In Pursuit of Profit
Read our expert article below or sign up to get articles sent to your inbox.
(800) 931-6557
(800) 931-6557
 An organization’s fiscal calendar is not set in stone, but it’s often treated like it is. Why? Because it’s extremely cumbersome to move it! And yet, circumstances may arise where an organization really has no other option but to move its fiscal year. A change may be strongly recommended by a trusted advisor, or even required due to major organizational changes.
There are many reasons why an organization could decide to shift a fiscal calendar, but the most common instances are to:
Undoubtedly, when a business owner, financial leader, or executive team is considering making a fiscal year shift, there is a valid reason to do so because the headache that results is not worth undertaking without good reason!  The biggest challenge we hear about every day is being behind in ongoing accounting activities!
We hear it over and over, “We’re so behind on _________. I feel like we’re never going to catch up because we just don’t have the people or time to do it all!” You can fill in that blank with almost any bookkeeping or accounting activity and it would describe the kinds of conversations we have with prospective clients. Whether it’s payables, receivables, close, reconciliations, reimbursements, payroll, or reporting, we have heard it all!  Previously, we put together a business record retention resource to answer the question, “How long do you need to keep business records?” It gave clear record retention recommendations based on standard business practices for tax filings, audits, property ownership, insurance, employment records, and permits/licenses. And yet, only five years later we’re revisiting the topic because there is growing confusion around how long companies and nonprofits should retain their records now that so many of them are digital.
The question we’re being asked today is, “How long do I need to keep digital business records – are the rules different?” 4/15/2024 Artificial Intelligence Already Powers A/R and A/P – Are Budgeting and Forecasting Next Up? As accounting consultants, we have seen AI usage increase dramatically over the last five years across daily accounting activities throughout organizations of all sizes. So, where is AI most widely used in bookkeeping and accounting these days?
When it comes to AI in accounting, A/R and A/P augmentation has proven to be the low hanging fruit. As accounting technology has grown more sophisticated machines have been tasked with doing these types of repetitive functions that have traditionally bogged organizations down with manual work. With A/R and A/P already being powered by AI, what can we expect next?  Research shows that today’s bookkeepers and accountants are making mistakes as their workloads have increased due to economic volatility and newly enacted regulations. The data also shows that the more capacity constrained accounting professionals are, the more likely they are to make data errors on manual work and miss issues when conducting regular reviews on accounting records.
And while this certainly does not mean accounting professionals across the board are doing poor work, even the best accountants are feeling the pressure. As their time continues to be squeezed and their responsibilities expanded, good accountants are finding that they need to work even harder to maintain the top-notch work that they are doing. The result is an environment more conducive to burnout and errors regardless of the integrity and work ethic that they bring to the role. If your books are messy due to overworked bookkeeping and accounting staff or turnover in those roles, you need to be able to figure out what needs to be fixed, understand how to fix it, and take a proactive approach to avoid future accounting issues!
And while A/R problems are often errantly believed to exist most commonly at large companies processing a high volume of invoices every month, the research proves that to be false. The companies that tend to be the most behind are those processing between 300 and 2,500 invoices every month.
Clearly, small businesses are the ones most likely to have A/R issues, which is a real problem because the fewer invoices a business has, the more important collecting on each one becomes. For instance, if a company is processing 10,000 invoices every month, and 50 of them are outstanding, that is only 0.5% of its revenue that has not been collected; whereas, if a company is processing 1,000 invoices, and 50 of them are outstanding, that is 5% of its revenue that is outstanding every month. Failing to collect on outstanding accounts receivables is a serious problem because, as the CFO Selections team explains, “The longer an invoice goes without being paid, the less likely it is to get paid at all. On average, 26% of invoices are uncollectable at the three-month mark, but that number rises to 70% at six months and 90% at 12 months.” 3/23/2023 Do We Need a Chart of Accounts?
We’ll break down what a COA is and why you need one, give you some pointers on how to create a COA, provide an example of a chart of accounts for you, and give you some helpful reminders to be aware of as you create your own COA. Let’s get started talking about accounting chart of accounts fundamentals:
9/28/2022 The Bookkeeping Cleanup Checklist
Having clean books lays a foundation for smart decision-making and sound strategic planning. It is also crucial when applying for financing, pitching to investors, and keeping partners informed. A company that does not represent themselves truthfully with their financial data, even if it is an accidental misrepresentation, can miss out on growth opportunities or be faced with fines or penalties as a result. But what happens when the books fall into disarray despite your best efforts to keep them accurate and close them in a timely manner?
 As our team explains when discussing the importance of bank reconciliations, The general ledger contains a record of a company’s cash transactions, and a bank statement tracks all money moving in and out of a company’s account. So, theoretically, these two statements should convey the same information and result in the same cash balances. However, in practice, this is rarely the case. Businesses of all sizes need to perform regular reviews, called bank reconciliations, to ensure that these two documents balance.  This summer, the IRS began urging tax professionals to increase their security measures amid a storm of increased cyber-attacks. Through the first half of 2021, cyber-attacks against tax professionals had already outpaced the annual numbers for 2020 and 2019. And tax pros are not alone. Cyber security has become a hot topic among all financial professionals over the last year as security attacks against businesses and individuals soared during the pandemic. Michael Cohn explains the recent rise in security threats when he says, Identity thieves and fraudsters were particularly busy last year and this year taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic as many tax pros worked remotely from home and their firms were forced to lower their cyber defenses. The economic downturn also served as fuel for a variety of scams and schemes to steal money and identities. So, how do you keep your financial data secure?
|
SUBSCRIBE:DOWNLOAD:
DOWNLOAD:
Categories:
All
Archives:
June 2025
|
RSS Feed
7/25/2024