As management or a stakeholder within an organization, it’s essential to understand and execute your fiduciary responsibilities as it relates to your organization’s audit (provided one is conducted). Everyone wants to have a “clean” audit with no findings, but internal control findings are very common in smaller organizations. They aren’t necessarily a result of [...]
Popular finance personalities like to instill fear around credit cards with sayings like: “Cut up the card!” “Credit cards saddle you with high-interest debt!” “You spend more when you use a card.” While credit cards do carry some amounts of risk, finding ways to mitigate that risk and utilize credit cards can provide many [...]
Applications for new businesses have increased over the past year. This is good news, as small businesses drive our economies and bring growth to our communities. But starting a new business isn’t an easy road—22% of small businesses fail within the first year, and 50% fail within the first five years. And with so [...]
Employee retirement plans are a great benefit to provide to employees of your organization, but the requirements associated with them are very specific and numerous. Many plans fail to meet some of the requirements with design of the plan, or they make operational errors. Usually it’s just an oversight. Both of these can lead [...]
Think back to when you first started your organization. Responsibility sat on a director or small group of individuals to promote, produce, and account for the organization’s mission. Each task was approached with a “whatever-it-takes” mentality. Everyone was in touch with what was happening, identified areas of improvement, and felt confident in the direction of [...]
Think back to when you first started your company. Responsibility sat on your shoulders to promote, produce, and account for your business. You approached each task thrown your way with a “whatever-it-takes” mentality. You were in touch with what was happening, identified areas of improvement, and felt confident in the direction you were heading. [...]
As your organization grows and scales, there are blind spots that sneak up on you. Things were going well in your organization; you were cruising along, enjoying the growth and sustainability and then … BAM! New problems and opportunities seemingly come out of nowhere. Each stage of an organization (startup, growth-stage and maturity) has [...]
Growing a business is a lot like an amusement park. It’s exciting, fun, overwhelming and nauseating. It’s a roller coaster of fear, confidence, joy and panic. It’s a tilt-a-whirl of influence, innovation, and concern. The growth stage of business can be a wild ride, especially when the growth occurs rapidly. This array of emotions [...]
It’s easy for inefficiencies to become the norm, especially during periods of growth. During these times, it’s common to focus on growing gross revenue, which is important; however, there are many processes in your business that eventually boil that revenue down to your net revenue, which represent the true results of your efforts. Do [...]
It is easy for inefficiencies to become the norm, especially during periods of growth. During these times, it’s common to focus on growing revenue, which is important to support your programs; however, there are many processes in your organization that eat up that revenue, and if they aren’t performed efficiently then they can take [...]
