ACCOUNTING SERVICES
SMALL BUSINESS ACCOUNTING
Arcane Accounting, LLC offers experienced, affordable and dependable bookkeeping services to small businesses. As a small business owner you have more important things to do than to manage your own books. We take care of your books for you, so you can get back to the job of running your business and generating profits!
In addition to your daily and weekly bookkeeping needs, each month or quarter we’ll do the following things for you as well:
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These tasks form the solid foundation of your small business accounting system. You can customize the package of services you receive by adding payroll, tax planning, tax preparation, or any of our other services.
PAYROLL SERVICES
When it comes to paying employees, laws and the IRS have made the payroll function a time consuming nightmare for the small business owner with many small business owners spending an average of roughly five hours calculating, filing, and paying payroll taxes each pay period. That’s 21 full days a year that could be spent generating sales, prospecting new business opportunities, improving products or services, or servicing customers. We offer payroll solutions that meet your business’s needs and enable you to spend time doing what you do best—running your company.
PART-TIME CFO SERVICES
Growing businesses often reach a point where they need professional financial advice, but can’t afford a full-time CFO or controller.
If you’re fortunate enough to be in this position then we have the perfect solution for you. Our Part-Time CFO service gives you a professional financial manager who works with you to help guide your business to success.
The cost of hiring a full-time CFO can range from $60,000 to over $100,000 per year plus bonuses and benefits. Our Part-Time CFO services provides you with experienced support at a small fraction of that cost.
Here’s what you get with our Part-Time CFO services:
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More time to focus on new services, new customers and other core business issues
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Better understanding of the financial side of your business. So you have less surprises and more control over the money
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Improved decision-making capabilities from clearly seeing the hard and true numbers of your business
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A readily available sounding board to help you with those tough business decisions and help you clarify your business plans
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The comfort from knowing that a professional is overseeing, protecting and constantly improving the financial side of your business
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A professional who establishes strong financial controls in your business to reduce the potential of employee theft and increase profits
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Training and managing your accounting staff
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Improved quality and timeliness of financial information
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Budget preparation and monitoring
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Profitability analysis by service or product line
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Tax saving strategies
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Trend analysis
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Assistance in defining long-range plans and the quantification of goals
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Cash management
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Liaison with bankers, attorneys, vendors, insurance agents, etc.
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Assistance in obtaining financing from banks, including assistance with negotiations
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Review/negotiation of insurance policies
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Development of company accounting procedure manuals
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Analysis of equipment purchases, expansions, etc.
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Mergers and acquisitions assistance
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Custom designed collection policies and procedures
SALES AND USE TAXES
Sales tax can be daunting for new entrepreneurs. The rules differ from state to state and are fraught with exceptions. But most of the confusion simply stems from figuring out if your business is required to pay sales tax and how much you need to collect. This is where we come in! We can help you navigate the confusing world of sales and use taxes as well as other state and local taxes that may apply to your business.
CASH FLOW MANAGEMENT
A wise business owner once said, “Happiness is a positive cash flow.” As a business owner, I’m sure you agree. Everything is better when your cash-in exceeds your cash-out.
A cash crisis can be emotionally devastating and it can even kill your business. If you’ve ever had to beg, borrow and steal to cover tomorrows payroll you know what I mean.
Our cash management service allows you to:
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know when, where, and how your cash needs will occur.
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know what the best sources are for meeting your additional cash needs.
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be prepared to meet these needs when they occur, by keeping good relationships with bankers and other creditors.
The starting point for avoiding a cash crisis is allowing us to develop a cash flow projection for you. We can help you develop both short-term (weekly, monthly) cash flow projections to help you manage daily cash, and long-term (annual, 3-5 year) cash flow projections to help you develop the necessary capital strategy to meet your business needs.
We also prepare historical cash flow statements to help you gain an understanding about where all the money went.
Creating an accurate cash flow projection is just one of the many cash management services we provide. You also get:
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Help obtaining an appropriate line of credit
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Cash collection acceleration techniques
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Proven effective collection policies
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Proven effective payment policies
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Help obtaining the maximum rate of return on your idle cash
BANK FINANCING ASSISTANCE
Need money to grow your business?
Requesting a business loan without adequate preparation sends a clear message to the lender: High Risk! Therefore, it pays to be prepared and organized in your approach for financing.
Put your best foot forward by allowing us to prepare a winning loan proposal for you. Our proposals have a high likelihood of success because they’re created from the lender’s perspective.
You get the money you need because we know exactly what banks want to see. Even more importantly, we know how to prove to them that you’ll be able to pay them back.
Our winning loan proposals come complete with:
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Executive Summary: Where we concisely state the purpose of the loan, the exact amount of money required, an explanation of what the loan will be used for and why it’s needed.
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Pro-forma Cash Budgets and Financial Statements: We use your data and underlying assumptions to prepare information that your banker can easily read and buy in to.
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Owners Personal Financial Statements: We make copies of the last 3 years of personal tax returns for the bank as well as identify the collateral being pledged as security for the loan.
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Representation: We help substantiate your financial needs/position to your banker in person.
NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS
Here at Arcane Accounting we support many local non-profit organization’s. If you have a non-profit or are considering starting one, we can help you setup and maintain your non-profit organization’s tax-exempt status by handling all the IRS reporting for you.
Each year the IRS requires most tax-exempt organizations to submit the Form 990 and its relations. The IRS use specific revenue and expense classifications to determine if your organization will retain its tax-exempt status. So it’s imperative that you build your accounting system around these revenue and expense classifications. We can help you stay on track and make sure your organization is follow the IRS rules and regulations. If you’re starting a new not-for-profit organization we can help you prepare your organization’s 501 (c)(3) application for tax-exempt status.
INTERNAL ACCOUNTING CONTROLS
At times you may need a trained outside professional to evaluate your company’s operations to determine if the appropriate controls are in place to ensure proper handling of resources and to protect yourself from employee theft.
We assess your internal control systems to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of your operating procedures. Then we make recommendations that help your company become stronger and more profitable by correcting any inefficient or ineffective operating procedures we find.
What we do for you:
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Implement segregation of duties so that duties are divided, or segregated, among different people to reduce risk of error or inappropriate actions. No one person has control over all aspects of any financial transaction.
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Make sure transactions are authorized by a person delegated approval authority when the transactions are consistent with policy and funds are available.
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Ensure records are routinely reviewed and reconciled, by someone other than the preparer or transactor, to determine that transactions have been properly processed.
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Make certain that equipment, inventories, cash and other property are secured physically, counted periodically, and compared with item descriptions shown on control records.
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Provide employees with appropriate training and guidance to ensure they have the knowledge necessary to carry out their job duties, are provided with an appropriate level of direction and supervision, and are aware of the proper channels for reporting suspected improprieties.
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Document policies and procedures and making them accessible to employees. The documented policies and procedures provide day-to-day guidance to your staff and continuation of duties in the event of prolonged employee absences or turnover.
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Review operations to ascertain whether results are consistent with established objectives and goals and whether the operations are being carried out as planned.
HISTORICAL BOOKKEEPING CLEANUP
In order to run smoothly and make informed business decisions, a company needs an accurate and well-maintained set of books. Most small to medium businesses have trouble keeping a clean set of books, as this requires regular updates, proper allocation of expenses, and adherence to commonly accepted accounting principles.
Key Benefits
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Clean and accurate accounting is an absolute necessity at the time of filing taxes. By not having a clean set of records, a business may penalize itself by overpaying taxes or could potentially incur fines from submitting incorrect information.
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Helps business owners better manage their company's cash flow and have a current and complete understanding of the financial health and standing of their business.
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A clear set of books provides a solid picture of the company’s financial situation required at the time of debt or equity funding or presenting before investors.
At Arcane Accounting, we help businesses clean and organize their books and get them up to date. Once everything is updated, we can implement a cost effective accounting system that is easy to manage and easy to maintain. In addition, we can also maintain the accounting system and books, so that you can concentrate on your business, without worrying about accounting and reporting.
PERSONAL FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
Personal Financial Statements are documents that contain general information about an individual as well as information about their current financial status. Most commonly this is referred to as a Statement of Net Worth as it includes a breakdown of total assets and total liabilities. These are frequently requested when applying for credit. At Arcane Accounting, LLC, we can prepare your personal financial statement, no matter the need.
DUE DILIGENCE
Clients often ask us to assist in the due diligence process when looking into purchasing a new business. During this process we assist in investigating and analyzing the prospective businesses financial statements.
It is important to make sure their expenses look reasonable and that the financials make sense in order to make the appropriate decision on whether to buy the business or move on.
FINANCIAL FORECASTS AND PROJECTIONS
A financial forecast is an estimate of the future financial status of a business based on the historical financial data. These are used to provide business owners with information about what the financial outlook of the company is likely to be. A financial forecast is likely to be requested by banks and other investors.
A projection takes the financial forecast and adds in a “what-if” scenario. Projections contain hypothetical events and help the business owner to see how things could turn out. We are asked to do these for various reasons such as: buying a business, estimating how a specific event would affect the bottom line, tax consequences of a specific event, evaluating the sustainability of the current business, etc.