Earnings Projections: Big Value to Small Business

Lockhead Martin recently reported that they are projecting their year end earnings for 2011 to be up 25%. This adjustment to their annual earnings projections came after they had reviewed their third quarter reports. Whirpool, on the other hand, has announced that they will be closing one plant and laying off 5,000 workers in the next year, after reviewing their third quarter financial reports. These are large, publicly held corporations. Their announcements, positive or negative, have a big impact on their stock value. Read More »

Accounting Software: Is it time to upgrade?

When businesses start out, they generally don’t need a very expensive or complicated accounting program to handle their accounting functions. They simple require something that will keep tracking of their payables and billings, and possibly payroll. However, as a company grows and expands, its needs in the area of accounting can also grow. Read More »

Using Accounting Data to Measure Performance

Your accounting system is full of information. It has the pay rates of all your employees. It contains records of all your sales and all your costs. It has the data related to your investments back into the company when you purchase assets. It has all this data. How come it has such a hard time turning that data into information that you can really use, like measurements of your company’s performance in different areas?
Read More »

Fixed Asset Records

Your fixed asset purchases are an important part of business for a number of reasons. They are capital investments, which show how you’ve invested profits back into the company. That is part of the reason why they are listed on your balance sheet and not as an expense. The other reason is because they have an expected life of more than one year. Because they will be providing benefits to the company over a longer period of time, the expensing of their value is spread out over the useful life of the asset. We do this by recording depreciation expense for each of your assets.
Read More »

Want to grow your business? Fire your bookkeeper

Lots of businesses have bookkeepers but if you really want to grow your business, you need to tell them to pack up their general ledgers and hit the bricks!

Okay, I might be incurring the wrath of bookkeepers everywhere, so let me explain myself before an angry mob of them come knocking on my door with torches, pitchforks, pencils, and calculators.

Bookkeepers ARE valuable to have a in a business. But the function of bookkeepers is largely administrative. They may manage your receivables and payables; they may manage your income statement and balance sheet; they may manage your payroll… and without those functions, your business would not run.

But here’s why I suggest that you fire them:  Read More »