Many of our clients over the years have been manufacturers, makers of the products they sell – cosmetics, automobile parts, aerospace components, etc. Some of those manufacturers, notably in the aerospace field, make products to meet the design specs of their customer, generally on a negotiated cost-plus-markup basis. One of the biggest challenges they encounter […]
If you’re considering selling your business in the near future, you may have taken notice of the recent news that interest rates are about to start going up, perhaps 3 or 4 times this year alone, after being near zero for several years. You may have asked yourself – or you should have asked yourself – how […]
I wrote this article for my (print) newsletter 25 years ago. It’s so relevant even today that I decided to republish it, even though it’s longer than my usual post. I think it’s worth the extra few minutes you’ll spend reading it. We are often asked: What is the most common problem that we see […]
It will cost you $2.15 today for what would have cost you $1 in 1990. You don’t have to read about the effects of inflation to know that it’s hitting everyone and every company. You see it at the gas pump and the supermarket. Your managers see it in the cost of raw materials, supplies, […]
I spoke with a CEO today, referred to me by a business associate, about providing CFO services to get their financial records current and their financial reporting up to what is needed to manage the business. It didn’t go as I had hoped. . The CEO’s company, in the business of refurbishing major pieces of equipment […]
Every year we, in payroll, wait in anticipation for the social security (OASDI) wage base to be announced. This basically heralds in the year end/year beginning processing time. But for some, maybe those responsible for employment tax budgets or financial reports, the wage bases for future years is a handy thing to have all at […]
As we experience a strong year in our business, new clients always have a list of questions to guide our client-tailored task list, and one question that appears on more than half of those lists is this one: “We’re making a profit, why isn’t our cash flow reflecting that profit?” It’s truly not rocket science, […]
I was asked last week to explain the value of a CFO to a young entrepreneur who had started from scratch with a great idea, and built a pretty solid business before hitting the glass ceiling (no, not that one) where the financial infrastructure he had in place just could not support his continued growth. […]
We have a client who engaged us to help them integrate an acquisition and structure a financial function for their rapidly growing company and guide its financial strategy as the company grew. Or at least we thought that was the plan. Along the way, the CEO hired a (well-qualified) Controller and guided the role of […]
We have a client that has been coming out of a revenue decline, induced in part by COVID-19, and they’re now in the black and growing nicely. But despite their company’s overall success, their accounting team has consistently been performing at below an acceptable standard. So when we started working together we connected them with […]
