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What is a Virtual or Interim CFO?
This interview with John Y. Lafferty of CFO-Pro explores some of the most beneficial services he offers his clients. John is one of the most experienced Interim CFOs in the country. We’re going to be talking about CFOs and start-up businesses in general and how you get involved in starting up a company properly with…
How to Sell Your Business – What Business Buyers Want – Part II
If you’re thinking of selling your business be prepared for an onslaught of questions from potential business buyers. If you know what they want in advance you’ll have an excellent chance of preparing. Here are some of main areas of inquiry business buyers will scrutinize before you can sell your business. Due Diligence Process When…
How to Sell Your Business – Why You Should Build to Sell
Few small business owners think about building a company to sell it. They think about building a company to support their family or hand it down to their children. But building a company to run and grow, and building a company to sell can actually be the same thing with different planning. Without the guidepost…
Are you using the right metrics to measure your company success?
Key Performance Indicator – Resources & Outputs A company’s resources include: their people, their plant and equipment and the hours available for production. In a well-financed business, resources also include cash and working capital. Ask yourself, what are your unit outputs or sales from your employed resources? Outputs include: Physical units produced/sold Purchased units resold Machine…
Virtual CFO Services – How to hire a qualified interim CFO
The answers you need before hiring an interim CFO If you’ve thought about using virtual CFO services, I recommend doing due diligence on your candidate and asking the following questions. The qualified interim CFO you choose should be able to respond positively to 90% of the qualifications listed below. Does the virtual CFO have hands-on…
How to know if you need virtual CFO Services
What Your Accounting Dept. Can’t Tell You When your company changes, your internal financial management has to keep pace. Red flags in the accounting department may be signaling a skills gap or they could be indicating a lagging, bloated or overwhelmed financial reporting and tracking system. The expertise to make specific fixes may be outside the…
How To Create Clean, Lean Monthly Financial Reports
Here’s how to turn a lengthy financial report into an executive financial summary In my last blog I discussed the importance of lean month-to-month financial reporting. Now, I’ll tell you how to generate a lean and clean financial report. Many CEOs wade through a lot of unnecessary financial detail that clutters their thinking and eats…
A Time-saving Financial Tool for Better Financial Reporting
How to generate a financial report that provides better financial insights I was invited to breakfast one morning by a CEO of a food service company. She came to the table armed with an inch-thick sheath of papers, and told me the stack represented her controller’s financial statement. “This is too much to deal with,”…
Plotting the Trends of Your Company’s Performance
Here’s how to learn whether your company is trending positive or negative in key performance areas. In my last blog, I told you about a family-owned business I counseled. The firm appeared to be doing well, but had no way of knowing whether its performance was trending positively or negatively. My assignment was to give…
Tracking Performance Trends for Your Business
Key performance indicators that offer important insights into your company Recently, I assisted a $10-million-a-year, Chicago-based, family-owned company that was anticipating significant growth. The company’s problem was that managers did not know what data they should be tracking to illuminate their operating trends and performance. The firm’s officers also did not feel they had a…