As a business owner or accounting manager, you’re responsible for ensuring that your team can handle any challenges that come their way. However, with the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of the accounting industry, it’s not always easy to predict those challenges. That is why it is important to perform stress tests for your accounting team – to identify potential weaknesses and prepare them for whatever comes their way. This article will examine why accounting team stress tests are important, how to conduct them, and why hiring a consultant can be a valuable investment.
Stress tests are a way to simulate potential scenarios and test your team’s ability to handle them. By subjecting your team to various stressors, you can identify any weaknesses or areas for improvement and take steps to address them before they become bigger issues. For example, you might simulate a sudden increase in workload, a major audit, or a financial crisis. This will help you assess your team’s ability to handle pressure, meet deadlines, and maintain accuracy and quality in their work.
Depending on your goals and resources, there are several ways to conduct stress tests for your accounting team. Here are a few options to consider:
While stress testing can be a valuable tool for identifying weaknesses and preparing your team for potential challenges, it can also be a complex and time-consuming process. That’s where a consultant can come in handy. A consultant can objectively assess your team’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as valuable insights into best practices and strategies for improvement. They can also help you design and conduct stress tests that are tailored to your specific needs and goals. In addition, a consultant can provide training and coaching to help your team develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed.
Stress testing is a critical component of ensuring that your accounting team is equipped to handle any challenges that come their way. By simulating potential scenarios, testing your team’s capacity, and evaluating their technical skills, you can identify areas for improvement and take steps to address any weaknesses. With the proper preparation and support, your accounting team can be well-prepared to navigate any obstacles and continue to drive the success of your business.
An outsourced CFO (Chief Financial Officer) is typically a highly skilled and experienced financial professional who provides strategic financial guidance to companies that may not have the resources or need a full-time CFO on a part-time or as-needed basis.
The role of an outsourced CFO may vary depending on the company’s needs. Generally, they provide financial planning analysis and reporting services to help the company make informed business decisions.
If you are asking this question, you do need a CFO. As the owner of your company, you are expected to have all the answers, regardless of your experience. But you do not have the time or expertise to figure them out on your own.
At outsourced CFO can benefit your company by improving financial reporting, increasing financial transparency, and bettering your financial planning and analysis. However, the return on investment (ROI) of outsourcing a CFO will depend on several factors, such as the size and complexity of your company, the level of expertise required, and the cost of the outsourced services. We’ve listed some insights on the ROI of outsourcing a CFO below.
Remember, outsourcing your CFO does not mean that you give up control of your company. Your outsourced CFO does not have the same level of control or authority as a full-time in-house CFO who is a member of your company’s executive team. As the owner or manager of your company, you still retain complete control over the company’s operations, strategy, and decision-making. The outsourced CFO serves as an advisor and consultant, but ultimately, it is up to you to make the final decisions. Therefore, working with an outsourced CFO who understands your business and shares your vision and goals is important. The ROI of outsourcing a CFO will depend on your company’s specific needs and circumstances. However, considering the above factors, you can make informed decisions about whether this approach makes sense for your company.
Budget projections are to be viewed as a tool, not a chore, although they may feel boring at times. Budget projections increase revenue and cut spending costs to improve business strategy. Still, only 54% of small businesses have an official budget, leaving almost half of them without a tool to evaluate performance and properly plan their future. So, you went to kindergarten, and you know how the alphabet works, but we should go back to ensure you have it down in terms of budgets.
A budget is a statement of expected sales volume, operational production capacity, revenue, and profit stream. Creating a budget is a lot like setting a goal because the budget serves as a motivating factor by outlining expectations for future growth. Think of a personal budget; you have expenses like rent, laundry, utilities, groceries, gas, etc. You budget this by how much your paycheck amounts to and anticipate these expenses. A business is the same way; the only difference is the scale, with many more moving parts and significantly bigger dollar amounts. Budget forecasts are outlined by considering sales revenue, volume, anticipated costs, and profit contributions or margins. They also consider factors like historical data or patterns of your organization, statistical analysis, expert opinion, and other factors that would encompass inclusiveness for greater accuracy. Forecasts are the most helpful when you can use them to identifying trends and patterns based on current data.
For example, a printing company may be constrained by capacity because they can only print so much in a 24-hour time frame. Breaking down your budget monthly makes it easier to digest and forecast incremental growth that needs to be made by considering how many more hours we can run the machines. Can we reduce downtime for a service? Do we need to buy another machine? These are all the moving parts that make a business budget more complex than a personal budget.
A budget projection is like an umbrella or overarching goal, and the budget forecast details how to achieve that overarching goal. A budget projection is the action plan. A budget is the ‘what,’ and a forecast is your expectations from the budget or the ‘how.’ A budget forecast is a lot like forecasting the weather, you can’t necessarily motivate the weather, but you can prepare for it. A forecast allows predictions about probable future events that indicate growth or potential expectations from the marketplace. The benefits of frequently creating a budget forecast are that the more you do them, the more data you have to carry out your budget projection. It allows risk assessments to be made to eliminate being blind-sighted by costs so you can better avoid potential crises.
A budget for a business evaluates the momentum of both positive and negative things that are happening based on historical numbers, as income comes from many different places and is not as consistent as every other week’s paycheck. A budget coordinates efforts across the organization to optimize the allocation of scarce resources to achieve objectives. A budget motivates growth and tremendous success within your business. We want to see your company grow and learn from past mistakes by comparing your expectations with reality. C-Level Strategy has a team to help you compile and better utilize your budget to reach your highest potential as a company. Using this budget to your advantage is like wearing pads in a game of football; you’re going to get a lot farther and be less likely to get hurt if you have protection, unlike the other team playing without them. Those guys are playing rugby without pads on. So don’t play rugby on a football field; take advantage of your budget and use it to improve.
It’s the beginning of the new year, and you’ve gone through the arduous process of creating your 2023 budget. Don’t let all that work and maybe even some hair-pulling go to waste! Budgets aren’t just something to do for fun; they are intended to increase revenue and cut spending costs. Projecting your budget allows you to forecast growth for the new year to improve the business strategy. This is the time to make tactical changes that will benefit your company long-term.
The first thing you need to know is that there is a difference between a budget projection and a budget forecast. The most significant difference between these two terms is the component of time. A budget projection is intended to be a long-term goal of one or more years, and a budget forecast is a short-term goal of usually less than a year or between the range of one to four quarters. A budget projection is the what, and the budget forecast is the how to achieve the goal set out in the budget projection.
A budget projection is an umbrella goal, and within that umbrella are budget forecasts that make those larger, overarching goals more attainable for you and your employees. Budget forecasts are goals that keep individual departments accountable for their component of the goal because each department plays an individual role in achieving the greater, intended goal. Budget forecasting aids in building revenue, reducing expenses, and allowing departments within your organization to develop an internal commitment to your company’s goals and values to achieve long-term success.
Budget projections help support financial decision-making to ensure you know where to invest your time and money. It is also a method to plan and prepare for future expenses so that you are not surprised or devastated when you get hit by a recession or other economic downturn. Budget projections help you prepare and plan for expenses to increase revenue based on the supply and demand patterns of the market to cater those analytics to your company’s product or service.
For example, wouldn’t it be nice to know if a key component in your product is going to have a shortage in Q3? Then you could stock up in Q2 and continue on with business as usual. These are the kinds of trends projections look like.
Creating a master budget and an overhead budget can help you plan for possible economic down-turn and scenarios that may negatively affect your business. Creating a master budget and an overhead budget also establishes that your company is growing and making money to be sustainable in the market.
What is the difference between a master budget and an overhead budget? The most significant difference between these two budgets is that one can change, and one is intended to stay the same despite changes in the economy.
An overhead budget is much like a budget projection, presenting the expected expenses of the year, but it may change depending on the market or your company’s success. A master budget is a budget or document that your employees can refer to when making financial decisions about expenses based on revenue; this budget does not change. The master budget acts much like a key to your employees’ financial decision-making to increase accuracy and keep your expenses down and revenue up.
You are 42% more likely to achieve a goal when you write it down than if you do not. So, use budget projections to your advantage, don’t just check a box off a list. Optimize your projections to see the growth and expansion of your business within your market. Make budget projections and budget forecasts to ensure that you are making visible progress toward the goals you set and intend to achieve. Your goals no longer need to be wishful thinking. Not sure where to start? Or behind on your budgets? C-level Strategy can help. We have the expertise to take you from where you are and to where you want to be.
Sources:
https://www.inc.com/peter-economy/
Most business owners probably didn’t enter the business world to become experts in finance and accounting, but out of a passion for their customers or services. Even so, business owners often have to take on many different roles as they grow their business: marketer, salesperson, human resources, accountant, etc. The list goes on. A blind spot in any one aspect of business has the potential to gum up operations (and revenue!), none more so than with your finances.
Company finances are so complex and overwhelming that it can seem impossible to glean any useful information. Reading financials feels like an avalanche of figures and reports, and filtering through it all is a job in and of itself. (One that CFOs are paid handsomely for, in fact.) However, a successful business should be able to pinpoint exactly where their money is going and what it’s doing at any given time.
Once you know what your money is doing and where it’s going you can start to make informed decisions about the future of your business. Financial visibility allows you to analyze how long it will take to pay off that new piece of equipment you’ve been monitoring or whether or not you can actually afford to give your employees the five percent raise they have all been asking for. There is nothing worse than making a big decision only to find out you didn’t have the backing to execute it and scrambling to find a way, but that is how most business owners find themselves running their business.
Stop scrambling and start planning. Wouldn’t it be nice to anticipate your taxes throughout the year and plan ahead instead of getting hit with unexpected fees come April? What if you automatically knew how much money you have made on any given day and could predict what you were going to make two or three weeks any advance with minimal variance? When was the last time you actually hit your annual budget? Financial visibility opens all of these doors.
Now, you might be feeling a little overwhelmed with financial visibility at the moment. It can sound a bit like a secret recipe that would solve all your problems if only you could get the mixture right, but somehow you never quite seem to get there. That’s okay. Financial visibility is not created in a day. It’s a process that builds over time.
Get started by analyzing which areas have the biggest impact on your business. Is it sales activity? Operational costs? Then ask whether the reports you are seeing are really serving you. Do you get them frequently enough to matter? Is the data you are tracking meaningful or just easy to access? What else would you like to know? Finally, sit down with your team, and maybe an expert of two, and create a plan to improve your financial data one department, product, or service at a time. This way everyone is involved and understands the impact of their role and you can get the information you need.
Still feeling overwhelmed? Or maybe your team doesn’t have time to work on additional financial reports? That’s okay too. Call CLS. We can help.
A Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is the person who handles a company’s money. They oversee financial planning, manage financial risk, keep an eye on financial record keeping, and ensure proper financial reporting. If it has to do with company money, it has to do with the CFO.
Interestingly, though, not all companies have a CFO. One Netsuite article reported that, “in terms of revenue size, companies over the $25 million threshold tend to have CFOs. Alternatively, many startups hire CFOs right away to help develop company strategy and set up capital structure and business systems.” This means that, in today’s business trends, the companies that tend to have CFOs are either super big or super small.
Large companies are dealing with so much money and so many different facets of finance that they need to hire somebody (or in some cases a few somebodies) whose full-time job is making sure all that money is used properly. The risk is high enough to necessitate that investment.
Small companies understand that they need a solid financial structure and strategy if they’re going to go anywhere, so a CFO can help them with just that.
But what about the companies in-between? What about those medium-sized companies who are staying afloat, but feel like their finances could use a bit more attention? These are the companies that are growing, whose finances are becoming increasingly complex, but they aren’t sure if they can bring on a full-time CFO just for that. Their finances need more attention than their current staff can handle by putting in a couple extra hours each week, but they aren’t so big that they need a full-time CFO. So what do they do?
One option, that is becoming increasingly popular, is outsourcing CFO duties to a company that can take care of financial needs at a more affordable rate than a full-time employee (plus benefits!). These companies often oversee the finances of several companies at once, which makes it easy to invest just a few hours a week into each account.
Think about it. You could hire a full-time CFO and invest at least $200,000 a year in them (and that’s a low-paying CFO job—not a great offer to begin with). You could try to find a qualified CFO who’s willing to work for you, part time, without benefits, and hope they stick around. Or you could pay a professional group to spend a few hours every week making sure your finances are straightened out—a group who doesn’t need to invest full-time work into your business because (1) they have other clients and (2) your company doesn’t require that much attention.
The choice should be obvious. If you don’t need a CFO, outsourcing is an efficient, affordable, convenient, and professional option.
NOW CFO is a roll-up-our-sleeves, full-service consulting firm with a singular focus on outsourced CFO, Controller, accounting, and financial service needs. They bring full financial visibility to their clients’ businesses so they can make smarter business decisions.
If you’re looking to outsource your financial oversight, CLS and NOW CFO can help. Give us a call at 855-917-3165 or email info@clevelstrategy.com to learn how we can help your company maximize its financial management!