One of the first things you’re going to want to know about monthly accounting is what kinds of advice your accountant will be able to offer you. After all, monthly accounting is a much more hands-on service than just filing taxes with an annual tax accountant.
Learning that you’ll receive monthly advice should leave you wondering what types of advice your accountant is qualified to give you. We’ve briefly touched on this in our article about what an average monthly meeting looks like, but we’ll dive into much more detail below.
With over 50 years of accounting experience under our belts, we’re able to quickly identify common problem areas and their solutions, but we’re also able to form a deeper understanding of your unique situation and opportunities to further customize your advice.
Here, we’ll talk about the advice our accountants give based on your business’s situation, your financial documents, and your taxes.
Your Business’s Situation and Outlook
Your situation is a combination of a large number of factors. Together, we will discuss your growth plans and challenges, as well as how we can help you set and meet goals to achieve your idea of success. We work with KPIs, profitability, industry specifics, and sales and marketing.
Setting KPIs
When we talk about goals for your KPIs, we mean setting a measurable goal to see your business’s performance levels. There are many KPIs that you can choose to focus on, but profit margins and ratios are good examples.
First, we’ll take a look at where you are and where you should be. Then, we’ll reflect on why you are or are not meeting your goals. To pull it all together, we’ll figure out the steps we can take to get closer to the goal.
Maximizing Profitability
There are two major parts to maximizing profitability: cutting unnecessary expenses and increasing revenue. We’ll help you find opportunities for savings, including cutting unnecessary labor and finding your industry’s labor margins. We can also advise you through reflecting product and labor value in their pricing, selling complementary products to raise sales, and removing unprofitable products. Opportunities for increasing profitability will vary by your unique situation.
Industry-Specific Advice
Many KPIs and profitability tips that we give you will be based on businesses that are similar to yours. It’s important to consider industry averages when setting goals and reviewing your situation.
Not to mention, certain laws may affect your industry in particular, and certain opportunities may arise that can benefit your industry more than other industries. Since we spend so much time working with small businesses, we make sure to stay on top of the news that pertains to your industry.
Sales and Marketing Ideas
Examining your situation also requires making suggestions about sales and marketing. Some people should advertise more, while others should reflect on what they’re spending (compared to the outcomes) and advertise less or in different ways. There are several other areas in which you can influence sales, such as customer experience, aesthetics, or sales techniques.
Insight From Your Financial Statements
Aside from making suggestions based on your situation, we can use the financial statements that we make for you each month to dig even deeper. We may give you advice based on your profit trends, your bank accounts and loans, or leveraging your business.
Typical advice could include having a large asset base and using it to leverage good loan rates to expand, or having a large amount of cash and putting it back into your business so you can use it to grow. Your profit and loss statement can tell you if your revenue is up, down, or flat, and we can then offer advice to help you smooth out any inconsistencies throughout the year. Your balance sheet can also show your business’s cash flow, and we can tell you if you’re taking the right amount of money out of your business.
Tax Planning, Projection, and Preparation
When you work with an annual tax accountant, you only cover some of the tax portion of accounting. CSI includes the full tax package: planning, projection, and preparation.
Tax Planning and Projection
Prepare for the upcoming tax season by discussing business strategies to help you lower your tax bill, such as making purchases for your business, taking a look at your withholdings, and paying or holding off on expenses. You’ll have an idea of what your tax return should look like several months ahead of time.
After tax season, reflect on how you did from a tax perspective and examine how you’re starting the next tax year. If you owed a lot in taxes, we’ll make a plan to prevent that for the next tax year; the same goes for if you received a large refund and would prefer to have that money to use throughout the year instead.
Tax Preparation
If an annual tax accountant does more than just file your taxes, they may also assist in the preparation process. However, this is typically where their services stop. CSI’s planning and projection are what set us apart in the tax department, and those services make all the difference when it comes to finding the best tax strategy for your business.
Ready For Advice Beyond Traditional Tax?
If you didn’t realize the scope of advice topics that a monthly accountant can cover, you now know that we can cover your business’s situation, your financial documents, and your taxes. If anything else comes up that you would like to discuss with your accountant, we’re happy to help - even if that means referring you to a trusted professional outside of CSI.
Feeling confident in your knowledge and want to see if we can be a good fit for each other? It’s time to schedule a free consultation.
If you do decide that monthly advice is a better solution for your business than just reflecting post-tax season with an annual accountant, you should read up on:
