One key to successful business start-up and expansion is your ability to obtain and secure appropriate financing.   Raising capital is one of the most basic of all business activities.  Raising capital may not be easy; in fact, it can be a complex and frustrating process.

However, if you are informed and have planned effectively, raising money for your business will not be a painful experience. Professional guidance should be considered in this quest, especially as to the financial information for the loan proposal.

This Financial Guide focuses on ways a small business can raise money and explains how to prepare a loan proposal.

Finding Sources Of Money

There are several sources to consider when looking for financing. It is important to explore all of your options before making a decision. These include:

• Personal Savings. The primary source of capital for most new businesses comes from savings and other forms of personal resources. While credit cards are often used to finance business needs, there may be better options available, even for very small loans.
• Friends And Relatives. Many entrepreneurs look to private sources such as friends and family when starting out in a business venture. Often, money is loaned interest free or at a low interest rate, which can be beneficial when getting started.
• Banks And Credit Unions. The most common source of funding, banks and credit unions, will provide a loan if you can show that your business proposal is sound.
• Venture Capital Firms. These firms help expanding companies grow in exchange for equity or partial ownership.

For additional information, see the Dashboard Accounting website.   Dashboard Accounting can assist your company with bookkeeping in Akron and Clevelan.   We can be the accountant for your small business, handling your bookkeeping and payroll.

Dashboard Accounting is beneficial to the company that:

• Cannot afford to staff an accounting department, but recognizes the necessity of having one.
• Does their bookkeeping their self, but wants to free up time and needs help
• Has a bookkeeper but is unable to manage them.
• Needs to utilize their financial information to assist with decision-making.
• Wants to reduce costs by outsourcing the bookkeeping.

What Dashboard Accounting can do for your company:

• Function as the Accounting Department for your small or medium-sized company.
• Complete bookkeeping tasks on a daily basis.
• Assist in interpreting your financial data.
• Assist with current year budgeting.
• Assist with forecasting and strategic planning.
• Assist with tax planning and tax filing.
• Ensure a secure environment for all financial data

Dashboard Accounting Services Include:

Accounts Receivable Processing

• Record sales invoices
• Invoice customers
• Send customer statements

Accounts Payable Processing

• Process vendor invoices
• Process approved vendor payments

Payroll

• Record third party payroll
• Prepare payroll
• Prepare payroll tax returns

Reconcile Balance Sheet Accounts

Controller Services

• Supervise and review bookkeeper
• Quarterly phone consultation
• Monthly financial report package
• Monthly “Dashboard Report”
• Quarterly management letter

Control Review

• Review management internal control
• Review standard operating procedures
• Review backup procedures

When looking to outsource, not only should you look at small business bookkeeping services, but make sure you use a small business accountant.

Dashboard Accounting offers outsourced bookkeeping and Accounting for small business owners around the Cleveland/Akron area.  Call Dashboard Accounting today to see how they can help you drive your business forward!

Dashboard Accounting

330-908-0888

www.DashboardAccounting.com

A Small Business Adventure, from your small business accountant

You have a treasure map … written in code, with hidden clues – to reveal buried treasures … even in the future! In its quest, there will be obstacles, challenges – possible peril – and some digging. If you could learn to read the codes, piece together the clues, chart your course along the map, and know, in advance, the tools needed to unearth your fortune – would you do it?

Here’s your chance.

Are you sitting on a buried treasure or a ticking time bomb? At any moment, and especially in this economic climate, do you know exactly where your business stands financially, according to industry benchmarks, and how to access its future fortunes? Two experienced guides will be leading a small group of business owners to do just that. FutureQuestNow is a hands-on lab workshop where you acquire and master the skills, tools and insights to map out a 2010 Financial Plan and three year strategic plan for your business. One-to-one consulting for this assistance typically costs a few thousand dollars; in this small guided group, it costs a few hundred.

Terri Ream, President of Dashboard Accounting LLC in Macedonia, and Eileen Sass, President of Sass Accounting Services LLC in Copley – both highly accomplished CPAs presiding over successful companies, with over five decades of combined experience – have led thousands of business owners on this journey to discover financial responsibility, prosperity and autonomy. Do you have what it takes to rough the seas of change on your own? Then hop aboard and learn how.

The Treasure Map

A financial statement: do you know how to read one? A banker knows how to read its clues, see “into the future”, and decide whether or not to extend credit – and for how much – to your business. Do they see something you don’t? Learn what your financial statement reveals about your business and what you can do to make your business more attractive to lenders and investors.

The Clues

Within your reach are vital clues, pointing the way to your business’s fortune. Look for them: accounts payable/receivable, chart of expenses, taxes, payroll, bank statements, job costing, cash flow, benefits, business plan, forecasts. Do you see it now – the map to your future, your fortune? Not yet? Read on.

The Code

Look closely at the clues: they have numbers in rows and columns – encoded with a pattern to decipher the steps to your goal. We’ll give you the tools to unlock and learn the code. Like using a sailor’s sextant, you will be able to navigate a sea of financial information, to know where you are – at any given moment – and, more importantly, where you are headed.

The Perils

Scylla & Charybdis: two mythological sea monsters, perched on either side of a narrow strait of water; in trying too hard to avoid one, sailors risked the fury of the monster on the opposite side. Knowing the middle course and navigating with purpose and skill remains the way to avoid the modern perilous monsters of Ignorance & Inaction. Armed with good information, a solid plan and skillful timing, you overcome fears that might lead to the wrong action or no action.  

Your Treasure Map

At the end, you will have in your hands a personalized strategy: a 2010 Financial Plan (based on your own cash flow analysis, with ways you have identified to reduce expenses, reduce tax liabilities, and increase sales) and a three-year strategic timetable – all of which you yourself will have mapped and fully authored.

The Guides

Even the best tools are useless if you don’t know how to use them. Both Sass and Ream are CPAs, meaning they have completed hundreds of hours of rigorous training, to help people like you.

Terri Ream – (MA, BA, CPA), President of Dashboard Accounting LLC, is a dynamic Finance Executive, with broad-based experience in integrations and strategic planning, cash flow control and asset management. Formerly Director at an eighty-million dollar corporation, Ream delivers high-level skills to nurture small businesses and innovative entrepreneurs. www.dashboardaccounting.com

 Eileen Sass – (BA, CPA), President of Sass Accounting Services LLC, carries the highest certification of QuickBooks training, applying three decades of public and private accounting experience to her forensic talents. Sass consults exclusively as an Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor (no tax preparation or financials), to a variety of industries, making tax preparations more efficient, less costly – and without surprises! Sass specializes in setting up, then training, businesses to optimize their bookkeeping and accounting systems, using QuickBooks. Let your books go too long? Sass does clean-ups, too. www.sassaccountingservices.com

FutureQuestNow

Forecasts, Finances & Fortunes

$350

Two 3-hour workshops or one 5 hour seminar

The series starts in November 2009.

 Attendance is limited so make reservations early.

for more information, call-email-or visit:

330.908.0888

info@FutureQuestNow.com

www.FutureQuestNow.com

www.SassAccountingServices.com

www.DashboardAccounting.com

Cutting paychecks once was much easier. But thanks to today’s laws… deductions and the IRS… the simple task of paying your staff has evolved into a time-consuming nightmare.

In fact, many payroll do-it-yourselfers don’t even realize how much time they spend on payroll alone. Recent studies showed that small business owners spend an average of eight hours a month performing payroll functions.

That’s 12 full days a year — over two working weeks! Wouldn’t that be better spent generating sales, prospecting new business opportunities, improving products or services, or servicing customers?

Instead of working on payroll, you could be generating more business so you actually can make payroll. Instead of cutting checks, you could be collecting them – from fresh sales.

In today’s competitive economy, it makes sense to outsource bookkeeping help and payroll, with small business accountant solutions that meet your business’s needs. Letting go of this one task will quickly let you to spend more time doing what you do best… like running your company.

Here’s why you should outsource your payroll:

• Save money – Use your staff more efficiently by letting professionals handle payroll and the associated legal details. This allows you to better contain your overhead, removing expense of specialized employees.
   
• Save time – Outsourced payroll services eliminate the hassle of customizing, updating and maintaining your own payroll system. No more data entry… no more researching updates or stressing about new laws… no more worries.
   
• Worry-Free Tax Filing – Eliminate the risks of calculating and filing your own payroll taxes. Have professional CPAs do it for you. Federal, state and local payroll tax laws always seem to be changing, becoming more complex. Your time can be better spent than researching new rules and updates.
• Easy-to-Understand Payroll Reports – You get a wide variety of user-friendly and accurate payroll reports. For a tiny fee, we can even include union reports, certified payroll, workers’ compensation reports and much more.
• Let the pros handle it - Our professional staff allows you to focus on the core competencies of your business. You get true accounting professionals working for you and with you.

When you’re ready for book keeping service — whether you need bookkeeping Akron or bookkeeping Cleveland — there are many bookkeeping firms and bookkeeping businesses from which to choose. At Dashboard Accounting, we specialize in virtual bookkeeping and outsource small business accounting services, giving our clients the complete financial picture and expert advice — all at a price that makes sense. We’re also QuickBooks certified, and can train you on small business software tax, payroll, and serve as a general accounting software consultant. For more details, go to www.DashboardAccounting.com.

This loyal employee is accused of carefully skimming off money for herself. Ten years later, her embezzlement appears to add up to over a $1.78 million dollars.

For a small business owner, even a theft of a few hundred dollars can seriously rock your bottom line. Having internal accounting controls in place can help protect you form loss.

Stealing can take different forms. Retailers call it “inventory shrinkage” – when the stock seems to naturally erode and go missing. Non-profits and small business both struggle with employees everyday “loss” such as using the copier machine for personal use, sending personal packages using office postage accounts, and running their own purchases through as “expenses.”

Even these smaller violations can add up to hundreds – if not thousands – over time. Having the appropriate internal controls can help you keep such loss to a minimum and set clear standards and expectations to keep your team on track, while protecting your bottom line.

When the time comes that you need accounting outsourcing service to evaluate your company’s operations, call Dashboard Accounting. Our professionals will determine if the appropriate internal controls are in place to ensure proper handling of resources. The small business accountants at Dashboard Accounting will help you protect yourself from employee theft.

Evaluating and developing internal controls is one of our specialties. First, we assess the “checks and balances” you already have in place to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of your operating procedures. Then we make recommendations that help your company become stronger and more profitable by fixing any sloppy or weak operating procedures we find.

By outsourcing your small business bookkeeping services, small business payroll services through virtual bookkeeping, you’re in a better position to protect your small business from loss.

Even though the Akron woman may receive a stiff fine and years behind bars if convicted, it does little to repay to lost money and broken relationships that can result from employee-theft situations. Having strong controls will help you avoid such stress so you can focus on what’s most important — your clients.

Contact Dashboard Accounting today. Together, we’ll drive your business forward.

Did you get that last part? It’s not their job to give you advice to help you make money. That, instead, is the job of a Chief Financial Officer or CFO.

But as a growing businesses during times like these, how you can even begin to afford a CFO – especially as you’re already worried about laying off the folks you already have on staff!?

Dashboard Accounting offers a better solution. Sure, you can use Dashboard Accounting as your outsourced bookkeeper… and your small business accountant… and now you can use them as a virtual CFO and/or virtual controller.

As a small business owner, you may have already reached that point… you need professional financial advice, but can’t afford a full-time CFO or controller.

Good for you!

If you’re fortunate enough to be in this position, you’ll be happy to know that 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 services provide you with experienced support at a small fraction of that cost.

Here’s why Part-Time CFO services make sense. You’ll get:

• More time to work “on” your business – Focus on growing your business with new services, new customers and other core business issues.
• Fewer surprises and better control – You’ll have a better understanding of the financial side of your business, with expert fiscal advisory services.
• An experienced advocate - You’ll have a wise sounding board to help you with those tough business decisions and help you clarify your business plans.
• A good night’s sleep – You can relax, knowing that a professional is overseeing, protecting and constantly improving the financial side of your business.
• Protection from within – Our part-time CFO services will help to establish strong financial controls in your business to reduce employee theft, systemize your operations, improve efficiency and increase profits.

 Go to Dashboard Accounting, www.DashboardAccounting.com, to find out more.

If you’re considering seeking financing for your small business, be sure to meet with a professional accountant before you begin the process. An outsource CPA, especially an outsource small business accountant, will help you gather the data you need to apply for financing with confidence.

Here are a few of the details and definitions you’ll need to know throughout the process.

• Loan amount – This is the total amount of your loan, the amount you borrow.
• Amortization – Payment period in years.
• Interest rate – Annual interest rate for your specific loan. Your interest is calculated monthly on the current outstanding balance of your loan at 1/12 of the annual rate.
• New monthly payment – Monthly payment for this loan.
• Annual verifiable net income – You’ll need to provide evidence that you make as much as you say you do. Your annual net income must be verified (proven) based on your IRS tax returns or other financial statements.
• Annual depreciation expense - Since depreciation reduces your net income (but not your cash flow), we add back depreciation in calculating your total net cash income.
• Other non-cash charges – Like depreciation, these are your other non-cash charges to your net income that should be added back to calculate your total net cash income for the year.
• Real estate mortgage – This is your monthly payment for any real estate mortgages for property you may own.
• Business line(s) of credit – Banks want to see your monthly payment for any business lines of credit. Lines of credit can come from banks, credit unions, suppliers, etc.
• Auto loans – Your monthly payment for any auto loans (or leases).
• Credit cards – Your monthly payment for any credit cards.
• Other loans – Your monthly payment for any other outstanding loans.
• Monthly debt payments eliminated – If you’re planning to use the money to bundle any of your older debts, the bank will want to know the amount of the monthly obligations (listed above) that will be paid off by the new loan.
• Debt Service Coverage (DSC) – The Debt Service Coverage (DSC) is determined by dividing the total annual net cash income by the total annual debt service. This is where the “rubber meets the road” when it comes to getting a loan. If you have a DSC of 1.25 or higher, there is a good chance that you will be approved for your loan.

 If you fail to get the financing you require, be sure to ask the loan officer for specifics about how the bank came to that conclusion. Then work with Dashboard Accounting as your small business accountant to make the changes necessary to put you on more stable financial footing. With Dashboard Accounting, you’ll find out how to be in a better position to get the loan you want on your next request.

Virtual bookkeeping can help your small business can do better than that.

When times are tight, an outsourced book keeping or outsource CPA service can give you the bookkeeping help you need, while helping you run your business at greater efficiency. It helps make your “break even” and your profitability easier to manage.

A basic break-even analysis is the number of units you need to sell in order to make a profit of zero. When your total revenue equals your total costs, you’re at break even. That’s the sweet spot – anything over that amount is the gravy that makes business profitable and worthwhile.

To make this easy for you, plug in your fixed and variable costs and other details into the free calculator tool at the Dashboard Accounting website,  www.DashboardAccounting.com (see “Resources” for “Financial Calculators” for the Sales Volume Break-Even Analyzer).

But use your best judgment here. As wonderful as our free calculator tools are, they may not give you the complete picture… especially if you don’t have solid data to feed into the equation. (It helps is you use bookkeeping firms or at least part-time bookkeeping to make sure your data is up to date and accurate.)

For instance, one area often underestimated without a small business accountant is your fixed costs (versus variable costs). This is the sum of all costs involved in producing any product at all. This fixed-cost number should include the salary you ought to be paying yourself. Also remember that the fixed cost amount does not change as sales/production volume increases or decreases. Consider it your core expenses.

Professional small business accounting is highly valuable to your business growth. Once you have a solid break-even analysis, your expectations become clear. You can create realistic goals… and then have “stretch goals.” You’ll know your “at least” amount you can afford to sell… and then your specific requirements for increase from there.

When you outsource bookkeeping, you’ll have professionals helping you to gather the details you need so your calculations are based on fact — and not on hunches and “guesstimates”. It gives you the edge you need – for less than you’d expect to pay for the quality support you receive.

For more information about accounting outsourcing service, and great calculators and other business tools, check out www.DashboardAccounting.com.

If you don’t have a business plan (or if yours is not quite organized or polished), you can use QuickBooks’ tools to create or fine-tune one. Dashboard Accounting is QuickBooks Certified and can show you how to use this (and other tools) to get the job done quickly and easily.

To get started using quick book accounting software for your business plan: select Company > Planning & Budgeting > Use Business Plan Tool.

It’s easy. QuickBooks’ business plan tool allows you to use its lengthy “wizard” tool to walk you through each step of the process. This tool supplies information and asks questions about what’s needed on each screen. You fill in the answers (or select from options). The Business Plan Wizard works in the background to put your data in the correct place.

One of the first things the wizard will ask you is information about your company. If your business is brand new or has yet to establish a track record, you’ll have to give it your best estimate when it comes to sales (its best to be conservative).

Next step is income. Hopefully, you’ll already have data in Quick book accounting. If that’s the case, use the “Income Projection Wizard.” Otherwise, you’ll have to fill in the spread sheet manually.

Income is obviously among the most important aspects of your business data. Expect these numbers to be carefully scrutinized at some point (by your accountant, your bank, the IRS auditor, etc.), so be sure you have the facts and proof to back them up.   

After income comes “expenses.” Here, you can use the wizard or input data by hand. You’ll need to gather some specific details for this section, such as: beginning account balances; assets you own or need to purchase; cash available to invest, and amortization and depreciation… plus numbers on inventory, vendor financing, lines of credit, total credit limits, etc.

Once all of this information is loaded into your Business Plan program (within QuickBooks Pro), it’s time to write up the plan for your business. Using the three sections you’ve already completed, you now have a solid foundation to work with. You’ll also have examples of text-based sections to inspire you. These come in handy when it’s time to put your business approach and details into words.

By assembling your Business Plan step by step, you’ll get a stronger picture of where you are and where you’re going in the year ahead. Even if you never look at your business plan again… even if you don’t share it with another soul… the process of assembling the details and examining your numbers is highly valuable to most business owners.

For a vivid snapshot of your day-to-day financial data, to making sure your plans are on track, be sure to work with a professional outsourced book keeping service, such as Dashboard Accounting. They offer the accounting help you need to ensure your business goals stay on track, so your vision becomes your reality.

A solution has been created from Dashboard Accounting. They want to be the small business accountant department. They offer book keeping service, payroll services, QuickBooks training, controller services, and much more. There is an on board CPA, Staff Accountant and Quick book Pro Advisors.

Contact Dashboard Accounting today and see how they can help drive your business forward!