The first years of a start-up business are crucial to its success. You must strike a balance between waiting too long to develop certain parts of your business and trying to stabilize them too fast. If you are behind, processes become a bottleneck and are overly painful and costly; if you are too early, it results in a burdensome process which also chokes the business and distracts you from your focus. Knowing when to ramp up or invest in the finance organization will ensure you avoid these struggles.
Don’t Make the Mistake
Startups tend to make the mistake of underestimating the future needs of their financial department. Holding off on planning for the future expansion and growth of your finance department, can put your team under a lot of pressure, when the time comes, to fulfill your growing needs.
Not only does lack of planning put pressure on your team, but bringing on a specialist when you find yourself in a time crunch can come at a costly rate! When you begin to add up the fees of trying to clean up, catch up, structure, and organize everything to bring your accounting to the standard that it needs to be, you’ll wish you had started earlier.
Don’t wait until there is a catalyst or even an urgent need for the finance team to meet specified deliverables., to take the defensive approach! Rather, take proactive steps to ensure your back office has the resources and capabilities needed to help your business grow; keeping you one step ahead in your finances.
The Proactive Effect
Proactive companies think about the future of their finance organization and its maturity over time. One way to stay ahead is knowing the capacity of your back office. Knowing if you are outgrowing your bookkeeping, allows you to source for the help you need before you find yourself in the deep end.
Do you find yourself:
- Involved in your bookkeeping, as the CFO or CEO?
- With no visibility to future cash flows of your business?
- Lacking checks and balances due to your back office?
- Having reporting problems?
- Questioning your accounting or lacking confidence in the accuracy of financial statements?
- Receiving monthly financials more than 10-15 days after the month-end?
- Unsure if you are using your accounting system to its full potential, and notice manual processes within the team?
- Experiencing a nightmare scenario every tax season, fraught with surprises?
- Worried you will lose your bookkeeper? – key man risk
- Not wanting to make data-driven business decisions?
These are clear signs that you are outgrowing your current bookkeeping.
Once you determine that your bookkeeping needs assistance, the next step should be to engage with a firm that can help navigate the next phase for your company. The earlier this process starts, the better! With more time, you can ensure that the firm you choose has your best interests in mind and knows your objectives. You can begin to build a relationship that is able to help you anticipate your next steps and future needs.
Bright Balance Fills the Gap:
Bright Balance Accounting offers a team who is ready to partner with your business as the fractional finance department! We are not just here to just take care of the nuts and bolts of accounting in your business, we are here to help you stay ahead of the stress and think strategically about what your business needs to grow. Our firm delivers cost-efficient solutions for accounting FP&A / CFO augmentation for startup and middle market companies.
Avoid the stress and cost that comes with underestimating the needs of your financial organization with Bright Balance’s team and services.
Don’t wait until it’s too late, contact us today!
