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Scot Justice
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It's Official, I’ll Be in Haiti a Month from Today
I decided to hold off posting until I knew which team I’d be traveling with from Brentwood Baptist Church to Haiti. I received notification last week that I will be a member of the team that will be traveling to Haiti on April 22nd, a month from today. Now that... Continue reading
Posted Mar 22, 2010 at Haiti Bound
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Mar 15, 2010
Kim, Of course, controllers have to know the system they manage. Every company I've been CFO of that had a controller, the controller was the person who had the hands-on management of the accounting system.
Small Business Accounting Personnel - Controllers
A controller is responsible for the functional accounting duties in a company. In small and entrepreneurial businesses, a controller is often a bookkeeper who possesses an accounting degree. In these firms, the controller often assists the owners with financial management activities as well. You...
Thank you for your response. I agree, accounting personnel are vital in any organization. Scot
Small Business Accounting Personnel
Every business needs a good financial reporting system. Accounting is the backbone of an organization because the performance of every area of a company (sales and marketing, production, warehousing, etc.) is reported through the accounting system. A company’s owner is usually a small business’s...
Any good CFO knows that they can;t make it without a great staff, see http://virtualcfo.typepad.com/virtual_cfo/2010/02/small-business-accounting-personnel-controllers.html, my post about controllers.
Small Business Accounting Personnel – Chief Financial Officers
Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) are the top financial managers at small businesses. CFO’s provide small business owners with high-level financial management, analysis, and advice. At many firms, the CFO is the right-hand man/woman to the owner. Generally, the owner takes care of sales and operat...
The First Time I Talked to My Wife Was About Her Missions Trip to Rio
In 2000, I was attending the People’s Church in Franklin, TN and was a member of the church’s twenty-five to thirty-five year old adult singles group. Through a friend in the group, I learned about a singles sand volleyball get-together that took place once a month In Bellevue. Singles from... Continue reading
Posted Feb 21, 2010 at Haiti Bound
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I Won’t Ask for Contributions for My Mission's Trip to Haiti on this Blog
Last week, I put up a post on the Virtual CFO Blog entitled: “The Virtual CFO is Going to Haiti in April and Would Like Your Support for the Trip ”. In the post, I discussed my desire to fund most of the expenses for the trip from contributions from... Continue reading
Posted Feb 20, 2010 at Haiti Bound
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Observation from a Friend About My Mission’s Trip
I told a couple of friends about the mission's trip I was planning to Haiti over breakfast last week. One of my friends had a great comment, “You can’t fix all the problems affecting Haiti, but you can spend a week helping solve a small part of the problem”. And... Continue reading
Posted Feb 19, 2010 at Haiti Bound
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Thanks Jenni, I appreciate it. Glad your trip to India went well and all of you got back safely. Scot
Cross Point Community Church’s Dominican Republic Missions – The Seed to My Haiti Trip
The thought process to take the missions trip to Haiti didn’t start a couple of weeks ago when Brentwood Baptist Church’s senior pastor, Mike Glenn, discussed how the church was going to facilitate assistance for Haiti. The seed for the trip was actually planted a year ago in a Cross Point Commu...
I believe you are responding to my comment that controllers keep on top of the functional accounting.
Yes, automated accounting systems do beep at you when entries are out of balance, but they won't catch an entry made to the wrong expense account or an incorrect accrual to account for future tax payable.
This is why it is advantageous to have someone, such as a controller, to make sure your accounting system is functioning correctly.
Small Business Accounting Personnel - Controllers
A controller is responsible for the functional accounting duties in a company. In small and entrepreneurial businesses, a controller is often a bookkeeper who possesses an accounting degree. In these firms, the controller often assists the owners with financial management activities as well. You...
Rita,
Very good question.
One of the reasons I wrote this post is that bad budgets don't help anyone in a company improve performance. And normally, the bad budgets are ignored because they do not give employees reasonable benchmarks to compare actual performance to.
This why you should revise your budget periodically to get it in line with reality.
The frequency depends on how well your previous revisions are as well as how dynamic your company or industry is.
You don't want to drive yourself crazy, and use valuable company resources, continually revising your budget. So quarterly may be best, unless there is a huge bust in the budget that you know can be fixed with small revisions.
Revising Your Budget
When you start using your budget as a tool, you may find that your revenue and expense estimates are not falling in line with the actual performance of your company. When this occurs, you have two choices. The first choice is to not revise the budget you created for the period and continually a...
Cross Point Community Church’s Dominican Republic Missions – The Seed to My Haiti Trip
The thought process to take the missions trip to Haiti didn’t start a couple of weeks ago when Brentwood Baptist Church’s senior pastor, Mike Glenn, discussed how the church was going to facilitate assistance for Haiti. The seed for the trip was actually planted a year ago in a Cross... Continue reading
Posted Feb 15, 2010 at Haiti Bound
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Welcome to the Haiti Bound Blog
Hello and welcome to the Haiti Bound blog! My wife, daughter, and I are members of Brentwood Baptist Church (BBC), which supports several missions in Haiti. BBC recently announced that they will be sending missions teams periodically to Haiti to assist with disaster relief. Last week, my wife, Linda, and... Continue reading
Posted Feb 14, 2010 at Haiti Bound
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Ceci,
Thanks for reading my blog. I really do appreciate it.
I hope you enjoy your future visits to the Virtual CFO Blog.
Scot
Video Blog: Adopting a Lean Business Model for a Start-Up
CPA for Small Business, LLC is my second entrepreneur venture. My first was a logistics firm I owned for four years in the mid-1990’s. My logistics company failed largely because I adopted an aggressive-growth, all-in business model, which left me with no cash reserves when the bottom dropped o...
Michele,
Thanks for your comment and for reading my blog!
You bring up a good point about segregation of duties.
This is definitely something small business owners should be concerned with. I don't have the exact statistics in hand, but in the past the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners has reported that a high percentage of fraud, both in number and in dollar cost, is perpetrated at small companies.
The cause of a lot of this is having a small staff (or one staff who handles this) and lack of owner’s oversight or segregation of duties.
Thanks again for your comment; I’ll probably write a blog series on fraud in small business in the future to address your question.
Scot
Small Business Accounting Personnel - Administrative Assistant and Clerks
The first person to handle the accounting for most small businesses is generally the owner. As the company grows, the owner starts to look for someone to take over these duties so they can concentrate on the sales and operations of the firm. Often, the owner chooses to turn the accounting dutie...
Indri,
Thank you for your comment and for reading my blog!
Scot
Video Blog: Adopting a Lean Business Model for a Start-Up
CPA for Small Business, LLC is my second entrepreneur venture. My first was a logistics firm I owned for four years in the mid-1990’s. My logistics company failed largely because I adopted an aggressive-growth, all-in business model, which left me with no cash reserves when the bottom dropped o...
Christine, Thanks for your kind words. I'm glad your enjoying my blog. Scot
Income Statement – Cost of Sales
The cost of sales section of the income statement shows the expenses that can be directly tied to the sale of the products or services your company sells. This section of the income statement is found directly beneath the revenue section. Included in the cost of sales are the labor costs and the...
Miranda,
Thank you for your comment, I really appreciate it.
I'm curious, what service do you work for?
Scot
I Have People (Who Are Paid $7.00 an Hour), The Truth is the CPAs Charge About the Same as the Large Franchised Tax Preparation Services
Flash forward to now, where I charge an hourly rate for preparing tax returns. There was a time when I offered flat rates for tax return preparation. I based the flat rates on the average time it took to prepare each type of return. After a few weeks of offering flat rates, I returned to chargi...
I wanted to thank you for for mentioning my blog series in your blog post. Keep up the good work! Scot
Can somebody making $7 an hour really beat a CPA?
That is what H&R Block wants you to believe with their radio and television ads. Our members are getting annoyed, so we started looking into this a little deeper and found this post from a fellow CPA and his blog over at Virtual CFO. Turns out he knows exactly what we (and they) are talking a...
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