business process improvement – Page 10

May 19, 2015November 15, 2019

Accounting for Custom Manufacturing

Accounting and bookkeeping is a part of every business large and small, yet there are myriad details to work with and a multitude of possible approaches to addressing the requirement. From a summary perspective, there are standards which are fairly easily met, providing the basics of sales and expense tracking and income reporting sufficient for basic tax and compliance work to be performed. Yet accounting may go much deeper into the operational processes of the business, delving into the details of productivity and profitability in order to find and expose areas where the business might improve both.

mfg Manufacturing, particularly custom manufacturing or ETO (engineering to order) is among those industry types that could benefit tremendously from a more intimate and detailed approach to accounting. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to find experienced professionals with not simply a competence in working with manufacturing industry sector clients, but specifically with ETO process. Building to order is one thing, but finding the way to improve efficiency and profitability when every job is a custom encounter takes additional skills and a lot of data. Accounting professionals with these skills are needed to help these custom manufacturers grow, transform their businesses and make the overall operations more efficient and sustainable.

It seems logical that manufacturing and ETO space businesses are ripe for the same bridging of technology and analysis that the accounting industry started broadly approaching some years back. With bookkeeping processes being more frequently outsourced to non-accountants, the accounting professionals saw increased pressure to find more efficient ways of doing things and had to find new value to deliver to clients. Technology, data collection and analysis became the foundations for delivering on that new requirement. With the established model and philosophy, bringing more operational aspects of client systems into the mix and extending the model end-to-end just makes sense.

It takes a combination of systems – from the core accounting solution to the manufacturing control or other operational systems, through to the analytical tools. Leveraging hosting technologies and cloud service, businesses are finally able to bring the multiple work locations – shops, warehouses and business offices – together in a single software and technology platform, and collect the level of detail necessary to provide a comprehensive and true picture of the business. The analytical tools then provide the means to explore the details and identify where improvements might be made or where previously unrecognized risk exists.

QuickBooks desktop editions remain among the most popular financial systems used by manufacturing and job shop applications, largely due to the effectiveness of connecting the operational applications to an accounting solution which proves highly workable and which has strong industry support. Even with the emergence of QuickBooks Online (and the push by Intuit to get customers to adopt this web-based alternative to desktop-based software) the QuickBooks desktop edition products continue to provide more functionality and application support for these working models, as the ability to fully manage the information in the solution exists more in the disk based products than it does in a multitenant web-based application. Accounting “mechanics” are able to see, access and work with all the data rather than simply view reports where only half of the transaction is visible – making detailed accounting and data analysis more readily available.

The key is to leverage the accounting professional, the right software tools, and the platform and delivery environment that allows it all to work in concert for the entire organization. Add the QuickBooks hosting service so the participants can work more closely together. Enabling the accounting professional and bringing them closer to their clients (and client systems) allows the deeper move into operational issues, creating the basis for both to receive new and more value from the relationship.

jmbunnyfeet Make Sense?

March 10, 2015

EMV and Retail – Your Trusted Advisor Should Be Advising You about This

EMVChipCard There is ‘big change a comin’ for retailers, merchants and any business that accepts credit cards for payments, and there are a great many businesses that are completely unprepared for it. The change, what is being referred to as the “Payment Networks’ Liability Shift”, goes in to effect in October 2015 and places the burden of liability for fraud squarely on the shoulders of the merchants and card issuers who are not compliant with certain payment system security standards. Accounting professionals and Trusted Advisors – here’s one of those things you should be helping your clients with. Help them get informed, trained, and prepared. Help them to understand the risk and decide on a course of action. This is part of what makes a trusted advisor: they got your back.

The way things generally work in the US today, a fraudulent charge on a credit card is likely to end up being covered by the credit card company (the issuer). Starting in October, retailers are supposed to be able to accept payment cards with EMV chips (named for the founders of the standard: Europay, MasterCard and Visa), and must process those cards using the compliant technology that takes advantage of what the chip processing and security offers. If these conditions aren’t met – like having a POS or payment terminal not capable of reading the EMV chip – the merchant is on the hook for the fraudulent transaction. Given the volume of credit card and payments fraud in the country you’d think that most merchants would already be ready for this, but replacing all the POS and terminal equipment could be pretty costly. It may take a bit of analysis to understand the real risk and compare that to the cost of compliance. Certainly it makes sense to always be in compliance, but there are always factors which influence how quickly (or how completely) compliance may be met.

The liability shift is part of the influence being leveraged to get businesses to adopt newer and more secure models of electronic payment acceptance and processing. It is simply the case that the magnetic strip on a credit card isn’t good enough any longer. The new EMV Chip reading payment terminals require that the card be inserted and processed by the terminal rather than simply swiping the magstrip across a reader. Over 40 years of using the magstrip approach has helped to earn the United States a top spot on the leaderboard for credit card and financial fraud, and we seem to be lagging behind in adoption and implementation of the EMV technology even though it has been shown to seriously curtail fraud even as payment card usage increases. The EMV chip process, which encrypts information about the card so that even the local POS system doesn’t get access to it, is far more secure and is being widely adopted and used in Europe, Canada, Latin America and the Asia/Pacific regions. Now the clock is ticking for US businesses to get ready to either update their systems or accept the liability for not doing so.

The shift in how payment cards are made and processed is simply one of many changes which will continue to occur as technology and human ingenuity continue to be applied in both good and not-so-good ways. Recognizing that the pace of change is increasing, businesses must find ways to remain informed and prepare for those changes which will impact the business operation and sustainability. This is among the essential roles the trusted advisor plays, and the current imperative simply underscores the growing need for such advisors by business large and small.

jmbunnyfeet Make Sense?

February 24, 2015

Trusted Advisor is About the Work, Not the Title

Many accounting professionals believe they are THE trusted advisor the client comes to for advice and guidance on business financial matters. Having fully bought into the messaging about the value of the accounting and tax work, these professionals are feeling pretty relaxed about their client engagements. They believe the client will come to them with questions and provide the opportunity to deliver advice or work. And each year many clients return to get their taxes prepared or financial statements produced, and even new clients may appear. But the work remains largely the same – financial statements and tax returns, and addressing additional needs only when the client brings it up, which isn’t all that frequently.

happy_client On the other hand, there are professionals who recognize that a proactive approach to helping clients results in better and richer client engagements and better-performing client businesses. These professionals are truly the business advisors to the client – the trusted partners who understand the variety of conditions which impact business performance and care to make sure they are properly addressed. This advisor not only reports but makes recommendations and provides guidance on certain situations or processes which are essential in the business model. These professionals recognize that the bookkeeping and operational information collection is not simply a means to an end; these professionals understand that these foundational processes and the information they encompass are the important details which reflect the true performance of the business… details which no summary report can fully describe.

Having more direct participation in clients’ financial systems is a highly successful component of practice building, helping the firm to mine opportunities that may be hidden in current or new client engagements. This does not mean that the accounting professional becomes part of client operations or workflows. Rather, it suggests that the accounting professional understand these aspects of client operations and assist in the development of necessary controls and processes involving data collection or validation. It may include the implementation of KPI and benchmarking solutions to help identify problems and map improvements, or it may involve the installation of a solution to improve the importing of orders and other transactions into the system, improving the efficiency in processing the information while at the same time reducing the potential for manual data input errors.

Regardless of the depth of direct involvement in client systems, professionals can more fully benefit from every client engagement by providing some level of training, consulting or supporting service in addition to compliance and reporting work. Services may be aligned toward helping clients set up or support their own in-house bookkeeping and controllership responsibilities, or they may be more suited to providing real-time guidance and review of client business performance data. Either way, the quality of the financial information derived is generally far better and requires less work to adjust and report on.

The key is recognizing that the work involved – whether it is through training, regular process and data reviews, or more direct participation – is not intended to simply streamline reporting on outcomes. The work the trusted advisor performs is intended to help the client save money and improve business and financial performance, and the practice is rewarded with higher value billable services and a much increased opportunity to engage the clientele in other efforts.

jmbunnyfeet Make Sense?

January 22, 2015

State of the Union: The Irrelevance of Good Accounting?

finance I’m a little concerned, and any professional in accounting and finance who works with small businesses should be just a little concerned, too. Why? Because there is a belief out there that some nifty software and Internet Of Things (IoT) approach to finance will ultimately eliminate the need for a small business to work with skilled, trained accounting professionals. Remember the marketing slogan introduced by Intuit with QuickBooks – the one that suggested that, “if you can write a check, you can do your own books”? Most accountants will tell you that it is not true, and the ability to operate a product like QuickBooks does not magically turn poor accounting and bookkeeping information into good business data. In fact, it most frequently enables bad information to turn into bad business decisions – quickly.

DIY bookkeeping solutions have been around for a while, so why the distress about it now? Up until this point, it hadn’t been so overtly stated to small business owners that having less-than-great accounting data is very much OK, and that the role accounting professionals play in small business finances is more of a burden than benefit. Consider the statement made by President Obama in his recent State of the Union address:

“Let’s simplify the system and let a small business owner file based on her actual bank statement, instead of the number of accountants she can afford”

If I’m an accounting professional, I am pretty steamed up about that statement because I know how screwy business accounting data gets when the work is done by folks without the proper training. Incorrect or improper accounting treatment can make a big difference when it comes to filing those taxes mentioned…. and not in a good way. That transaction on the bank statement… Is it a cost of goods sold or a regular business expense? Is it an asset or supply item? Is it a reimbursement or revenue? Is the payroll deduction before or after taxes? Is that even a viable payroll deduction item? These questions and more arise frequently in a small business, and the treatment for these items is improper as often as not.

There is a big value in what a trained accounting professional can offer a small business owner, and the value often translates to eliminating unnecessary tax burdens and the delivery of accurate reporting – both of which are really important when it comes to actually trying to grow a healthy and sustainable business.

Small businesses are often considered to be the fuel powering our economy. Doesn’t it make sense for us all to recognize that smarter businesses are likely to be more successful, and that more successful small businesses means growth in the economy? The importance of good fiscal and financial management and reporting – in business and in government – is not something to minimize, and suggesting that it takes no intervention or skill to do the job properly reflects poorly not only on the person saying it, but on the entire establishment.

jmbunnyfeet Make Sense?

January 7, 2015October 9, 2017

Everything Old is New Again: Big Fat Phones and Desktop QuickBooks in the Cloud

Every year that passes leaves some reminder of the time – some person or occurrence which touches us and creates a lasting memory. 2014 delivered its share of memorable people and moments and proved again that social platforms such as Twitter and Instagram have become increasingly significant as people across the world organize, march or call for change. Yet even as change is demanded from us and often forced upon us, it is wise to remember that the pendulum eventually swings both ways. We want to have our cake and eat it, too, which is the ultimate no-win situation and causes us to constantly and consistently seek out the alternative. Like the puppy chasing his tail, we end up going round in circles. Harem pants and jeans torn from knee to thigh have come back in fashion, and even though they didn’t really work the first time, here they are again. It is inevitable.

Information technology trends follow similar patterns, and what was once in high fashion may now be considered as “legacy”. Perhaps the better word is “classic”, as these legacy solutions often represent the standards by which new solutions will be measured. Eventually, the properties of the classic or legacy solution wind up in the new breed, because this is what the market has come to expect and/or demand. Even when entirely new standards are believed to be adopted, the truth is that years of learning and experience will often find the path previously traveled by others to be the right path.

It seems like so long ago when some said “the desktop is dead” and that all applications would be used by every device via the web, but not run on the device. Well, there are quite a number of web-based applications and services delivered in just that manner, but there are also lots and lots of computers out there with software still installed on them, happily working away for their users (there’s an app for that, right?). The desktop isn’t dead at all, it seems, and what’s more – there are trends to extend the capability and reach of the desktop to the web rather than replacing the desktop with the web. Application integration, process integration, interoperability, functionality and modality – all these factors and more have become the underlying drivers for extension of and hosting for desktop applications, and are the areas where SaaS and web-based application service has not delivered as expected.

The idea of having no software on the computing device is kind of silly, when you think about it. Computers continue to get more powerful and have more capability than ever. Heck, even phones are getting fatter and bigger again. The best phones these days are the ones that rival tablets and laptops in size and have lots of apps to run.

Microsoft Office, too, hasn’t gone anywhere, really. It’s still firmly attached to most workstations whether they’re iPads or Macs or Windows systems. Web-based productivity tools are certainly gaining in use, but not nearly as widely as some would believe. Office productivity continues to live on the desktop, and ties many users to desktop computing for that very reason. Use CRM in the cloud? I’ll bet you still export data to Excel or Word on the PC. Use accounting in the cloud? A lot of reporting still goes through Excel, trial balance systems and the like. The universe of web-based and SaaS apps is getting larger, but it hasn’t yet become the center of the universe for most established businesses. Net-new customers and smaller businesses are adopting SaaS due largely to cost and to the success of the marketing message, but use and direct experience with the product applied in the business setting often demonstrates that adoption of a more flexible (malleable) or functionally rich solution is indicated. The business likes the mobility, remote access and managed service, but not the actual SaaS application. So, hosting becomes the better alternative and the business is able to use the software that works for the business, and use it in a manner that allows the business to take advantage of remote and mobile capability, subscription service, and more.

I really have no gripes with web-based and SaaS solutions. In fact, some of my best friends use SaaS 🙂 The message I’m trying to convey is simply that, regardless of what the media and marketing may tell you, things don’t always change as quickly as it seems. Yes, there is a movement towards cloud solutions and online working models. Yes, there is change in how information technology is obtained and used. And equally true is the reality that only a portion of the market has adopted these changes and new philosophies. By the time there is “complete” adoption, there will be a new standard or approach being marketed and we will be in this place once again. Is there wide recognition of the benefit for mobility and remote capability? Sure there is, but it is also accompanied by the understanding that tried and true solutions will continue to deliver the functionality and capability businesses rely upon, even as new models for delivering them come about.

Make Sense?

Here are some of the most popular articles from CooperMann.com in 2014. Surprisingly enough, the most popular were articles about QuickBooks and the Cloud, a subject I’ve been writing about for many years. In fact, some of the most popular of my QuickBooks/cloud articles are from 2013 and they remain among the most frequently viewed even today. Search and view metrics indicate that the topic’s popularity is not likely to diminish soon, so plan to hear more about how businesses are using QuickBooks (and other desktop and network applications) in the cloud, but aren’t using Online editions to make it work really well.

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. CooperMann.com blog was viewed about 19,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

November 18, 2014December 2, 2014

Courier or Messenger as Contractor or Employee? Compliance with Department of Labor

When it comes to dealing with the Department of Labor, there is only one prudent approach: keep meticulous records and self-audit regularly. It’s not that the DOL is a particularly frightening group, but increasingly public conflicts suggesting wage theft and avoidance of employer responsibilities continue to shine a bright light on the gravely imperative nature of keeping the right records and operating within the proper constraints. It is the DOL’s persistence in the auditing of independent contractor relationships which has put a tremendous amount of pressure on businesses which operate with primarily contracted workers.

The issue is not exclusive to any particular industry, but it seems that there are numerous rich targets in the area of logistics, as recent decisions impacting FedEx and UPS reflect. Described in an MSNBC article quoting David Weil’s book “The Fissured Workplace”, the decisions supporting the DOL in the 9th Circuit “further undermine the “devolution of the proletariat” — corporate America’s ongoing effort to shed front-line, often low-wage employees through independent contracting, subcontracting, and franchising arrangements”. The two federal appellate decisions disputed FedEx’s contention that its drivers in California and Oregon were properly classified as independent contractors. While there are many situations where the argument supports fair treatment for workers who operate more as employees than contracted workers, there is an equally substantial base of business where the performers are contracted and independent and should remain free to operate as such.

One of the industries directly in the crosshairs of the Wage and Hour Division of DOL is the courier and messenger industry. Couriers and messengers pick up and deliver messages, documents, packages, and other items – generally between offices or departments within a business, or directly to other businesses or individuals – and do this while traveling by foot, bicycle, motorcycle, public transportation or private vehicle. The Bureau of Labor statistics in 2012 indicated that almost 25% of those classified as couriers and messengers were local messengers and delivery providers, and that the highest concentration of these providers is in New York.

So what’s the deal with DOL versus courier/messenger services and their clients as it relates to the “contractor independence” issue? Well, the initial approach by the DOL is often to consider the hiring authority (the client) as a Professional Employer Organization or simply as an employer. This approach is often forwarded regardless of the provider’s owner/operator status, and may be due to a lack of supporting evidence that the courier was actively soliciting additional business from other sources (which is generally not the problem of the client, but in this case could be). There is a requirement to substantiate not only the client’s position that he is not the employer, but to satisfy recordkeeping for the courier or messenger, as well, proving independence and having the necessary paperwork and proof to support the claim.

In a business where people are frequently on the move, scheduling jobs between pickups and deliveries, there isn’t a lot of time to spend filling out paperwork and getting written agreements. These folks are working even as they’re scheduling more work, and a lot of this activity is done via text or telephone while riding a bicycle. The circumstances of how this industry works makes compliance a particularly difficult task, and the DOL doesn’t have to schedule audits and compliance visits – they can approach a business at any time and request to review records, observe activities, and more.

Given the frequency of such investigations and audits, every business in the industry should be looking for a simple and foolproof solution to keeping the right paperwork and records that will support the business operator claim of independence and protect them from unnecessary cost or litigation. This is where an accounting professional or consultant may provide assistance, identifying the tools and developing the processes to ensure proper reporting and compliance with regulations on both sides of the transaction. Without the proper documentation and evidence supporting the position of the client as well as the provider (the courier/messenger), both parties may end up finding themselves in an unintentional and costly relationship.

jmbunnyfeet Make Sense?

Accounting for Custom Manufacturing

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EMV and Retail – Your Trusted Advisor Should Be Advising You about This

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Trusted Advisor is About the Work, Not the Title

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State of the Union: The Irrelevance of Good Accounting?

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Courier or Messenger as Contractor or Employee? Compliance with Department of Labor

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