Starting Your Business Right
Today, businesses need an edge to stand out and flourish. Americore is here, to help you thrive with business services, strategizing, advising, cash flow, planning and support. We are experienced at exploitation of existing, but underutilized unique programs for your business.
If you are in an existing business, contact us now for information on how we can help your business grow.
If you are just starting out, before you begin looking at programs, you need to organize and form a plan. You may have heard lots of suggestions from helpful friends and associates, but once you have a starting business plan drafted, laying out your entire business in a balance sheet will give you a better perspective on the state of your business.
The balance sheet will act as a foundation. It will help you track assets, liabilities and the equity in those assets with liabilities. It can also help you organize and track expenses like employees and supplies. Your balance sheet can offer insights into which areas of your business are better positioned to perform. The usefulness of a balance sheet is not limited to start ups. A balance sheet is a great tool at any time for analyzing the state of your business.
Method of Accounting:
If you haven’t already done so, determine what method of accounting you will be using. Accrual or cash methods are a common method of purchase record keeping.
In Accrual accounting, transactions are put on the books as the sale is completed. In the cash method, transactions are recorded only once the payment has been received. The Accrual method can create an immediate snapshot, but the figures have the potential to be deceiving. The cash method shows the cash flow clearly, but limits the long term clarity and predictiveness. Discussing this decision with your accountant or business advisor may save you tax money.
Accounting Professional:
Though it is tempting to do your own bookkeeping and figures to save money, professionals agree that hiring a certified public accountant or bookkeeper can ensure that a critical task is done timely. Americore often works with a CPA or bookkeeper on planning, but they also handle accounts receivables, accounts payable, cash availability, bank reconciliation and payroll. Not keeping up with any of these tasks will have repercussions that can snowball.
The Benefit of a Cost Business Analysis (CBA)
Laying out your cash flow, money-in vs cash-out helps you see the profit and loss cycle of your business and facilitates your planning for improving the cash balance. It is critical to categorize your expenses, so they can become a component of your cost business analysis. The CBA enables non-critical decision making in an efficient speedy manner. For Instance, when you need to consider hiring more workers it would be helpful to know if the additional cost makes sense based on your CBA.
Business Credit
Establishing excellent business credit is essential to securing financing for growth when you are ready. If you are putting all of your business expense on personal credit, you can harm your personal credit, while your business’ credit remains stagnant, and looks undeveloped. Creating, and carefully using a business credit line, even if you are required to sign personally for it, can help develop your business credit history.
Developing a healthy credit history for your business depends on several factors. It is important to pay your bills on time as agreed, but there are other considerations to be aware of. How you pay, how much debt you owe on your credit accounts compared to your limits, and large amounts of debt that pops up at one time all affect your business credit. By keeping accounts current and the balances under half of what your limits are, you can help demonstrate your business’ ability to manage credit.