Accounting Advice for the Small Business

Nothing beats having a good accountant. You may not be big enough to have your own CFO or controller or even a bookkeeper. Usually those functions are done in house by someone who has other responsibilities as well.

Hire an accountant and they’ll do all your transactions and books, file your tax returns, and so forth. Some accountants offer services where if you have a person who is willing to put entries into a ledger, then they will take the ledger and submit or prepare your tax returns. There are also accountants that will offer as-needed services – kind of an a la carte accounting service.

Even if you have an accounting department or if you have someone whose primary function in the company is to do the accounting part, there are fractional controllers that are available. They charge for services they provide, but the controller doesn’t just do the plugging and chugging at numbers – they interpret the numbers on a company’s financial statement and calculate Days Sales Outstanding (DSO). DSO is the average number of days that it takes for a company to collect on an invoice.

The role of a controller in a business is a step in between the CFO and the bookkeepers. They interpret the numbers on financial statements so that a company can strategize for growth. Even though you don’t have enough work to employ somebody full-time as a controller, there are freelancers that you can pay for their time. They are responsible for coming up with ways for the company to save money, improve cash flow, determine the return on investment (ROI), and find other ways to make operations more efficient, like reducing waste. They also advise the owner on how to get rid of bad inventory and retire bad debt. This frees up the business owner to spend more time on the business, rather than in the business.

This is an affordable option for the business owner because you don’t have to hire a person and pay them benefits and compensation.