• Beware of the tax man

    Tax issues to avoid when preparing your exit strategy All too often, business owners neglect to plan ahead for the succession of their business. And while this is likely to affect their options for transitioning out of their business, there can also be severe tax implications that could have been avoided with a bit of forethought and advance planning. In many cases, the ultimate tax burden [...]

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    Motivating finance department staff

    Optimize the performance of your staff through motivation Do your staff have more work than they can manage? It is often said that work expands to meet the time available, but this does not occur when staff are motivated to do their best. Solid supervision by a department head can often go a long way to encourage staff to go the distance. In this article I review some of the basic skills that a[...]

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    Dashboards

    For you to remain aware of the potential issues and changes in your business on a timely basis, your Controller (or Accounting Manger, CFO, VP Finance, or other person with similar responsibilities) should prepare a regular update of the key information and indicators for management. Many of the more sophisticated ERP and accounting systems provide a feature that will do this automatically once it[...]

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    Ratios in financial statements

    If a banker looks at the ratios in a set of financial statements to determine the health of a business, shouldn’t the management look at the same information? Management should be looking at ratios to determine operational issues as well as any issue that would affect the businesses’ credit standing. When reviewing your financial statements, regularly consider the critical ratios and the [...]

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    Preparing a business plan

    Have you ever considered the reason why almost all large businesses prepare a formal business plan and most small businesses do not? The small business owner is generally aware of the main benefits of a business plan but does not feel a need to prepare one because no one has asked for it! Also, they may not have thought of all the advantages of a business plan and assume that they are already [...]

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    Tactical risk management

    In last month's article "Risk Management", I wrote about the framework of risk management and some of the strategic issues when considering it. From my experience there are a numerous specific tactics that are often ignored, which are easy and inexpensive to implement. I hope you find some of these relevant for you to implement into your business. The most important strategy is to pause and [...]

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    Risk management

    The huge catastrophe caused by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico can teach medium-sized businesses about risk management. BP clearly did not adequately assess the risk and failed to put in place procedures for managing potential risk and the results of a risk being realized. In a column in The Globe and Mail, Ian Brown quoted “This is what I don't understand,” an unnamed person admitted. [...]

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    Accounting for large jobs

    In the March 2010 article on Measuring Profitability I reviewed the importance of a business taking steps to ensure that profit is properly measured in each month and year and discussed some of the challenges that small businesses face in doing that with some suggested solutions. One of the larger challenges that I did not discuss is for a business that has large contracts or jobs that span a [...]

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    Measuring profitability

    Several clients come to mind when I consider measuring profitability. These examples illustrate the challenges that many small and medium sized businesses face when the owner/CEO is not sure what profit/loss the business has made in a given month, or even over a year. I recently reviewed a new client's monthly income statements for the previous year. The first thing that caught my eye was the [...]

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    Group Insurance - What am I paying for?

    With each renewal of your group insurance plan you likely enhance your understanding with respect to pricing and have a better sense for what is fair and not fair. With good education you can feel more confident that you are getting a reasonable deal from your supplier/carrier. Let's spend a few minutes to address some of the hard and soft facts around price. To begin with insured benefits like [...]

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