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Find and Keep the Best Talent for Your Business

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ValueMetrik CFOFinding the best candidate to hire is often costly and time consuming. But, if your new hire turns into a loyal, hardworking, long-term employee, your investment may be worth every cent and minute.

Locate Candidates

How do you find good people? In the past, people who were job hunting would look in the “help wanted” section of the newspaper or go from store to store filling out applications. Today, most people use a computer and a mouse and search the Internet for jobs. So if you’re not posting your openings on online job boards and industry blogs and websites, you may be missing talented candidates. Note: Running classified ads may still be a good way to reach out (especially to fill jobs requiring local candidates) since many local newspapers also have an online job board for posting classifieds.

Another way to attract candidates is to add a recruiting page to your website. In addition to posting job openings, you can use the page to attract qualified candidates by highlighting the benefits of working for your company.

And last, but certainly not least, you can use social media to announce openings and solicit job applicants. There’s no better way to reach a large number of people almost instantaneously.

Make an Attractive Offer

If you’re hoping to hire top talent, you’ll want to make sure the benefits you offer are competitive — or better. Many  full-time workers have access to employer-provided medical care and/or access to a retirement plan.

Keep Employees on Board

Once you’ve assembled a group of valuable employees, an attractive and competitive benefit package will help ensure they stay. Your financial professional can provide insights and help you review your firm’s benefit package for cost efficiency and competitiveness.

For more tips on how to keep business best practices front and center for your company, give us a call today. ValueMetrik CFO is a valuable resource for new business owners in all industries and specialties. Contact us today at 479-242-1236 or request a complimentary consultation through our website to get started now.

7 Best Practices for QuickBooks Online

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Fort Smith, AZ - ValueMetrik CFOEven if you’ve been using QuickBooks Online for a long time, it’s good to step back and evaluate your actions.

“Best practices” aren’t enforceable rules. They’re simply guidelines businesses commonly follow in one area or another. If you’re in retail, for example, one best practice might be to always ask customers checking out if they found everything they were looking for. This serves two purposes: It conveys a feeling of concern for the customer’s shopping experience, and it may also lead to increased sales.

QuickBooks Online has many best practices, some of which may serve multiple purposes, including these:

    • They keep your company data safe and clean.
    • They provide insight on your financial status.
    • They save time.
    • They can lead you to better relationships with customers and vendors.

Are any or all the following common practices for your business?

Reconcile accounts regularly.

One of QuickBooks Online’s most useful features is its ability to connect to your financial institution’s websites and download cleared transactions. QuickBooks Online also offers tools to help you keep your accounts reconciled online, like you used to do every month when your paper statement came. Reconciling accounts can help you uncover errors. It gives you a truer picture of your cash flow, and it improves the accuracy and timeliness of some reports.

It’s not a particularly pleasant process, but you should be reconciling your accounts regularly in QuickBooks Online. We can help.

Clean up your lists.

Some lists in QuickBooks Online aren’t overly long. You don’t have to worry about, for example, Payment Methods, Terms, or Classes. Your lists of customers and vendors, products, and services, on the other hand, can grow unwieldy over the years. This means it can take more time than it should to scroll through lists when you’re using those entities in transactions. It also puts unnecessary stress on your company file. If you can’t delete any, at least make them inactive.

Never leave QuickBooks Online open when you leave your work area.

This goes for everyone, even people who work alone and don’t access their company files away from their work areas. The obvious reason is to keep someone else from getting in and authorizing payments, for example, or otherwise compromising your financial information. It also protects the integrity of your data file in case your internet connection suffers some kind of outage.

Keep track of 1099 vendors.

Whether your company uses 10 vendors or a hundred or more, you may have to supply at least some of them with an IRS Form 1099 at about the same time you’re preparing W-2s for employees. Your 1099-related tasks will be much easier if those individuals and/or companies are earmarked. If you think vendors might need 1099s when you create their records in QuickBooks Online, click in the box to the left of Track payments for 1099 in the lower right corner. Not sure? Ask us.

Classify everything with care.

Every time you have to create a record or transaction where categories are involved (i.e., Classes, Customers and Vendors, Territories), check and double-check that you’ve assigned them the correct classification. Errors here can result not only in problems with daily workflow, but your reports will not be accurate. A related best practice: Create a meaningful group of Classes, and use them faithfully. They’ll help you make better business decisions.

View reports on a regular basis.

There are some advanced financial reports in QuickBooks Online that we should be creating for you on a regular basis, either monthly or quarterly. These include Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, and Statement of Cash Flows. The mechanics of creating them aren’t difficult, but analyzing them is. You should be running reports on your own at frequencies that you think would be helpful, like A/R Aging Detail, Unpaid Bills, and Sales by Class Detail.

If you’ve been using QuickBooks Online for a while, you could probably come up with your own list of best practices. If you’re new to the site, consider scheduling some time with us to go over more of them. Develop good habits from the start, and there won’t be nearly as much need for troubleshooting down the road.

ValueMetrik CFO offers QuickBooks support as part of our package of accounting services for small and midsized businesses. Call us at 479-242-1236 now and find out how you can leverage QuickBooks to precisely track your finances or request your complimentary consultation online.

Map Out Your Journey with a Business Plan

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Much like a map or a GPS provides clear directions to your destination, a business plan can help define your goals and spell out the steps your business must take to achieve them. It can also establish a set of benchmarks to measure your progress. A business plan is critically important when it comes to obtaining financing. Here are the key sections that a business plan should include.

Executive Summary

Your executive summary outlines the primary points in the subsequent sections and touches on your company profile and goals.

Company Goals/Mission Statement

This section summarizes your company’s purposes and goals. It defines who you are and what you want to achieve.

Market Analysis

Here you can demonstrate your industry knowledge and present conclusions based on your assessment of the industry, your potential market and its demographics, and your main competitors.

Company Description

Provide information on what you do, how you do it, the markets your business serves, and what differentiates your business from the competition. You can include examples of recent projects that were completed and, if advisable, the names of some of your major clients.

Organization and Management

Here you can outline your business’s organizational structure and identify the company owners, management team, and board of directors.

Service or Product Line

This section provides the opportunity to explain what you sell and how your products or services benefit customers.

Strategy and Implementation

It’s important to summarize how you plan to market your business and what your sales strategy is. This section should include information on how you will reach target customers and penetrate the market and should provide details about pricing, promotions, and distribution.

Financial Plan

This is where you present an overview of your finances. It is where you lay out your assumptions about revenue growth, operating costs, and cash flows. Include balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow schedules as well as details about capital requirements.

Discover how our insights and experience can translate into a better bottom line for your business. Call ValueMetrik CFO today at 479-242-1236 to learn more or request a consultation through our website and we’ll reach out to you to set up an appointment.

Do You Have a Business Continuity Plan? You Should

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What if disaster strikes your business? An estimated 25% of businesses don’t reopen after a major disaster strikes.1 Having a business continuity plan can help improve your odds of recovering.

The Basic Plan

The strategy behind a business continuity (or disaster recovery) plan is straightforward: Identify the various risks that could disrupt your business, look at how each operation could be affected, and identify appropriate recovery actions.

Make sure you have a list of employees ready with phone numbers, email addresses, and emergency family contacts for communication purposes. If any of your employees can work from home, include that information in your personnel list. You’ll need a similar list of customers, suppliers, and other vendors. Social networking tools may be especially helpful for keeping in touch during and after a disaster.

Risk Protection

Having the proper insurance is key to protecting your business — at all times. In addition to property and casualty insurance, most small businesses carry disability, key-person life insurance, and business interruption insurance. And make sure your buy-sell agreement is up to date, including the life insurance policies that fund it. Meet with your financial professional for a complete review.

Maintaining Operations

If your building has to be evacuated, you’ll need an alternative site. Talk with other business owners in your vicinity about locating and equipping a facility that can be shared in case of an emergency. You may be able to limit physical damage by taking some preemptive steps (e.g., having a generator and a pump on hand).

Protecting Data

A disaster could damage or destroy your computer equipment and wipe out your data, so take precautions. Invest in surge protectors and arrange for secure storage by transmitting data to a remote server or backing up daily to storage media that can be kept off site.

Protecting Your Business

If you think your business is too small to need a plan or that it will take too long to create one, just think about how much you stand to lose by not having one. Meet with your financial professional for a full review.

Discover how our insights and experience can translate into a better bottom line for your business. Call ValueMetrik CFO today at 479-242-1236 to learn more or request a consultation through our website and we’ll reach out to you to set up an appointment.

Source/Disclaimer:

1Source: U.S. Small Business Administration, www.sba.gov/content/disaster-planning.

Hire Nothing But the Best

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accounting services fort smith AZHow can your company attract and retain top employees? It’s not always easy, especially for small businesses. Having a streamlined hiring process and ensuring that your salaries and benefits package are comparable to other, similar companies in your area can help make your company an attractive destination for high performers. Here are some pointers to jump-start your thinking.

Simplify the process. Make sure job responsibilities are clearly described when posting your openings. Candidates should be able to easily ascertain if they have the appropriate qualifications for a position. Also, describe any documentation candidates may need to submit with their applications.

Be open and professional. Let candidates know early in the process, preferably in the job posting or during interviews, how much the position pays. Top candidates appreciate candor about such matters. Treat candidates professionally during every stage of the process — it sends a strong signal about your company’s culture.

Evaluate your benefits package. Compensation and benefits are important factors when it comes to attracting and retaining top talent. Salaries should be in line with what other companies in your region pay for specific occupations. Attitudes toward health and retirement benefits can influence employment choices and how committed and engaged employees are after they are hired. Your company will have a leg up on attracting and retaining the employees it needs to succeed and gain a competitive advantage if it can offer the benefit options top performers want.

If you are unsure whether your current benefits package is competitive, please contact your financial professional. An analysis of your current retirement and insurance benefits will help you identify areas that may need to be improved if you are to attract and retain the best employees.

Discover how ValueMetrik CFO’s insights and experience can translate into a better bottom line for your business. Call us today at 479-242-1236 to learn more or request a consultation through our website and we’ll reach out to you to set up an appointment.

Do You Truly Know Your Business Costs – You Better

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accounting services fort smith arizonaYour company’s profitability depends not only on sales, but also on effective cost management. Are you adequately addressing the cost side of the business equation?

Analyze Your Cost Structure

You probably can readily identify the products and/or services that are generating your greatest sales volume. But can you identify all the costs associated with providing each product or service? Only when you know your true costs can you effectively allocate resources to the work that is most profitable for your company.

Actively Monitor Operations

As the busy owner of a small business, you can’t be everywhere all the time. But you do need to stay in circulation, regularly observing the day-to-day operations of your business and talking to your managers and employees. By staying visible and encouraging an open dialogue, you’ll be in a better position to uncover costly problems before they seriously erode your company’s bottom line.

Solicit Bids

Even if you are satisfied with a current vendor, you may want to talk to the competition from time to time. You won’t necessarily want to switch vendors simply because you are quoted a better price. But you may be able to use that price in negotiating more favorable terms from your existing supplier.

Watch for Discounts

In the interests of cash flow, your company may routinely pay its bills only when they come due. While this generally is a sensible strategy, it may not be wise if you are passing up generous cash discounts for earlier payment. In the current low interest rate environment, borrowing the funds you need to take advantage of discounts may be a better move. For example, suppose a vendor offers your company a 2% discount for paying a $10,000 invoice 20 days early. Passing up the discount will cost you $200. Instead, you might borrow $9,800 from your bank, pay the discounted invoice, and repay the loan in 20 days. If the rate on your bank line of credit is 8%, you’ll owe about $45 of interest — for a net savings of $155 on just one invoice.

Effective cost management requires good information and careful planning.

Discover how ValueMetrik CFO’s insights and experience can translate into a better bottom line for your business. Call us today at 479-242-1236 to learn more or request a consultation through our website and we’ll reach out to you to set up an appointment.