Part-Time CFO Services

Think of us as a valuable resource for growing and understanding your business.

• Strategic Business Planning
• Fraud Prevention
• Internal Controls
• Shareholder Reports for Private Entities
• Audit Preparation
• Train for your Accounting Staff
• Screen candidates for accounting positions

Growing businesses often reach a point where they need professional financial advice, but can’t afford a full-time CFO.

If you’re fortunate enough to be in this position then we have the perfect solution for you. Our Part-Time CFO service gives you a professional financial manager who works with you to help guide your business to success.

The cost of hiring a full-time CFO can range from $60,000 to over $100,000 per year plus bonuses and benefits. Our Part-Time CFO service provides you with experienced support at a small fraction of that cost.

WHO: For businesses who need professional advice but cannot afford a full time CFO.

Strategic Business Planning

The Strategic Plan provides a blueprint, describing your company, its products, the competitive environment, management team, financial health, and business risks.

The plan allows you to…

1. Identify and describe the target customer profile, features, advantages and benefits of your new or existing venture, product or service.
2. Fully researching the need being filled by your company.
3. Develop marketing plans including full descriptions of targeted promotional campaigns with implementation timelines. You also get to examine market conditions, the nature of your customers, as well as your competitors, sales potential, and projected results of your promotional campaigns.
4. Develop staffing plans including identifying the key players, skills, attitudes and expertise needed to build the venture.
5. Develop management plans including full descriptions of management systems and timelines for implementation.
6. Develop comprehensive plans including projected startup costs, operating costs, revenue, profits, and break-even analysis for the first 3 to 5 years. Projected comprehensive plans allow you to effectively predict upcoming problems, or prevent them. In other words, the perspective gained through your Strategic Business Plan can make a significant contribution to your company’s success, and help you get the funding you require. In fact, most lending institutions and private investors will not even talk to you without a solid financial plan.
7. Identify building and equipment needs including vendors and cost estimates.
8. Formulate company milestones including timelines for upcoming products and services in development.

WHO: For business owners who want to successfully grow their business and truly understand where they are headed.

Fraud Prevention

If someone else is managing your books, you need to know what’s happening with your money at all times!

White-collar crime is at an all time high! Each year thousands of small businesses are victims of fraud and many don’t even know it (yet), and when they do find out, the results can be disastrous. Fraud is sometimes worse than being robbed. At least with being robbed, you know you’ve been robbed. With fraud, it may take several years to notice something is wrong and by then, it might be or in a lot of cases, is too late. It may not seem like a lot at first, $10, $20, $50, $500, $2,000, but it all adds up and pretty soon your business may be losing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. When all is said and done, it may mean your company has gone into heavy debt or even out of business.

We can help you to reduce the risk of fraud by educating you and designing a checks and balance system to help prevent embezzlement or other employee financial wrongdoing. As a small business owner and entrepreneur, we will get you involved in your accounting process without turning you into an accountant. See our Internal Control Items listed below.

WHO: For businesses who need to safeguard their assets.

Internal Controls

At times you may need a trained professional to evaluate your company’s operations to determine if the appropriate controls are in place to ensure proper handling of resources and to protect yourself from employee theft.

We assess your internal control systems to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of your operating procedures. Then we make recommendations that help your company become stronger and more profitable by correcting any inefficient or ineffective operating procedures we find.

What we do for you…

• Implement segregation of duties so that duties are divided, or segregated, among different people to reduce risk of error or inappropriate actions. No one person has control over all aspects of any financial transaction.
• Make sure transactions are authorized by a person delegated approval authority when the transactions are consistent with policy and funds are available.
• Ensure records are routinely reviewed and reconciled, by someone other than the preparer to determine that transactions have been properly processed.
• Make certain that equipment, inventories, cash and other property are secured physically, counted periodically, and compared with item descriptions shown on control records.
• Provide employees with appropriate training and guidance to ensure they have the knowledge necessary to carry out their job duties, are provided with an appropriate level of direction and supervision, and are aware of the proper channels for reporting suspected improprieties.
• Document policies and procedures and making them accessible to employees. The documented policies and procedures provide day-to-day guidance to your staff and continuation of duties in the event of prolonged employee absences or turnover.
• Review operations to ascertain whether results are consistent with established objectives and goals and whether the operations are being carried out as planned.
• Custom designed collection policies and procedures

WHO: For business owners who want to ensure a good system in place to safeguard against problems.

Shareholder Reports for Private Entities

Overview: A company may provide its shareholders, investors, and creditors with information about the high points of business in the past year with predictions for the next year, the company’s philosophy: and a section that describes how the company does business etc. Additionally companies include financial statements (balance sheet, income statement, cash flow statement, and applicable footnotes) to their shareholders.

It’s essential that financial statements be used by its intended recipients. By meeting accounting standards and following industry practice in relation to reporting, presenting and disclosing information, companies can ensure that their reports are as accessible as possible to the people who need to read them.

The Financial Statements aims to provide information about a company’s performance and the effectiveness of its management over a given period. Specifically, it should:

• provide information that can be used to support decisions about investment or financing
• be easily understood by people who are reasonably well acquainted with business and finance
• help current and future investors and creditors evaluate likely income from expected dividends or interest, and from the sale or maturity of securities (including timings)
• provide information about a company’s economic resources, including claims to those resources, and how they are affected by particular transactions, circumstances and events.

WHO: For business owners who need or want to provide accurate and timely financial reports to their investors, shareholders or creditors.

Audit Preparation

We have found that too many companies suffer through unnecessarily difficult audits.

Often the results are additional billings from your audit firm, and hours lost internally as your staff struggles to provide information the auditors are seeking.

At Accounting a la Carte, we’ve found that with effective planning provided by accountants with experience in the audit process, the audit engagement can proceed smoothly and painlessly.

We provide three levels of audit preparation service.

Evaluation
We will provide a high level evaluation of your readiness for an audit. We review your records for consistency and accuracy. At the end of our engagement we provide you with a report card grouped by financial statement line item that summarizes your accounts’ readiness for an audit, along with suggestions for improvement for accounts that do not make the grade.

Implementation
Since our firm has no independence requirement for these services, we can also help implement the suggestions we make for your company. From cleaning up your accounts receivable aging to helping you with the accounting for more complex transactions, our implementation services provide you with records that your auditors will appreciate.

Consultation
Accounting principles continue to grow in complexity. Should you find that you do not have the technical resources to explain your treatment of complex transactions; your auditors may issue findings regarding your controls over financial reporting. Accounting a la Carte can counsel you on the background and theory surrounding complex transactions, and provide you with authoritative literature to support your treatment so that you can assure your auditors that you are properly informed to present accurate financial statements.

WHO: For companies that need help preparing for their annual audit, contact us today to learn how Accounting a la Carte can help
your company along the road to a smooth audit.

Training for your Accounting Staff

We offer Training to your Bookkeeper or Accountant – Upon completion of our training, your staff will be able to do the following:

• Apply the concepts of accrual accounting to transactions that span fiscal periods.
• Trace the effect of accrual and deferral transactions to financial statements.
• Apply accounting concepts and the basic tools of financial analysis in identifying and correcting errors.
• Apply accounting principles in reconciling bank accounts.
• Apply accounting concepts in preparing payroll transactions, from paying wages to depositing and reporting taxes.
• Apply accounting concepts to depreciation transactions including various methods of calculating depreciation.
• Apply accounting concepts to valuing inventory, recording costs, making entries, and reporting inventory on financial statements.
• Help your company use basic internal controls to prevent theft, embezzlement or check and credit card fraud by employees, customers or vendors.

WHO: For business owners who want to invest in their current accounting person to enable to be an efficient and effective part of the management team.

Screen Candidates for Accounting Positions

Choosing the right accountant is one of your most important business decisions. If you need to hire someone for your accounting staff, we can find and screen qualified bookkeepers, accountants, QuickBooks experts and CFO’s.

We thoroughly interview prospective applicants to identify their accounting knowledge, education, and quality of skills. We check their references, work experience, training, successes and work habits.

In a committed effort to guarantee the skill level and work history of all Accounting a la Carte consultants, applicants are thoroughly screened through the following steps.

WHO: For business owners who don’t have the time and or resources to find, screen, and hire a qualified accounting person for your staff.

Think Of Us As Your Own Accounting Department

We are a powerful one-stop shop, providing you with the essential accounting services you need to manage, grow and run your business smarter.

Contact Accounting A La Carte

(805) 636-1250