For the most part no one likes surprises; unless it’s your birthday! Same goes for a business owner who thought they had a good month, then see the profit & loss statement, and “surprise,” you’re in the red! OUCH! You can minimize surprises and predict, with a level of confidence, your bottom line if you take the time to analyze and understand two important predictors in your business.

Every business has customers, clients or patients; they are the life blood of a business and the reason a business exists. Often we see successful businesses that have been around a while have a tendency to become complacent and take customers for granted.

Here at Michigan CFO Associates, we are in the midst of the “busy season”; the period from mid-January through April. Not because we prepare tax returns (because we don’t do taxes – and I feel compelled to repeat that as part of my “mantra”). Rather, we’re busy assisting with year-end work needed for CPAs to do tax returns.

In the Fall of 2016, Michigan CFO was engaged to work with an Engineering Company that had drawn significant concern from its bank. We were referred to the owners by the company’s strategy consultant who we’ve known for many years.

In 2014, the company started using the Percentage-of-Completion accounting method to determine how much revenue to recognize on projects underway, but not yet complete.

Guest blog by Alisha Lucido, Marketing Coordinator

In small businesses, marketing often gets placed on the backburner, yet many times the primary focus is on getting new leads. But how do you get new leads? By marketing! Small-business marketing guru Dan Kennedy says it best, “If you’re looking for the answer that turns your time into the most money, then turn your attention to marketing.

Most of the time when we start a new engagement with a client the first phase involves some level of clean up or prep work. Some require more, some less, but almost all require some. Cleanup can be any number of things: in extreme cases, bank accounts haven’t been reconciled in years or the company is still using a paper ledger system.

If you’re a typical business chances are you accept credit cards as a form of payment from your customers or clients for a variety of reasons. Easy, fast, convenient are just a few reasons for accepting plastic payment but the astute business owner knows that convenience comes with a catch.

We help a lot of different businesses setup and manage their financial reporting. The purpose of this reporting is to ensure that you’re on the right track, making progress, and financially healthy.

There are a lot metrics that help determine financial health in 10 to 15 different areas.

Guest blog by Martin Hilker, Consulting CFO

Working with small, privately held clients is rewarding due to the variety of opportunities and challenges we face and our ability to implement change in a relatively short time frame.