How To Build A Financial Support Team For Your Business
Its important to keep track of the finances in your business to run your business successfully. Having the right financial support team in place makes this possible.
Running a business is complicated, but the financial needs of a business can be broken down into four parts.
Accounting system – It’s important to have some sort of system and process for keeping track of your accounting. This can be an accounting software, such as QuickBooks or even a simple spreadsheet.
- We recommend using QuickBooks for your accounting system. But the most important thing is that you have a system in the first place.
Logging transactions and financial data – While running your business, there are a number of transactions and financial data that need to be tracked over time. For example;
- When you send a bill to a customer, you need to track when that bill is sent and when that bill is paid.
- You also need to track upcoming financial obligations, such as bills that you will need to pay.
Having a process and system in place to keep track of these transactions is important.
Financial structure and tax compliance – In addition to day-to-day tracking of transactions, you need to be sure you have the right financial structure for your business and also that you are meeting your tax and legal obligations.
Managing financial strategy – While day-to-day tracking of transactions and longer-term financial structure and tax compliance is important, it’s also important to plan financial aspects of your business and revisit that plan over time.
Tracking Transactions With A Bookkeeper
The role of a bookkeeper for your business is to keep track of transactions and financial data. For example, entering bills to your customers, processing bills from your vendors, reconciling accounts, and more. While you can do your bookkeeping yourself, this is something that becomes difficult, especially as your business gets more complicated. Having a bookkeeper you can rely on allows you to have the data tracked but not be responsible for data entry.
Financial Structure and Tax Compliance With A CPA
A CPA can help you make sure you have the right financial structure in place for your business and that you are meeting tax compliance requirements for your business.
Financial Strategy And Management With A Part-Time CFO
While a bookkeeper is someone that you work with regularly, such as weekly or monthly, depending on the amount of transactions your business has, a CPA is someone that you will probably meet with every few quarters or yearly.
- It’s important that you follow the recommendations of your CPA and also keep track of your day-to-day transactions with your bookkeeper. But the space in between those two roles is also very important.
- Even though your business may not need to hire full-time due to CFO cost, having somebody responsible for CFO duties or controller duties can be an advantage to your business.
- While the bookkeeper enters regular transactions, and the CPA manages long-term tax compliance issues, a part-time CFO can help you make sure that you have the right financial system in place, and that the system is being used effectively.
- In addition, a part-time CFO can help you make decisions based on the data that is in that system. For example, your bookkeeper can enter daily transaction data and produce reports for your part-time CFO to review and make recommendations based on that report.
It’s important for you to have the right financial team in place for your business. Most businesses consider bookkeepers and CPAs as part of their team. But having a part-time CFO or controller on your team can be something that ties all your financial data together and allows you to make better financial decisions for your business.
If you have questions about how to build a strong financial team for your business or how to manage the roles of a part-time CFO on your own, contact Bernard today.
