End to End Services
From Bank Reconciliations to Strategic Plans, Customer Invoices to Exit Strategies your virtual cfo can provide a complete solution to whatever needs you and your business may have. Services Include (but not limited to):
Your Trusted Advisor
We will take your vision of your company’s future and turn it into a meaningful financial projection. We will tell you if you should expect to have excess cash or if you will be needing cash. If you need cash to grow, the projection will show your banker when they can expect to get their money back. It will also help you plan when you will need to hire more people and add more equipment and/or facilities. Financial projections are part of the answer for a business owner who is tired of flying by the seat of their pants.
Cash Flow
Cash flow projections will assist you in understanding your current cash situation and planning your future cash requirements. Such planning will reduce your stress level, and keep your vendors, bankers and employees happy.
Budgets
Whether you need us to create a budget process, fix your existing process, or you just want assistance creating a budget that makes sense, we will help you formulate a budget that is based on your company’s past results and your vision of its future.
Results Analysis
We will carefully analyze your financial results looking for trends, clues to operating more efficiently, and information that will assist you in future decision-making. We can similarly analyze your operations. We would identify key operations indicators, and set up systems to track those indicators and measure performance monthly, weekly, or even daily if needed.
Strategic Planning
We will work with you and your staff to identify and quantify the important factors that will affect your future growth and success. We will use that information to prepare financial projections and accompanying plan narrative that helps you visualize your company’s future.
Profitability Improvements
We will assess your operation looking for process inefficiencies that may be costing your company money. We will look for excesses in people or materials or other misallocations of resources. We can set up systems to help you measure productivity on an ongoing basis.
Acquisitions
We can help a business owner think through the idea of making an acquisition. We will assess whether the acquisition makes sense from a standpoint of acquiring: technology or other knowledge; customers; a new product line; marketing synergy; patents or other intangible assets; capacity; or, just a way to grow the business. We can then assist with due diligence, negotiations, and eventually, assimilation of the newly acquired business or assets.
Sounding Board
Owners of small companies are very familiar with the concept that it is lonely at the top. They frequently don’t have anyone with whom they can discuss strategies and issues. What do you do with that problem customer, supplier, employee, or banker? Which way do you go with that key decision that could determine the future course of your business? Sometimes your virtual cfo is just a good sounding board. Like a “virtual” partner, we have a wealth of experience and business insight a company owner can tap into.
Risk and Opportunity Assessment
We will look at your operation in the context of your industry and the general business environment. We will use our wealth of experience and business insight to help you identify those risks and opportunities that may affect your company in the near and long term. We can also help you plan how you can avoid the risks and take advantage of the opportunities.
Systems Assessment and Development
We will assess your existing systems to make certain they are operating efficiently and providing accurate results on a timely basis. Where systems are inadequate, or are non-existent, we can develop them for you. This might include, among others, your financial accounting system, cost accounting system, purchasing/accounts payable process, operations process flow, or system for measuring operations performance.
Growth Plan
Operating a growing business without a growth plan can be risky. The likelihood of success is much higher if there is a plan for when the business needs to add cash, people, training, knowledge, capacity, distribution channels, and more. We can help you create your plan and follow it.
Key Success Factors
All businesses have key factors that, if monitored, can give an indication of how the business is doing. Monitoring such factors has an advantage over looking only at financial results. Financial statements are historical documents. They can only tell you what has already happened, and they usually do that the month following the events. Key indicators can tell you what is happening today and can sometimes predict what will happen in the future. We may find key factors in production, distribution, overtime statistics, sales operations, order taking, cash collections, inventory levels, backlog statistics, or other areas depending on the type of business you are in. We can identify these factors and set up a process for tracking and analyzing them.
Organizational Structure
As businesses grow and change, their organizational structure frequently evolves into one that is less than optimum. The present structure is not what one would create if they were starting the business from scratch. The business may have become one that has misallocations of resources. It may not function like the well-oiled machine it once was. We can look at your business objectively, help you visualize your optimum structure, and create a plan to implement the changes that you decide you want to make.
Financial Staff
Our clients may have one or more people who handle the day to day transactions of the company. We can manage these staff members onsite at a frequency determined by the client’s needs. This allows the business owner to focus on other aspects of the business rather than spending time managing the accounting function. We will train the staff, helping them become more knowledgeable and more valuable. We will identify staff members who are in the wrong job, help restructure where required and we can help find suitable replacements if needed.