management skills necessary to complete the job effectively.

While we are champions of the outsourced CFO model (check out our outsourced CFO service here), we also recognize the CFO on your team is always looking for effective tricks that can make their job easier. Plus, having a successful CFO means your business can run on autopilot.

Share the following six effective tricks with your CFO to improve their effectiveness and streamline your business processes.

Optimize Cross-Team Documents

CFOs have a lot on their plate. Working from a cross-functional perspective, CFOs often have a hand in many of your business operations. While this is an excellent perspective when defining your business strategy, dealing with multiple sources of information can slow down even the savviest financial pros.

Implementing a business-wide policy of data version control is a time-saving trick your business CFO should understand and leverage. Instead of wasting time sorting through different versions of data, encourage your teams to work from one source of truth – a single financial spreadsheet. Creating a model document you can use to collect data across your organization saves your CFO time and costly mistakes.

Leverage Business-Grade Financial Software

Investing in your team is one of the most important things you can do to maintain a healthy business. According to Continuum Cloud’s 2019 State of Workforce Management Report, 73% of CFOs report a significant return on investment in implementing digital tools.

Leveraging business-grade software enhances the efficiency and efficacy of your business while making it easy for your team to do their job. Financial software helps CFOs save time on routine tasks that are traditionally unconsolidated. Aggregating data from multiple sources and automating several financial functions helps your financial team work more effectively with other business operation teams.

If you want your CFO to give you more effective strategic advice, take advantage of the wide-ranging software options available.

Automate Financial Processes

In a similar vein to leveraging business-grade financial software, implementing automation in your business process can help your CFO save time. Keeping up with growing business demands is a primary struggle for most CFOs.

Automating data collection and reporting functions can go a long way in helping alleviate the overwhelm. You can help your CFO automate by offering to implement strict internal controls and cross-functional dashboards. Many financial software programs integrate seamlessly with your existing financial processes and offer these automation features.

Support your CFO and financial team by investing in automation software that fits their unique needs.

Focus On Strategic Reporting

An important function of any CFO role is reporting. But financial reporting can quickly become a time-wasting activity. Taking time to collect, analyze, and create a report on financial information provides valuable insight, but the key is to spend that time on strategic reporting.

If your company invests in business-grade financial automation software, much of the weekly or monthly reporting functions your CFO typically reports on can be automatically created. Distributing these reports through mid-level staff allows your time-strapped CFO the opportunity to think strategically.

Encouraging your CFO to move away from day-to-day reporting and take a higher-level approach to the business strategy can be the catalyst for the growth your business needs. While your CFO is well-versed in daily operations, it may be necessary to outline operational expectations beyond monthly models.

Give your CFO the tools and guidelines to spend more of their time on strategic reporting for the foreseeable future so they can hand the reigns of daily operation to their executive team.

Create Internal Risk Management Protocols

The responsibility for risk management often falls to the CFO in small to mid-sized companies. Collaborating with an in-house or outsourced legal team on risk management issues can be a time and energy drain.

A time-saving trick for your CFO is to implement a strategic company-wide risk assessment. With the help of a legal team, your CFO’s team can quickly develop a risk management process that protects your business in the event company standards are compromised.

While this takes upfront work, having risk protocols in place ensures a huge return on time in the future.

Build Proactive Strategies

It’s no secret that CFOs wear many hats. From financial analysis to risk management and goal setting, CFOs have plenty of work to keep them busy the whole day. However, getting trapped in endless work cycles without taking the time to anticipate problems can be a risk for your business.

An effective CFO can save time and energy by delegating daily operations to their staff. In turn, they can spend the freed-up time anticipating potential problems in the business and developing proactive strategies to mitigate them.

Your CFO is an integral part of the decision-making process of your business. You must encourage them to make space in their day to look out for solutions for any potential problems that may arise.

It may be wise to outsource your CFO functions if you believe your CFO is struggling to be as effective as they could be. At Cook CPA Group, we’ve worked with hundreds of business clients and seen how the best businesses have scaled their operations. Schedule a free consultation today to find out how we can help your CFO and your business achieve financial goals.

Today’s businesses require financial management processes and systems that are agile, efficient, and digital. As both small business and accounting professionals, we have the privilege of working with clients from a broad range of industries.

Over the past few years, we’ve observed that many small businesses struggle with their day-to-day accounting and finance tasks – even when they have fantastic people working for them. Small business owners tend to be doers rather than number crunches. They love what they do and pour all their time, energy, and passion into their company. But as a result, many of them don’t pay enough attention to how they can streamline their business processes and save time on routine tasks.

In this post, we’re sharing the four ways to simplify your business finance process. By following these tips, you can reduce the time and effort you spend managing your business’s finances.

Keep Accounts Separate

The first step in simplifying your business finance process is keeping your business and personal accounts separate. By keeping track of your business finances in a different account, you will be able to more efficiently manage your cash flow and stay on top of your business-related expenses.

By keeping your business account separate from personal accounts, filing your taxes and dealing with any IRS inquiries is a much smoother process. Maintaining a separate business account means you never have to worry about keeping track of business deductions you want to leverage to reduce your tax bill.

Additionally, separating your business finances will help you build the business credit history needed to qualify for financing. Building your business’s credit history is important for future lending opportunities as banks and lenders ensure your business is in good standing with creditors. To learn more about establishing business credit and maintaining good credit history, check out the U.S. Small Business Administration’s website here.

Integrate Software From the Beginning

Accounting software can be a helpful tool when it comes to simplifying your small business finance process. By using software that integrates with your existing accounting system, you can automate many of the tasks that would otherwise be time-consuming and complicated. This can help you save time and money, and help you stay organized and in control of your finances.

Additionally, accounting software can help you keep track of your cash flow to avoid costly mistakes. By following these tips, you can improve your small business’s financial stability and reduce the time and effort needed to manage your finances.

Many small businesses turn to Quickbooks to help them manage their finances. Quickbooks is cloud-based accounting software that can be used by anyone. The software is very user-friendly and allows you to keep track of your business finances in an easy-to-use interface.

If you already use Quickbooks in your small business accounting process, make sure you leverage the Accountant’s Copy function. This feature allows you to send your business accounting records to your accountant in just a few clicks, making it easier to file your taxes.

Update Your Business Recordkeeping Process

Keeping updated records is essential to simplifying your business finance process. You can make more informed financial decisions by keeping accurate records of your transactions and balances. Understanding your business’s financial outlook is a critical component of your business plan and ongoing growth strategy.

LLCs and Corporations are legally required to keep business and personal accounts separate, which makes the recordkeeping process even easier to maintain. But choosing the recordkeeping system that is best suited to your business can sometimes be a struggle.

Keeping accurate records of any business-related purchases, sales, and payroll is essential in keeping your business financial processes streamlined and effective. By maintaining updated records in these areas, you will also be able to avoid costly mistakes and stay on top of your finances.

Maintaining updated records can be time-consuming, but you can make the process easier. To learn more about proper business recordkeeping, check out the IRS guide on the topic.

Hire an Outsourced CFO Accounting Firm

Outsourcing your accounting and finance needs can save you time and money. An experienced and qualified accountant can help you manage your finances, prepare financial statements, and make sound financial decisions.

Additionally, an outsourced CFO can provide valuable insight into your business finances and help you identify areas where you can save money. By outsourcing your CFO responsibilities to a qualified accountant, you can simplify your business finance process and improve your financial stability.

Cook CPA Group offers expert outsourced CFO services for businesses wanting to streamline their financial processes while saving time and money. If you’re interested in what outsourcing your CFO services can mean for your business bottom line, schedule a call with Evelyn today.

In conclusion, there are a number of ways to simplify your business finance process. Following these tips can save you time and money and improve your overall financial stability. Keeping business and personal accounts separate, using accounting software, maintaining updated records, and working with an expert outsourced CFO accounting firm, can simplify your business finance process.

A chief financial officer (CFO) is crucial to the success of your business, but hiring someone to take on the job can feel daunting. You know having a professional CFO by your side can help manage your business cash flow and financial records, and maintain accurate company budgets and records.

As a Sacramento small business, you know the costs of hiring someone full-time to manage your business finances. Often, small companies simply do not have the resources to hire and train a full-time employee to perform the job.

Luckily, outsourcing your CFO responsibilities is easier than ever with Cook CPA Group. We’re a great outsourced CFO option for Sacramento business owners who know they need financial help. Keep reading if you are interested in how outsourced CFO services can help your Sacramento business!

Save Money With a Sacramento Outsourced CFO

One of the main benefits of outsourcing the CFO responsibilities of your business is cost savings. Hiring an in-house chief financial officer can be costly when you consider how much your business will spend on the hiring and onboarding process, ongoing professional training, employment benefits, and other employee-based costs, including:

1. Marketing the open position on job sites
2. Training and onboarding a new employee
3. Payroll
4. Bonuses
5. Health insurance
6. Life insurance
7. Disability leave
8. Other payroll-related taxes

Outsourcing CFO services for your small business is a great option if you want to pay for excellent professional services without the hassle and costs of hiring a full-time chief financial officer. Additionally, hiring an outsourced CFO to handle your Sacramento business means you don’t have to worry about employees leaving your company for other employment opportunities.

An outsourced CFO handles your business financials on a contract basis and is obligated to serve you with your business’s best interest in mind.

Keep Your Business Flexible With an Outsourced CFO

With an outsourced CFO on your side, your business benefits from flexible services. Hiring outsourced CFO services for your Sacramento business means you don’t have to worry about the changing business landscape. If you foresee tough financial times and prefer to handle your own finances until circumstances change, you are free to do so without the hassle of firing one or more full-time employees.

Additionally, hiring an outsourced CFO services team, like Cook CPA Group, means you don’t have to rely on just one person to keep the financial health of your business in check. Having a whole team of expert viewpoints and skill sets can be a valuable benefit when dealing with complex financial or accounting issues.

And the flexibility this arrangement gives you is one of the main benefits of hiring an expert outsourced CFO. In these uncertain times, it’s more important than ever to have expert financial forecasters on your team. Ensuring your business stays nimble is one of the best ways to ensure long-term success.

Save Time By Outsourcing Your CFO Responsibilities

Hiring an outsourced CFO services team allows you more time to run your business the way you envisioned. With an expert financial team taking care of your CFO responsibilities, your business can run smoothly in the background. You don’t have to waste time wondering what is going on in your company’s finances, where there may be trouble ahead, and where you may need to course-correct to get back to financial stability.

Bookkeeping is a tedious task that leaves you and your team too exhausted to focus on the things that matter to your company. An outsourced CFO saves you time by taking care of accounting practices, such as:

1. Account receivables
2. Cash flow reports
3. Updated balance sheets
4. Payroll

With your financial books in order and fewer administrative tasks to deal with, you and your team can focus on the long-term success of your Sacramento business.

Get Expert Insights with an Outsourced CFO By Your Side

When you hire an outsourced CFO for your Sacramento-based business, you’re hiring a plug-and-play partner. As soon as you outsource your CFO services, a team of financial experts gets to work on your specific business needs. There’s no need to onboard new employees, show them the ropes, and start them off slowly as they adjust to their new role and responsibilities. An outsourced CFO team hits the ground running and gets to work on the financial aspects that make a real difference to your company.

Handing off the company’s financial responsibilities to a team of experts means you never have to worry about dealing with financial issues during busy seasons or when you’re taking some well-deserved time off. Outsourced CFOs have spent their professional careers working on accounting, bookkeeping, and other financial problems and know the right solutions to just about every problem that your company may face. Dealing with unique financial challenges is what they do best. Outsourcing CFO services for your small business means having a team of accounting experts on your side every step of the way.

Make Filing Business Taxes a Breeze

Most business owners will tell you tax season is the most stressful time in their business. Sorting through paperwork, scrambling to balance and update their books, and searching for expense receipts are just some of the struggles business owners face before filing their business taxes. However, with a professional outsourced CFO on your side, you can rest easy knowing your bookkeeping is updated, your accounts are balanced, and your expenses are properly accounted for.

Outsourcing CFO services for your Sacramento business means you can ditch the chaos and panic this tax season. Hiring Cook CPA Group as your outsourced CFO partner provides the flexibility you need to run your business without worrying about filing your taxes for the biggest return possible. We’re committed to helping our business clients tax advantage of every business expense to keep your tax bill as low as possible.

If you’re interested in learning more about what Cook CPA Group can help you accomplish with our outsourced CFO services, schedule a call today!

Understanding your business’s balance sheet or cash flow statements is essential to operating your business. But staying on top of your business financial statements while running a successful business can be hard when you don’t have the same expertise and clarity as an accountant.

Luckily, spotting red flags in your business financial statements takes a cumulative approach – you don’t need to act on every last red flag as they crop up. However, as your business operations become more complex, it’s crucial that you take an active role in monitoring and updating these records.

This post guides you through six key red flags in your business financial statements that will alert you to problems lurking in your business. Once you know what you’re looking for, these red flags will be easy to spot so you can work with your team or an expert accountant to help you fix any issues.

Monitor for Irregular Cash Flows

Cash flow is one of the most important metrics in your business. Monitoring your cash flow is the easiest part of your financial statement reporting process, as it often uses a simple template.

If your business is generating consistent cash flow, there isn’t much to worry about. However, if your cash flow becomes irregular, you may be facing a financial red flag.

Irregular cash flows can occur for a number of reasons, including paying too much in taxes, mismanaging your accounts receivables, and unexpected expenses. If you notice your cash flow has become irregular over the last few months, you will want to investigate the root cause. The irregularity may be due to a temporary fluctuation (such as an unexpected expense) or a deeper financial problem.

Rising Debt-to-Income Ratio

The debt-to-income ratio is a classic metric indicating how much debt you’re using to finance your business operations. In your first few years of business, monitoring your debt-to-income ratio is crucial to setting a baseline for the rest of your business’s financial life.

If you notice your debt is starting to rise while your income remains stagnant or decreases, you may be facing a critical red flag in your business financial statements. When your debt-to-equity ratio reaches 1:1 (over 100%), your business is considered to be in a debt crisis.

Another way to determine the debt-to-income ratio of your business is by looking at the falling interest coverage ratio. To calculate this ratio, divide net interest payments by your operating earnings. If the ratio is less than five, your business is facing a financial red flag.

There are many free debt-to-income ratio calculators to choose from. Here is a simple calculator provided by Wells Fargo.

Decrease In Revenue Year-Over-Year

Depending on the type of business you operate, you may be facing financial red flags if your notice a decline in revenue over the past three years. If you’re operating a seasonal business, you may want to review your revenue from one year to another to determine whether it has decreased.

If you notice your revenue has decreased, you will want to investigate the cause to determine whether it is due to a temporary fluctuation or a larger problem. You can offset these downturns through several cost-cutting measures, including reducing overhead expenses and cutting payroll-related expenses. However, you should note that these measures can only do so much for the financial health of your business.

If you track three or more years of revenue downturn, it may be too late to make any measurable change to your business financials. Your best option is to seek out accounting experts to help you determine the best next steps.

Rising Accounts Receivable

Accounts receivable is the money you owe your clients. To reduce financial red flags, you want the time it takes to collect these payments to be as low as possible. If you notice your accounts receivable are rising, it could be a sign your clients are having difficulty paying you back on time.

Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to address this problem. First, ensure the terms of your contract are clear. Then, take steps to implement an accounts receivable management software that will automate some of the collection processes.

If these efforts don’t reduce your accounts receivable, you will want to investigate the root cause and determine if the fluctuation is temporary or due to a larger problem.

Higher Liabilities Than Assets

The difference between your assets and liabilities is your business’s net worth. In any business, liabilities and assets fluctuate throughout the year. However, if you notice your business liabilities have exceeded your assets, you should investigate the cause to determine whether it’s due to a temporary fluctuation or a bigger problem.

For example, companies with more cyclical operations (i.e., agriculture, construction, and other season-based companies) may notice their liabilities outweigh their assets a few months per year. This should not be considered a red flag on your business financial statements as it is expected year-over-year.

Decreasing Gross Profit Margin

The gross profit margin on your business financial statements shows the amount of money your business makes after subtracting the cost of goods sold from your total sales. This is an important metric to track as it is easy to understand and helps you determine how much money the business is actually making.

A financial red flag to look out for is a decrease in your business’s gross profit margin. Your business’s gross profit margin accounts for production costs and any additional money needed to cover operating expenses. It’s vital you thoroughly investigate any decreasing gross profit margins on your financial statements to avoid potential financial risks.

There are many red flags indicating potential problems in your business financial statements. If you notice any of these six red flags, you will want to investigate to determine whether they are due to temporary fluctuations in your business or if they point to a much larger problem.

If you find your business is in financial trouble, reach out to Cook CPA Group today. We’ll help you make sense of the issues and guide you through steps you can take to avoid a potential financial disaster.

As a mid-sized business, you know how difficult it can be to stay on top of your accounting. With employees to manage, fires to put out, and a healthy work-life balance to maintain, making time to keep on top of your accounting practices is more complicated than ever.

As you grow your company and employee base, staying on top of your accounting operations becomes increasingly important. This post will guide you through five strategic accounting tips your mid-sized business can use today, including:

1. Maintaining business records
2. Defining an accounting strategy
3. Automating accounting practices
4. Leveraging business tax credits
5. Outsourcing your accounting practice

Strategic Accounting Tip #1: Maintain Updated Business Records

The first strategic accounting tip for your mid-sized business is to maintain accurate and updated business records. Recordkeeping is an essential function of any business and a critical component of complying with IRS accounting requirements. There are three main accounting areas to pay particular attention to as you strive to maintain accurate business records.

1. Gross income

The most straightforward business recordkeeping responsibility is tracking gross receipts or gross income. This is the income your business generates. Make sure to maintain accurate records of sales in the form of deposit receipts from both credit card and cash sales, any invoices

2. Expenses

Expenses are all the costs you incur running your business, including payments and transfers. Consider using accounting software that automatically keeps track of this type of business record for easy accounting during tax season.

3. Assets

Calculating the annual depreciation of your business fixed assets is an important recordkeeping practice. Ensure you maintain original asset documents, including purchase and sales receipts, as well as any proof of payment documents to make your business accounting run as smoothly as possible.

Strategic Accounting Tip #2: Decide on Your Accounting Strategy and Stick With It

Once you have a handle on your recordkeeping habits, the next strategic accounting tip your mid-sized business should leverage is deciding on one accounting practice and sticking with it. Choosing between accrual accounting and cash basis accounting is a matter of preference.

While cash basis accounting tends to be easier for small and mid-sized businesses, accrual accounting is used most often.

The difference between the methods comes down to the way expenses are deducted. In cash basis accounting, revenue is documented as soon as payment is received. Conversely, accrual accounting records revenue when the product or service is delivered.

At Cook CPA Group, we recommend your business align with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) by using the accrual accounting method. In addition to being the most common accounting method for mid-sized businesses, accrual accounting provides a general overview snapshot of your business. This can be very helpful in determining the financial health of your business.

Strategic Accounting Tip #3: Automate Accounting Practices

You may reach a point in your mid-sized business where manual accounting practices are no longer efficient or productive for your team. Automating basic accounting practices for your business is a strategic tip you can leverage today.

Finding the appropriate accounting software for your business can be challenging, but once you select and install it, keeping your financial books in order is a breeze. To determine the right software or accounting automation plan for you, consider which accounting processes you can automate.

You may need to consider your company’s existing technology and the necessary training to ensure your staff has the know-how to use automation software. It’s also important to involve your team in the automation process. Make sure the entire team knows expectations for recordkeeping and basic troubleshooting processes.

Consider automating these accounting practices to keep your company’s finances running like clockwork:

1. Accounts payable
2. Accounts receivable
3. Payroll
4. Credit card and bank statements
5. Account and statement reconciliation
6. Routine banking tasks like transfers and monthly payments
7. Financial reporting and tax compliance functions

Automation for your accounting tasks is one of the best steps you can take for your mid-sized business. Stop wasting precious time and overcome year-end hassles by automizing your business accounting process today.

Strategic Accounting Tip #4: Leverage Business Tax Deductions

As a mid-sized business owner, you’re no stranger to tax deductions. And while it’s easier to put off recording those business deductions until right before tax season, our recommendation is to figure out the deductions you can leverage before tax season.

There are plenty of tax deductions your mid-sized company can take advantage of to reduce your tax burden. The trick is to ensure your strategy for keeping the appropriate accounting records for each business expense.

The most common business tax deductions your mid-sized business can leverage are labor costs and operating expenses. Payroll and administrative expenses to the equipment you use on a daily basis are common tax deductions you’re likely already aware of.

However, other business expenses like marketing and advertising can be claimed on your tax form as deductible expenses so long as you retain the appropriate records. Another deductible your mid-sized company may not think to leverage is the payment for professional services. Payments to accountants, lawyers, and even professional membership networks can and should be leveraged deductions at tax time.

With the right accounting practices in place, you can appropriately document and justify these business expenses to save big this tax year.

Strategic Accounting Tip #5: Outsource Accounting

Outsourcing your accounting tasks to a professional accounting group is a great way to save time and an easy way to save your company money. Rather than hiring and training new employees to perform basic accounting functions, outsource your business accounting functions to a trusted professional.

Remember, hiring a professional service provider like an accountant to help with business tax is an eligible deduction come tax time! Save yourself the headache of getting your financial records in order and filing your taxes the right way.

Expert business accountants like Cook CPA Group can help you file federal corporate taxes and save you money on your tax bill. With decades of professional accounting experience, we can efficiently and accurately help you file your mid-sized company’s federal corporate tax.

Schedule a free consultation today if you’re ready to leave the important accounting functions to the pros.