Business Advisory Services

Cash Flow Management

A wise business owner once said, “Happiness is a positive cash flow.” As a business owner, I’m sure you agree. Everything is better when your cash-in exceeds your cash-out.

A cash crisis can be emotionally devastating and it can even kill your business. If you’ve ever had to beg, borrow and steal to cover tomorrows payroll you know what I mean.

Our cash management service allows you to…

  • know when, where, and how your cash needs will occur.
  • know what the best sources are for meeting your additional cash needs.
  • be prepared to meet these needs when they occur, by keeping good relationships with bankers and other creditors.

The starting point for avoiding a cash crisis is allowing us to develop a cash flow projection for you. We can help you develop both short-term (weekly, monthly) cash flow projections to help you manage daily cash, and long-term (annual, 3-5 year) cash flow projections to help you develop the necessary capital strategy to meet your business needs.

We also prepare historical cash flow statements to help you gain an understanding about where all the money went.

Creating an accurate cash flow projection is just one of the many cash management services we provide. You also get…

  • Help obtaining an appropriate line of credit
  • Cash collection acceleration techniques
  • Proven effective collection policies
  • Proven effective payment policies
  • Help obtaining the maximum rate of return on your idle cash

Strategic Business Planning

A Strategic Business Plan is much more than a tool to obtain financing. If you still have all you plans and ideas locked up inside your head… preparing a strategic plan helps you clarify your company’s direction, ensures your key leaders are all “on the same page”, and keeps both management and staff focused on the tasks at hand.

A Strategic Plan is often needed when…

  • Starting a new venture, product or service
  • Expanding a current organization, product or service
  • Buying a new business, product or service
  • Turning around a declining business

The Strategic Plan provides a blueprint, describing your company, its products, the competitive environment, management team, financial health, and business risks.

The plan allows you to…

  1. Identify and describe the target customer profile, features, advantages and benefits of your new venture, product or service.
  2. Justify that your plans are credible by fully researching the need being filled with your new venture.
  3. Develop marketing plans including full descriptions of targeted promotional campaigns with implementation timelines. You also get to examine market conditions, the nature of your customers, as well as your competitors, sales potential, and projected results of your promotional campaigns.
  4. Develop staffing plans including identifying the key players, skills, attitudes and expertise needed to build the venture.
  5. Develop management plans including full descriptions of management systems and timelines for implementation.
  6. Develop financial plans including projected startup costs, operating costs, revenue, profits, and break-even analysis for the first 3 to 5 years.Projected financial plans allow you to effectively predict upcoming problems, or prevent them. In other words, the perspective gained through your Strategic Business Plan can make a significant contribution to your company’s success, and help you get the funding you require. In fact, most lending institutions and private investors will not even talk to you without a solid financial plan.
  7. Identify building and equipment needs including vendors and cost estimates.
  8. Formulate company milestones including timelines for upcoming products and services in development.

Remember: Failing to plan is planning to fail.

 

Bank Financing

Need money to grow your business?

Requesting a business loan without adequate preparation sends a clear message to the lender: High Risk! Therefore, it pays to be prepared and organized in your approach for financing.

Put your best foot forward by allowing us to prepare a winning loan proposal for you. Our proposals have a high likelihood of success because they’re created from the lender’s perspective.

You get the money you need because we know exactly what banks want to see. Even more importantly, we know how to prove to them that you’ll be able to pay them back.

Our winning loan proposals come complete with…

  • Executive Summary: Where we concisely state the purpose of the loan, the exact amount of money required, an explanation of what the loan will be used for and why it’s needed.
  • Pro-forma Cash Budgets and Financial Statements: We use your data and underlying assumptions to prepare information that your banker can easily read and buy in to.
  • Owners Personal Financial Statements: We make copies of the last 3 years of personal tax returns for the bank as well as identify the collateral being pledged as security for the loan.
  • Representation: We help substantiate your financial needs/position to your banker in person.

Succession Planning

If you own a family business, retirement isn’t simply a matter of deciding not to go into the office anymore. You’ve got some critical questions to answer like…

“What happens to the business when you’re no longer running it?” and

“Will you have enough money to retire?”

The family dynamic complicates the whole transition because of the relationships and emotions involved. Most people are not comfortable discussing topics such as aging, death, and financial affairs.

Comfortable or not, succession planning should be a priority for any family business considering that more than seven out of ten family-owned businesses fail to survive the transition from founder to second generation, typically falling prey either to estate taxes or family discord – or both.

Developing and implementing a well-designed succession plan is essential to the survival of a family business from one generation to the next.

We help you with these key issues –

  • Keeping it in the family. Are you going to pass the business on to your family or sell it to a third party? We help you weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each of these options.
  • Who’s going to run the business when you’re gone? Management and ownership are not one and the same. You may decide to transfer management of your business to just one of your children but transfer equal shares of business ownership to all your children, whether they’re actively involved in the business or not.
  • Minimizing the tax bite. The tax burden when transitioning a family business can be significant. The challenge is that a family business is not generally a liquid asset, but taxes are typically due when ownership is transferred.
  • Making it fair. Transferring family ownership often adds a tremendous amount of stress to individual family members. We talk with each of the family members to ensure that they feel they a getting an equitable and fair share of the pie.

What we do for you…

Once we understand how you feel about the key issues above, we begin constructing your succession plan focusing on these 5 issues…

  1. Business Valuation
  2. Business Restructuring
  3. Tax Consequences
  4. Retirement Projections
  5. Tax Projections

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