It’s about automating and streamlining – and takes people, processes, and technology.
Let’s take a look!
Technology
- Set up bank feeds
- Record processes using a tool like Screencast-O-Matic and post the screencasts to a place that the team can access. This helps to get the most value from your top-level finance people instead of having them spend their time on more repetitive financial tasks
- Record task checklists in a workflow tool like Asana, Monday, or Wrike. Start with recurring tasks and include decision-making trees.
- Implement tools to automate tasks which don’t require human judgment, and to batch/streamline tasks which do. For example: memorized transactions, recurring transactions, transaction templates, Batch Enter, Find & Recode.
- Don’t use spreadsheets or other separate stand-alone files if the main technology that you have can do the trick. Learn more about what it’s capable of. Unnecessary separate systems will cause wasted time. If a separate spreadsheet is necessary, design it to be an easily-updatable template.
PROCESSES:
- Encourage electronic transactions and not use paper checks
- Have vendors e-mail their invoices to a Bill.com address or Hubdoc address. Hubdoc will employ OCR and handle some of the data entry for you
- Use a simple, standardized Chart of Accounts. Make sure it’s meaningful to the organization but don’t let it explode with details which don’t contribute to a decision-making process.
PEOPLE:
- Control the quality of the information stream, so make sure that only well-trained, process-oriented people are sending information to the Accounting team.
- Authorize new apps and processes such as the ones listed above. If the invoicing process can be streamlined by using TSheets for example, authorize a training and work with service providers to get the team trained on it.
- Make sure everyone is on board for streamlining and if someone is resistant, decide whether you are going to provide coaching or engage in a different course of action. Someone resistant to process will kill a company.
The price for a business plan depends on a few things:
- whether the plan will be used to raise investment capital (higher) or to make decisions while creating the company (lower)
- how large and how quickly the founder plans to grow the business (larger & faster = higher fee)
- how experienced the founder is in creating & launching successful businesses (greater certainty for the client can be parlayed into a greater fee for you if you’re really good at this, adding value & not just documenting…but greater certainty for the client can also result in a downward price pressure if he is just looking for someone to document his thoughts that he’s already confident about and not looking to be influenced)
- relates to the above point – whether this is designed to be a project documenting what’s in the founder’s head (lower) or a process in which the business design is in fact generated based on powerful, illuminating questions with a suite of the options presented (higher). This latter choice is a process in which language is treated as a generative act, not a descriptive act.
- what the startup will be left with when the engagement is complete – something genuinely reference-able, usable, inspiring? Or a 100-page book that’s going to get stuck on a bookshelf?
Every action that we take either enriches us or impoverishes us.
When we have perfect clarity about which is which, we’ll have the keys to the vault.
Expenses
I was driving through downtown Naples on a beautiful October Saturday. You have probably heard – and rightly so – what a beautiful city Naples is, and certainly there is a lot of wealth here, in the city itself and on lovely Marco Island.
On U.S. 41, the main north-south road connecting the main cities in the area, there are plenty of luxury car dealerships. I don’t mean the Honda Acura. I mean Maserati, Aston Martin, Tesla.
That’s fine.
But these are, for most people, expenses. Most people will not leverage a vehicle into a (spoiler alert!) ROI.
In the heart of downtown Naples is the difference between spending 6 figures to enrich your life or spending 6 figures to impoverish it. Just where U.S. 41 turns to the southeast is a cluster of establishments that spells out that difference in 2 words:
art galleries.
Art appreciates in value. Most vehicles do not. In a given transaction, one type of disbursement is an expense whereas one is an investment.
But while the dealerships are all up and down U.S. 41, you have to go to one special place for those art galleries.
What are the questions you’re asking yourself right now?
One of the many online marketing options available for businesses is blogging. A blog can act as a company’s daily newspaper, letting customers and followers know the latest news about what’s happening. It can also be a wonderful revenue-generator.
As long as the content of your blog is relevant to your readers, you can post on a wide variety of topics. You might want to let clients know about an upcoming sale, a new employee, or a tip related to a product or service of yours.
Some businesses make a separate revenue stream out of blogging. The most profitable blog today is the Huffington Post. Revenue from blogging can be earned in many ways:
- By selling ad space to people who want to get their products in front of people who read your blog
- From sponsors
- By holding events your readers attend
- From commissions from the sale of products on your site
- By creating products and services such as membership sites which allow paid access to your resources
Making money from blogging through one of these revenue streams takes work. Not only do you have to find or create content, you’ll need to attract readers too.
You can also simply use your blog to generate a following for your products and services. The right content can improve customer service, educate customers on your products which leads to better client retention, or inform them of the benefits of your products during your sales cycle.
If you’re not a writer, there are plenty of freelance writers available that you can hire to create your blog posts. You can also curate articles, meaning you can find existing articles and ask the author if you can re-publish theirs.
Creating a blog is easy with software like WordPress or apps like Blogger.com WordPress.com, and Wix.com, and all of these solutions are free.
Think about how a blog can impact your business for the better.