When you are a business owner, there are many moving pieces to your small business. Hopefully, your small business is thriving and revenue is coming in. However, amongst all the growth, there are questions about your future. You find yourself wondering what to do about financial decisions like are you pricing your products right? Is it time to hire more staff?
Cash flow is a huge issue for many small business owners and knowing when to spend your money. You may ask yourself questions such as when is the right time to spend? Which clients and services are the most profitable? Should we hire more employees to a certain department? How much should we spend on marketing to produce the highest ROI and drive growth?
Outsourced controller services can help your small business receive meaningful, timely, and accurate financials about your business which encourage better decision making. Outsourced controller services should also review the information provided by your bookkeeper or accountant to predict future information for your small business.
If you don’t have a controller or the person with that title isn’t providing you with the relevant information you need to make data-driven decisions, outsourcing controller services might be a smart move for your business. Outsourced controller services help your company gain much higher levels of reporting and analysis. The following are some additional ways financial controllers will help your business.
1. Future Focused Planning
Outsourced controller services can help your small business with both short-term and long0term planning, goal setting, and removing barriers to meet those goals
2. Your Questions Answered
You may be an excellent business person, but you’re not clear on accounting concepts. With a good financial controller, you have an expert in your corner that will help you make better strategic business decisions like hiring, equipment upgrades, and spending reductions.
3. Best Practice Processes
When you hire an outsourced controller, you are adding years of best practices on accounting and financial reporting onto your team. Your business will have the ability to transition from: what we’ve been doing” to “what the best businesses do.”
4. Manage Financial Relationships
Outsourced controller services are experts at negotiating with banks, insurance agents, attorneys, and other vendors. In fact, financial controllers in smaller companies are usually responsible for all banking and finance activities. This includes negotiating lines of credit and vendor agreements, as well as reviewing all financial contracts, financing agreements, and insurance policies
5. Hold Your Team Accountable
Your outsourced controller can supervise your bookkeeper and accountant. Since they are reviewing the financial data and looking to maximize potential in all departments of the business, your outsourced controller can discuss goal setting and shortcomings in sales and operations with the appropriate people.
6. Stop Single-Point-of-Failure
A single point of failure is when one person is in charge of a function or process, and when they aren’t there, the duties don’t get accomplished. And when the bookkeeping isn’t completed, billing doesn’t get done and cash flow suffers. If your accountant or controller goes on vacation for two weeks, who will complete their work when they are gone? If they were to quit, is there a system in place for someone to pick up where they left off? By outsourcing your company’s controller services, there’s no risk involved. It all just happens.
Why Should I Outsource Financial Controller Services?
Employing a full-time controller is expensive. It would cost a small to medium-sized business anywhere between $75,000-$100,000 a year for their work. Most small businesses don’t even have enough work, which is where outsourcing could be an excellent solution
Outsourced controller services typically start at $2,000-4,000 per month. The oversight provided and the improved reporting package delivered will usually be well worth the price. Fees are dependent on the needs and size of your business. At the end of the day, outsourcing will be cheaper than a full charge in-house controller for most businesses.
Signs Your Business May Be Ready For An Outsourced CFO
- Company leaders spend >4 hours each week crunching numbers or preparing financial reports
- Your team often references reports you don’t have that would help you make better decisions
- There is no clarity on your tax liability.
- More than 5,000 invoices are processed each year.
- You have more than 500 SKUs in your inventory
- Growth is occurring at a rate faster than 15%
- OR it seems like your growth has stagnated and you’re not sure why or how to fix it
- There is consideration of taking on outside investment or changing the equity distribution of the company
Final Thoughts
A controller’s duties can vary depending upon the size of the company, the complexity of accounting and financial operations and the number of people employed in the accounting department. The controller provides financial leadership and is instrumental in forming accounting strategies. A controller’s role, especially in smaller companies, can include broad visionary responsibilities as well as hands-on management.
Limitless Investment and Capital’s Outsourced Controller Services
At Limitless Investment and Capital, we understand your business is unique. We’ll work with you to accommodate your specific needs, from short-term projects to ongoing support. Our network of finance professionals have years of experience and domain expertise, helping businesses, like yours, solve their unique problems. Out outsourced controller services are scalable and flexible. Scale up and down quickly and without any stress! Need more help tomorrow? No problem.
Call us TODAY to get started!