Before you start rushing forward with issue of ‘my business finance’, it is worth to know the answers to a few questions ‘Why….?’ Perhaps you should change direction …
why
some ideas about finances are wrong
1
I have accounting, so in finance I don’t need anything more
The law require that accounting appears from the first day of company’s existence, and you control all remaining financial matters “in your head” by feeling (margins, costs, …). When the business accelerates and begins to grow, staying in situation where finance ends with accounting resembles a situation when driver presses the acceleration pedal and in the same time has a blindfold on. If no one changes your manual control into professional finances, you will not develop and earn as much as you could and you will not even be aware of it. Remember: corporate finance begin with accounting, but do not end there.
2
If an accountant somehow deals with finances, everything is OK
you are as strong as your weakest link – many companies went bankrupt despite having a brilliant product and sales, but someone, for example, didn’t calculate how to make money on it. Finance is an area supporting business such as IT or HR, but just as there are no winning companies with weak people and weak IT support, there are no winning companies with poorly organized finances. Finance is no exception: if they are poorly organized, they stop you and if they are correct you are ahead of competition – therefore don’t delude yourself: they are not correct and perfect if you don’t care of them.
3
My finances are perfect because my accountant is ‘so nice, communicative and knows the regulations well’
Sorry, but start to distinguish the features of accountant, important in personal contacts, from features that are fundamental to good quality work and supporting you in business. Not being able to judge the unfamiliar field, you start to judge it only by what you can judge: by what you see and hear – it’s very human, but at the same time it leads astray. If you cannot judge by yourself, ask someone who can.
4
My duties around accounting are always a lot of commitment, confusion and endless e-mails and phone calls
Due to fact that we don’t know other solutions, we assume that “it must be this way”. Only when we see someone doing it differently “aha moment” appears and we want the same. Really accounting or more broadly, finances don’t have to mean tedious and boring e-mails or phone calls regarding subsequent invoices, payments, contracts, etc. This can be arranged into efficient processes and attention and energy should be directed to finance suggesting how to develop faster.
5
There are no errors in my financial data (small / medium companies)
Someone said that if automotive industry was at the level seen in business finance, most car owners instead of driving would wait for mechanic to finish constant repairs, most of attention devoting to car maintenance instead of using it, and under the hood there would be a whole bunch of faults that the driver has no idea about (till some moment). Unfortunately, this comparison is sometimes surprisingly accurate, so it is worth choosing the right “mechanic” in advance.
why
our assumptions are different
1
Reliable basics first
We have to start from scratch, i.e. organised and reliable accounting. Only then there are foundations (reliable data and a head free from registration issues) to implement periodical monitoring and financial management. At the same time, we are launching the third element – a continuous process of financial optimization. Common attempts to take shortcuts, where on the basis of weak, faulty accounting, one want to extinguish fires that could be detected much earlier, is really “painful path”. In finance as in other areas: it is easier and cheaper to prevent than to cure.
2
Boring and tedious accounting duties as easy and convenient as possible
The fact that over the years in thousands of companies everyone has become accustomed to the fact that cooperation with finance is endless e-mails and phone calls regarding invoices, payments, declarations, etc. does not mean that it must be so. Modern technology has changed many areas, in accounting and finance, so far it has mainly concerned improvements in work of financial guys instead of convenience and ease of work of users dealing with finance. For us this convenience and ease of work is in the “top 3” of our priorities and is by no means just a marketing truism.
3
Professional finance go beyond external reporting
In companies, finance is usually reduced to accounting focused on reporting to authorities (taxes, declarations, etc.). This is OK, but only in the early stages of the business. As companies grow, their owners usually leave this sphere intact, and so do their current accountants. The priorities should be different – official duties carried out in the background and time and attention focused on financial issues helping earning money, the same like in case of product / service development, sales or production. We will tell you how.
4
Procedures, plans, tasks, deadlines, …
quality, being on time, completeness don’t happen by chance. In short term, it may result from the personal characteristics of employee (accountant) and current circumstances (no overload of work, no random issues), but sooner or later it fails. In the long term, it’s always the result of well-thought-out work organization. Finance is no exception and as in other areas, it’s result of developed work procedures, planning, clear assignment of tasks, timeliness monitoring and well-implemented work tools. Anyway, have you seen large companies where their success was based solely on characters of employees, and not on organization of company?
5
The best specialize
Typical accounting and advisory companies support any type of entity (companies, economic activities, foundations, etc.) with any form of books and often in every financial aspect (accounting, analyzes, financing, legal advice, auditing, etc.) – the equivalent of doing everything for everyone. It is impossible to be the best by doing everything for everyone – if you want to be the best, you need to choose what you do and what you don’t (unless the priority is to maximize revenues instead of service quality).
6
If you can’t do something the best, you have to give it to someone who will do it the best (and not do it yourself)
A consequence of the earlier assumption is that you have to resist the temptation of additional income together with average quality. Wanting to provide clients with a complex service there is need to find for them the best specialists in a given field and support the client as one team. That is why in secondary areas a group of proven partners works the best. Why ? It’s just that the best lawyers don’t work in accounting offices but in law firms, the best auditors in audit companies, and the best bank loan can be found at brokers who only deal with this.
why
we operate differently and deliver different results
1
We start with arranging the finance basics
Especially when we take over company “neglected finances”, we organize cooperation between the company and accounting from scratch, because without it we can’t guarantee the effects we promise. Additionally, we clean up old mess. This means a certain organizational effort for the client at the start (training, learning new procedures, forms, explanations), but in the long term it transfers into area of effects unavailable in the previous realities.
2
The correctness of finance is based on procedures (but not on employees personality)
Due to the lack of industry patterns (we know how popular is that financial services are as good and timely as the person performing them), we have developed our own set of procedures, tools and practical know-how, which ensures the correctness of data and timely work. This is due to our work processes and not of temporary circumstances.
3
We implement management data collection mechanisms
When clients engage in joint, initial financial ordering, it is only a matter of time before we move to the stage of optimizing the business based on finance. Therefore, we implement registration solutions in advance that will allow you to smoothly move to this stage.
4
We develop solutions for difficult issues
Whether it is for clients with complex service or with their own financial team, there are “difficult issues” (in registration, accounting, analysis). From our perspective – a company that grew up on taking over customers with difficult cases – they stop being difficult when we solve them for the nth time, so we only focus on fitting the ready-made solution into the organization.
5
Convenience and ease of cooperation between customers based on developed know-how and tools
We didn’t reinvent the wheel – we adapted to the realities of our clients a long-known solutions for the organization of communication and data exchange processes, which, due to high costs and difficulty of implementation, were available only to large companies. For customers it means convenience, transparency, less time commitment and timeliness of cooperation well above what the financial services market offers (and it looks like it will be like that for a long time).
6
For those ready to make “Step 2”: management support following business size
Companies grow and so do their financial needs. When a company is small, it starts with low-cost and no attention needed accounting “for authorities”, but at some point there is time for “Step 2”, i.e. financial analyzes and consulting aimed at business optimization. By focusing on one type of customer, we can “scale” our services to their size. Small companies receive simple and cheap solutions, medium companies select new services as needed and expand the existing ones, while large companies can use a comprehensive package or expert knowledge in solving specific problems.
7
A group of selected partners as a guarantee of quality
In areas that are incidental to our activity, and still needed by the client, we have established cooperation with specialists who are the best in their fields (and better than we were if we had done it ourselves). This guarantees unbeatable quality. Example ? Could we, for example, do the transfer pricing policy ourselves = yes. Could we do the best? = No. Why ? = Because our people don’t have experience to do it at the highest level. What do we propose? = We found a partner who has long experience in doing this, is very, very good at it and we cooperate with him as one team.
8
The well-known phrase “we have experience” has been given a real form
The easiest way to meet the market price pressure is a model where the customer is faced by a senior manager, but the entire job goes to young (cheap) people learning the profession on your company documents. We know from many companies whose service we took over that the results are very poor (for the client, not for us). We also faced this dilemma and chose a different path – our people responsible for the customer’s affairs have an average of 15+ years of experience in what they are currently doing …