Verdant Accounting Services
What are you looking for?
Business Accounting Services
Small Business Accounting
At Verdant, we have a highly qualified and professionally trained bookkeeping staff that will take care of your businesses books. You can customize the services you need to best suit your business. Tasks we will do each month or quarter are:
- Reconcile your bank account
- Generate an income statement
- Generate a balance sheet
- Clean up your general ledger
- Provide unlimited consultations
Payroll
When it comes to paying employees, laws and the IRS have made the payroll function a time consuming nightmare for the small business owner.
Small business owners spend an average of eight hours a month performing payroll functions. That’s 12 full days a year that could be spent generating sales, prospecting new business opportunities, improving products or services, or servicing customers.
We offer payroll solutions that meet your business’s needs and enable you to spend time doing what you do best—running your company.
Part-Time CFO Services
Growing businesses often reach a point where they need professional financial advice, but can’t afford a full-time CFO or controller.
If you’re fortunate enough to be in this position then we have the perfect solution for you. Our Part-Time CFO service gives you a professional financial manager who works with you to help guide your business to success.
The cost of hiring a full-time CFO can range from $60,000 to over $100,000 per year plus bonuses and benefits. Our Part-Time CFO services provides you with experienced support at a small fraction of that cost.
Here’s what you get with our Part-Time CFO services:
- More time to focus on new services, new customers and other core business issues.
- Better understanding of the financial side of your business. So you have less surprises and more control over the money.
- Improved decision-making capabilities from clearly seeing the hard and true numbers of your business.
- A readily available sounding board to help you with those tough business decisions and help you clarify your business plans.
- The comfort from knowing that a professional is overseeing, protecting and constantly improving the financial side of your business.
- A professional who establishes strong financial controls in your business to reduce employee theft and increase profits.
- Training and managing your accounting staff.
- Improved quality and timeliness of financial information.
- Budget preparation and monitoring.
- Profitability analysis by service or product line.
- Tax saving strategies.
- Trend analysis.
- Assistance in defining long-range plans and the quantification of goals.
- Cash management.
- Liaison with bankers, attorneys, vendors, insurance agents, etc.
- Assistance in obtaining financing from banks, including assistance with negotiations.
- Review/negotiation of insurance policies.
- Development of company accounting procedure manuals.
- Analysis of equipment purchases, expansions, etc.
- Mergers and acquisitions assistance
- Custom designed collection policies and procedures
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
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.
Business Valuation
Few things are more important to business owners than the value of their business. The valuation you get for your business can make or break a proposition.
Whether you’re negotiating a merger, considering new shareholders, attempting to resolve disputes associated with liability, shareholder equity, estate planning or marital dissolution, objective valuation can make the difference between loss or gain, success or failure.
Business valuation is not an exact science. It’s based on judgment, experience and relevant information. So, you need professionals who are well qualified, with significant experience in evaluating all types of organizations.
Our approach is to intimately know your business in order to understand what constitutes its value. We work closely with you to analyze your operations and historical financial data. Our in-depth knowledge of your business enables us to provide a well-reasoned, fully documented and defensible valuation opinion.
We provide a full range of business valuation services for the following needs:
- Bankruptcy
- Business Disputes
- Buyouts
- Divorce
- Estate Planning
- Financing
- Gifting
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- Other Business Valuation Scenarios
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:
- Identify and describe the target customer profile, features, advantages and benefits of your new venture, product or service.
- Justify that your plans are credible by fully researching the need being filled with your new venture.
- 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.
- Develop staffing plans including identifying the key players, skills, attitudes and expertise needed to build the venture.
- Develop management plans including full descriptions of management systems and timelines for implementation.
- 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.
- Identify building and equipment needs including vendors and cost estimates.
- Formulate company milestones including timelines for upcoming products and services in development.
Remember: Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Let us help you develop a powerful Strategic Business Plan that drives your business to the level of success you deserve.
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:
- Business Valuation
- Business Restructuring
- Tax Consequences
- Retirement Projections
- Tax Projections
New Business Formation
Thinking of owning your own business?
Opening your own business is exciting and thrilling. It’s everything that comes after the excitement and thrill has worn off that dictates whether a small business will make it or not. It’s up to you to maintain and stretch out the “thrill and excitement” period forever.
A methodical plan of action is needed to fulfill your dream or goal of being your own boss and running a successful business. Success lies in the approach you choose to take. We help you avoid the common pitfalls that many new small business owners make when starting their new venture.
We help you:
- Prepare an initial business plan to clarify your marketing, management, and financial plans.
- Determine your start-up capital needs.
- Identify sources of start-up capital and backup sources if needed.
- Evaluate and quantify your borrowing power so you know how much money you can get your hands on if needed.
- Select a business structure that best fits your needs by evaluating tax advantages, legal exposure, ease of operation and portability should you need to relocate.
- Select the right accounting software by evaluating your budget, needs and hardware.
- Prepare a Cash Flow Budget so you know exactly how much money you need to keep the business alive each month for the first few years. Unplanned cash requirements are always emotionally painful.
- Establish billing and collection procedures to maximize your cash flow.
- Establish procedures to monitor and control costs.
- Setup a home office so you can maximize your tax deductions.
- Prepare and file all required state and local licenses and permits.
- Prepare and file your application for your Federal Employer Identification Number.
- Provide payroll and payroll tax filing when you bring on your first employee.
- Comply with employment laws so you don’t get hit with fines and unhappy employees.
- Identify your business insurance needs.
- Develop a solid Partnership Agreement. This is an extremely important document for all new partnerships and will help prevent a tremendous amount of financial and emotional problems down the road.
Let us help you succeed by getting your new business off to a good strong start.
Non-Profit Organizations
Here at Verdant, we support many local non-profit organization’s. If you have a non-profit or are considering starting one, we can help you setup and maintain your non-profit organization’s tax-exempt status by handling all the IRS reporting for you.
Each year the IRS requires most tax-exempt organizations to submit the Form 990 and its relations. The IRS use specific revenue and expense classifications to determine if your organization will retain its tax-exempt status. So it’s imperative that you build your accounting system around these revenue and expense classifications. We can help you stay on track and make sure your organization is follow the IRS rules and regulations. If you’re starting a new not-for-profit organization we can help you prepare your organization’s 501 (c)(3) application for tax-exempt status.
Internal Controls
At times you may need a trained outside professional to evaluate your company’s operations to determine if the appropriate controls are in place to ensure proper handling of resources and to protect yourself from employee theft.
We assess your internal control systems to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of your operating procedures. Then we make recommendations that help your company become stronger and more profitable by correcting any inefficient or ineffective operating procedures we find.
What we do for you:
- Implement segregation of duties so that duties are divided, or segregated, among different people to reduce risk of error or inappropriate actions. No one person has control over all aspects of any financial transaction.
- Make sure transactions are authorized by a person delegated approval authority when the transactions are consistent with policy and funds are available.
- Ensure records are routinely reviewed and reconciled, by someone other than the preparer or transactor, to determine that transactions have been properly processed.
- Make certain that equipment, inventories, cash and other property are secured physically, counted periodically, and compared with item descriptions shown on control records.
- Provide employees with appropriate training and guidance to ensure they have the knowledge necessary to carry out their job duties, are provided with an appropriate level of direction and supervision, and are aware of the proper channels for reporting suspected improprieties.
- Document policies and procedures and making them accessible to employees. The documented policies and procedures provide day-to-day guidance to your staff and continuation of duties in the event of prolonged employee absences or turnover.
- Review operations to ascertain whether results are consistent with established objectives and goals and whether the operations are being carried out as planned.
Interested in working together?
Contact us today.
- [email protected]
- 402-330-1200