hiring a cpa for your business

3 Reasons To Manage Your Business Finance Fears With An Accountant

02/21/2019 Scott Asai1 Comment

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The wealth of influence money has over one’s emotions is uncanny. It brings you joy as it drifts into your business bank account, sadness when it leaves and fear when you know time is upon you to file your taxes.

It’s an uncomfortable situation for most owners, particularly ones who do it alone and wing it any way they know how in any attempt to hoping nothing terrible will happen to their business financially.

The solution to this problem of fearing your business finances is clear and distinct. It’s a solution that can help you sleep better at night and relieve anxiety over your business financial fears. This can be achieved by appointing a professional, an accountant. Use Google and recommendations to find superior CPA firms, and be selective about finding the accountant that’s right for you and your company. If you’re not entirely convinced that an accountant is what your business yearns for, here are just a few reasons why you should begin your search.

Startup Failure

With a startup business failure rate around 90% within the first few years of opening, there are a few reasons that contribute to this, one of them being poor financial management. Who knew that not keep track of the lifeblood of your business correctly could resort in paving your company’s destiny towards failure? Hiring an accountant will eliminate the possibility of financial management ruining your businesses success.

Expenses

There is a common theme amongst business owners who are approaching the end of the tax year and subsequently panicking searching for receipts of business purchases to increase their overall deductions and reduce the prospect of their business’s earnings being ravaged by the tax people. If your organization is behind with looking after it’s expenses, or you have little to no idea the impact deductions will have on your profit, contacting a professional accountant is a wise choice.

Forecast And Growth

Swimming from month to month spending all that your business earns without little consideration is bound to amount to a cocktail of over-spending which eventually leads to borrowing more money, that could spiral into debt.

Also, you will want your business to expand, and to a degree, this will require money. But if you don’t have a forecast for your finances for the coming months to a year ahead, you’ll have little to no inclination of where your business is heading and what money you have left to invest it back in the company to encourage its growth. An accountant can devise a financial forecast for you to prevent this issue occurring.

Startup business owners take the standpoint of believing it’s smart to do as many business tasks as possible themselves to save money. That’s a great idea if you’re great at most things, but it’s also incredibly time-consuming and takes your attention away from the parts of the business that need your time to flourish.

Weighing up the cost of hiring an accountant to keep your business finances in line is worthwhile for the reasons above. But also because you probably spend a reasonable amount at the moment on a monthly or bi-monthly basis on a cleaner, mechanic, plumber and so on to look after other areas of your life you don’t have the time/expertise/energy to do by yourself, accounting for your business should be no different.

Taking Care of Your Small Business’ Accounts

11/20/2018 Scott Asai2 Comments

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When you first set up a small business, you will generally have one thing at the forefront of your mind: profit. But where profit is concerned, there are a whole host of steps that you have to take to deal with your accounts. Not only do you need to take account of everything to do with your business and its finances for legal purposes, but you also need to take account of your finances for the sake of your own benefit. After all, if you are unsure of where your business is making money and losing money, how can you expect to move forward and progress? Here are a few steps that you can take to manage your business’ accounts effectively.

Getting to Grips with Accounting

Put simply, accounting is a form of systematic and comprehensive record keeping that primarily revolves around your business’ financial transactions. Any records kept can be summarized and analyzed, allowing you to make more informed decisions regarding your business’ future transactions, reducing spending in futile areas and increasing spending in other areas with more potential for profit. Records kept can also come in extremely useful when you come to file your tax return at the end of each fiscal year. While you can become qualified in accounting yourself, and could, by all means, take care of your accounts independently, it’s generally best to leave this work to professionals within the field. Hiring an accountant can not only save you a whole lot of time, but a whole lot of money too. Remember that accountants can take care of so much more than simply filling in your tax return. They offer services such as Small Business Bill Pay Service, payroll services, bookkeeping, and management reporting too!

Open a Business Bank Account

Many small business owners will start out using their own bank account to fund professional practice. As they begin to grow and expand, they stick with what they know. However, you should never use your personal account for anything to do with your business. It’s always best to keep personal and professional finances completely separate. This will help you when it comes to filing personal and business tax returns, as well as helping you to organize your finances more simply and effectively on a day to day basis. While a business account doesn’t tend to vary from a standard checking account all too much at first glance, it means that you can carry out all professional transactions separately from personal ones. Browse different options available to you before signing up to one bank or another. Some will charge you to make transactions, so it’s best to compare rates and get the best offer possible.

Accounting for your business can, of course, be a complex and difficult process. But it’s important that you take care of your accounts effectively from the start of your business venture. This will set you off in the right direction and minimize the amount of problems that establish themselves over time.

Trying To Run A Startup Without These Things Will Doom Your Business To Fail

01/18/2018 Scott AsaiLeave a comment

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One of the things that a lot of people realize when they actually start trying to set up their own business is just how many different elements there are to it. Even the smallest startup is made up of a lot of different parts that all need a lot of care and attention put into them. Because of that, it can be kind of overwhelming to keep track of them all. However, there are some things that need more of your attention than others. With that in mind, here are three things that you startups is totally doomed without.

Employees

There are a lot of resources that your business can’t survive without, but if there’s one resource that’s more valuable than just about any other, it’s your employees. You might be at the head of the business, but they are the ones who can turn your ambitions into a reality. Because of that, you need to make sure that you’re bringing in the right people at all times. Using some applicant tracking system software can make that entire process much easier, without you having to divert all of your attention away from your business. And when you have the right employees, you need to make sure that they’re well taken care of because if you can’t look after your employees, you really can’t expect to get the very best out of them.

An accountant

Accounting is one of those things that far too many business owners have a habit of neglecting entirely. This is often for two pretty simple reasons. Firstly, it can be incredibly complicated and frustrating to wade through hundreds of invoices in order to figure out what position your finances are in. Secondly, it’s just plain boring. There are far more interesting aspects of your business that you might prefer to focus your energies on. That’s why outsourcing them out to an accountant is such a good idea. It might seem as though you’re going to end up paying more than you need to there but the truth is that a good accountant is worth their weight in gold.

An online presence

It’s pretty much impossible to deny the fact that the modern world that we live in is ruled by the internet. Just about everyone on earth is online now, and most people have the internet in their pocket pretty much all day long. Because of that, if you ignore the internet when arranging your business, you’re putting yourself at a serious disadvantage. Everything from marketing to actually selling your products can be done online incredibly easily, and you’re much more likely to connect with many more customers if all they have to do is put a search into Google to find you.

Sure, these things might need to be right at the top of your list of priorities, but they certainly aren’t the only things that should be there. You need to make sure that you’re putting as much care and attention as possible into pretty much every aspect of your business from top to bottom.

Here’s Why Your Small Business Is Losing Money

11/19/2017 Scott AsaiLeave a comment

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A business needs profit to survive: it’s a simple concept. Without generating a profit, your company cannot hope to thrive in their industry and will become one of many businesses that fail in the first year. It’s a difficult thing – building and then maintaining a profit – but it’s something that your business can be sure it can do before you get off the ground.

In business, there are a good few things that can eat into your company income and those may be small at first, but each of the small losses adds up to big ones that can often be quite difficult to overcome. The faster you work out where you are losing money, the faster you can fix the problem and keep things moving forward, the better off your business will be in the long run. There are some very common reasons your business is losing cash, and we’ve got some of those examples below for you.

Bad Accounting. You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to run a business, but you do have to know where your money is going and how much is coming in. Be smart here and outsource your accounting to an outside firm that specialises in accounting. There is absolutely no room for financial slip-ups in business. Suppliers need paying, clients need paying and staff need paying. You could be losing money in late fines by not paying your bills on time, and you need to be on top of the accounts so that you can monitor any issues.
Technology Mistakes. Security is so important for a business. By not updating your network security services, you are risking cyberattack and having your data stolen. This type of theft may not be financial on the surface, but it is one that could lead to significant financial demise if you haven’t got the right technological security in place.
Poor Pricing. If you are offering a product or service, you need to make sure you’re charging what your service or product is worth. You could be undercutting yourself by hundreds each year, simply by underestimating how much your offerings should cost. If you advertise for too much money, you risk people not buying your product. If you advertise for too little, you lose money. It’s for this reason that market research and focus groups could be vital for your company!
Lack Of Investment. You run a business, and you know that if you don’t pile money into it occasionally for marketing or upgrading your IT systems, you can fall behind in your efforts to beat out the competition. By investing cash into your business, you can ensure you get something back from it. Ensure that you put your money into things that will help your business grow, as this will mean you don’t waste your time or cash!

No business wants to lose money, nor do they endeavor to do what they can to make it fail. So, the answer for you would be to watch your cash and make it count!