The New Formula for Success!

NEW TRENDS = HIGHER PROFITS + MORE EFFECTIVE BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

We just returned from the annual conference, led by the Woodard Group, for the National Advisor Network, the QuickBooks® ProAdvisor group trained and certified by Intuit. Fiscal Foundations, LLC is the leader of the local chapter of ProAdvisors here in Minneapolis/St. Paul. We were fortunate to hear and participate in discussions with leaders in small business consulting and accounting.

Simply put, the trends are: moving to the cloud, and automating data entry. Many industries have shuttered at the idea of their jobs going away because of automation, but the accounting industry and small business will welcome this change. How many of us love the hours we spend entering checks, credit card charges, bills, and invoices. How many hours and how many dollars does your company spend on this activity every year?

Accounting is still the most important, and yes, often most ignored task in small businesses. It’s great to develop wonderful products and services, to be out there selling and earning more money. But without accounting, you don’t actually know how well (or poorly) you’re doing. What’s your profit margin? What’s selling and to whom? Who are your best customers? How much repeat business do you have? How much could you have? Which products should you abandon? What expenses are eating up your hard-earned profit? What are you doing wrong? How do you recognize your business going downhill? On what basis can you make wise, effective business decisions that will help you and your family accomplish your dreams? But here’s the beauty of this evolution.

Your business becomes more efficient because:

• You can focus on understanding and putting your numbers to work for you instead of putting all your time into data entry.
• Accounting reports are more real time than 10-30 days after the fact. When something is going wrong, you need to know NOW!
• Less money spent on data entry. There will be a cost for the apps that do this work, but you can expect it to be considerably less than staff wages or subcontractor fees.
• Technology costs decrease overall. Moving your data to a cloud service reduces hardware and software costs, reduces IT services needed, provides you the latest software, and ensures your data is protected by higher levels of security than you could ever achieve in your own office.
• You can access your accounting files and other data from anywhere with your PC or other mobile devices.
• You can actually create a paperless environment saving a lot of time, space and clutter in your office.

Over the next 12 months, watch for our reviews on various apps that work with QuickBooks® to simplify your accounting work. We will also schedule webinars to show you the apps, how they work, and how they can simplify your procedures and accounting. Sign up with www.meetup.com and http://www.meetup.com/Free-QuickBooks-Workshop/ to receive notice of these demonstrations. It’s FREE! We have over 900 members in our Meet Up Group so sign up early whenever you receive an invitation.

For more information or questions about how these capabilities can help your business, call my partner, Jennifer at 651-324-2273.

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Linda Logan
Founder/Partner/Educational Director
Fiscal Foundations, LLC