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Setting a Proper Foundation: Getting Started with QuickBooks

Businesses exist to make money, so it is no wonder that new business owners focus on the things that impact cash flow, like invoicing customers and making payments. These processes, involving getting and spending money, are among the first accounting-related things a new business owner generally addresses, yet they aren’t where the accounting should actually begin. The strongest foundation for any business begins with accounting, and proper setup and treatment is everything.

When most small business owners begin their operations, they get a business license, a computer, an email address and, more often than not, QuickBooks. Even if the owner isn’t fully prepared to handle the accounting for the business, they understand that they must do something to collect money and pay bills. QuickBooks is the standard for small business bookkeeping and has been for years, so this is where most begin.

Keeping a check register in QuickBooks, at the minimum, lets the business owner know how much money is in the bank. For a small business person, it’s all about cash flow and cash availability. Focusing on the checkbook and managing activities by counting payments going out and receipts coming in may help calculate the bank balance, but it doesn’t guarantee that the accounting is correct.

If the foundation isn’t solid, everything built on it is at risk.

To establish a proper foundation for business bookkeeping and accounting, there needs to be an understanding of basic accounting principles and how they are applied to this business. With the help and guidance of experienced accounting professionals or accounting software consultants, businesses will start out not just with the right chart of accounts, but also with knowledge of how to use the software properly. This enables workflows which utilize the capabilities of the software to handle the transactions properly at the back end, where data becomes information that provides insight into the business activities and results.

Whether the business is just getting started or has been operating for a while, there’s no time like the present to review the fundamentals and make sure you’re on solid ground. Mendelson Consulting, backed by CPAs and with years of business accounting software experience, is there to help businesses get the most from their accounting solutions. From initial setup to operational reviews and workflow re-design, you need a team that provides the services businesses need to build up their capabilities and grow the enterprise without compromising the structure supporting it.

jm bunny feetMake sense?

J

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Why Small Businesses Need Proactive Accounting

It has been demonstrated time and again that businesses working with experienced accounting professionals can benefit from the strategic financial guidance and compliance support they may provide. Yet these factors alone are often not enough to make the business owner happy. For most small business owners and growing enterprise stakeholders, the lack of proactive advice compounded by slow responses to business requests are the primary reasons for leaving their CPA.

Even if they don’t know how to ask for it, small businesses want proactive attention from their accounting professionals. Small businesses want and need to get information when it matters, and they need help deciphering what the information really means.

It is common for professional accounting firms to simply wait for their clients to provide after-the-fact information from which reports are prepared and delivered long after their relevance has passed. These firms often see no sense of urgency in helping clients address the business issues facing them in real-time.

Business owners attempting to grow a small enterprise from their budding small business especially need the benefit of experienced insight into operational metrics, cash flows and overall business performance. Without this meaningful data and advice delivered in real-time, stakeholders don’t really know what is going on or if they’re on the right path.

Advice on business planning and financial strategies should come to business owners from their accounting professionals, but it often does not. It is interesting that so many firms list business planning and strategy among the services promoted on their websites, yet they just sit back and wait for clients to ask for help.

Regulatory and reporting requirements for businesses are ever-increasing, so it makes some sense that many professional practices continue to focus on taxes and compliance work. Firms may find it challenging enough to keep up with changes to these core services provided. Yet this is why practitioners should take notice and accept that their ability to meet changing market and customer demands is wrapped in their ability to leverage technology to do what people and process can’t do alone.

Information technology is needed to speed up the bookkeeping, accounting and reporting processes, and it takes even more technology to help turn data into relevant and useful information. This is where Mendelson Consulting and Noobeh cloud services can help.
Working with businesses of all sizes and encouraging participation by the accounting professional, Mendelson and Noobeh help businesses implement the technology that facilitates faster collection of information throughout the business and then applying solutions that reflect those numbers in ways that helps users visualize the meaning of the data.

Mendelson and Noobeh help CPAs and accounting professionals remove threats of competition and irrelevance by helping them work closer with and deliver greater value to their small business clients. Applying proven, innovative technologies with improved processing methods and controls leads to better information provided in a timelier manner, which returns to the client as a better result offering greater insight. This is what small businesses want from their CPA, and Mendelson Consulting and Noobeh Cloud Services helps professionals deliver it.

jm bunny feetMake sense?

J

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For Franchise Business, Platform Agility Helps Deliver Customer Value

In every corner of the franchise world, businesses are talking about growing value. Customers are pursuing lower prices and are spending less, and the competitive marketplace often pushes businesses into a race to the bottom. With pressures coming from all sides – rising labor and supply costs, inflation and the cost of capital, changes in consumer spending habits – franchise operations are looking for ways to differentiate themselves and delight customers while supporting profitability and growth.

Value is not simply a discounted price on an item. To the buyer, value is often found in the quality of the product or service, and fast friction-free transactions made without errors. New bundles of products and offering new add-ons may also improve the customer’s value perception. The introduction of online and mobile ordering and partnering with third-party delivery services is not only an enhancement to the customer experience but can open new revenue streams by reaching new customers and serving current customers better.

Understanding where changes might be made to not only improve value to the customer, but also to the business and stakeholders, is the challenge. Only through close monitoring of operational and financial data will businesses understand what adjustments are needed to achieve the desired results. Yet the complexities of data collection, integration and reporting often pose barriers to exposing the information needed to fully inform stakeholders.

Mendelson Consulting and Noobeh Cloud Services understand that many franchise organizations are faced with challenges in identifying, collecting, combining and reporting on their operational and financial data. Working with Microsoft Azure and having team members and partners experienced in working with a wide variety of financial and operational systems, Mendelson Consulting and Noobeh help businesses create the foundations for flexible, agile and massively scalable data collection, storage and analysis.

From standardizing accounting systems and processes to establishing data lakes and foundations for data analysis and reporting, Mendelson Consulting and Noobeh have the range of services and solutions and partners to help support new, established and fast-growing franchise operations. Its about delivering more value… to our clients and to theirs.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

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Phishing, Cybersecurity and Your Small Business

Phishing can have a significant and often devastating impact on small businesses. Unlike larger organizations, small businesses typically have fewer resources to dedicate to cybersecurity, making them an attractive target for cybercriminals.

Small businesses can be impacted by phishing and other types of attacks in ways that might not have been considered before. Here are some of the more common ways that phishing attacks can impact the business:

Financial Loss
Phishing attacks often result in direct financial losses due to funds being stolen, fraudulent payments being made, and ransoms being paid. Cybercriminals often use phishing emails to trick employees into transferring money to fraudulent bank accounts, and attackers may impersonate legitimate vendors or clients to request fake payments. Worse, phishing emails can be used to deliver ransomware, locking up or encrypting critical systems or data until a ransom is paid.

For small businesses, even a single financial loss can be catastrophic.

Data Breaches
Phishing can lead to the compromise of sensitive business information or customer data, such as customer personal information or payment details, employee credentials or other private information of the employee, or business trade secrets and other proprietary business data. Data breaches can easily result in legal liabilities, fines, and damage to the business reputation.

Reputational Damage
When a phishing attack exposes sensitive customer information or disrupts services, it erodes customer trust. This can lead to clients taking their business elsewhere and makes attracting new customers harder. It could also impact vendor relationships, causing partners to view the business as a weak link in the supply chain.

Operational Disruption
Cyber-attacks, including phishing attacks, can disrupt business operations and cause numerous problems. Ransomware or malware delivered through phishing emails can render IT systems unusable, causing loss of productivity. If employees lose access to critical tools, files, or data, there will be delays in work and projects. Businesses also must divert time and resources to recover from attacks, taking away from regular business operations and revenue-generating activities.

Why Small Businesses Are Often Targeted
Small businesses are rich targets for cyber-attacks, especially phishing, because they often have weaker defenses compared to larger enterprises. Often made up of a few trusted employees, small businesses are attacked in ways that exploit trust and personal familiarity. Due to many small businesses having weaker cyber-defenses, attackers can find high payoffs in financial rewards or valuable data with a single successful phishing attack.

Noobeh Helps Businesses Protect Themselves
Every business should teach their employees how to recognize and report phishing emails, and MFA (multi-factor authentication) should protect all accounts, but human beings can only do so much, so it makes sense to implement tools that can put additional intelligence behind your services and defend your systems to help keep the problem from ever getting to your users.

Our team at Noobeh recommends and provisions Microsoft Defender for Office 365 to block phishing emails and messages with malicious links and content. Advanced email security helps reduce inbox spam and blocks messages from spoofed senders, which helps prevent users from interacting with bad emails and potentially exposing protected information.

Email protection is only part of the needed coverage. Noobeh also recommends having strong endpoint protection solutions to detect and prevent phishing-related malware and other attacks. Microsoft Defender for Endpoints does this, working seamlessly with our remote monitoring and management and your other Microsoft services to provide a higher level of protection for the business.

By understanding the risks and taking proactive measures, small businesses can minimize the impact of phishing attacks and protect their operations, reputation, and customers.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J

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PowerBI, Data Warehouses and Combining QuickBooks Enterprise Data with Other Data

Businesses of all types are looking for ways to discover more useful information hidden in their systems. With a desire to implement business intelligence tools such as Microsoft PowerBI, companies need the ability to combine and analyze data coming from a variety of sources. The data can help businesses inform their conclusions rather than leaving it up to “gut”, supporting decision making in all areas of the company.

The tools for exposing and combining data are many. Enterprise ETL (Extract/Transform/Load) products have been available for many years. When it comes to SMBs and the applications they utilize, the options aren’t quite as prevalent nor as powerful. In most cases, businesses are left to working with data exports and a bunch of linked Excel worksheets.

Noobeh understands that businesses need their data available for integration, analysis and reporting. Noobeh are experts in deploying SMB applications such as QuickBooks Enterprise desktop, Acctivate Inventory, Sage ERP, MISys Manufacturing and more, all on the Microsoft Azure platform, positioning the applications and their data perfectly for use in business analytics and data warehouses.

Data warehouses and data lakes are growing in popularity because there is simply too much disparate data present in any growing business to effectively analyze it one data silo at a time. The number and variety of data sources in a single small business can be far larger than the company realizes until it attempts to capture and report on that data.

Any approach to data warehousing should consider the potential number and variety of data sources involved. This is among the reasons for Noobeh electing to work with Microsoft Azure and PowerBI. The Azure platform provides the infrastructure services and platform tools to enable data connections needed, powering the data warehouse and exposing the data to PowerBI and other reporting and analysis tools.

Even QuickBooks Enterprise desktop data can be extracted into its own standalone data warehouse, connected to a broader data warehouse and then combined with other business data. When businesses can combine data from their various solutions, even those which may still be desktop-bound, the power of the information and intelligence contained in it can be revealed.

Whether the purpose is process improvement, performance monitoring, management reporting or combined operational intelligence, collecting and storing the data is the first step. Noobeh is there to help make it happen.

jm bunny feetMake sense?

J

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A Hurricane and the Port Workers Strike Force Conversation About Business Resilience and Continuity

Hurricane Helene is one of the biggest storms to have hit the Gulf Coast in years. An analysis done by a scientist at Colorado State University, Helene was larger than almost every storm that has hit the gulf since 1988. Only Opal and Irma were bigger than Helene. The toll in life and property is not small, nor is the disruption of services. There are troubles enough getting help and supplies to impacted areas, so the focus on doing everyday business just isn’t a thing.

To make matters worse, there is a strike going on right now. A big strike that is already impacting supply chains nationwide, and things will only get more strained the longer it lasts.

“The 2024 United States port strike is a labor strike involving over 45,000 port workers who are part of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), impacting 36 ports across the United States primarily along the East Coast and the Gulf Coast.” (Wikipedia)

While there are many people currently facing larger life issues, the entire nation is forced to consider what happens now, and if they weren’t directly impacted by these events, what would they do if they were? It is a bit of a wake-up call for many business owners, because business interruptions can come from all angles, and it is always best to have made at least some attempt at a set of plans for when things happen.

One critical type of plan is about making the business more resilient and better able to recover or adapt. It’s a broad strategic plan that focuses on overcoming unexpected disruptions and adapting to changing conditions or circumstances. This includes addressing business continuity, which is about how operations may be maintained during a crisis. Business continuity planning is part of what makes a business resilient.

The Importance of Business Resiliency

Business resiliency has become a critical factor for success. In today’s rapidly changing world, the ability to stand up to or quickly recover from disruptions is no longer a luxury but an imperative. Resilience means being able to adapt to changes and challenges swiftly, maintaining continuity and minimizing losses. Customers want reliability, so a business that can continue to deliver products and services despite disruptions will build trust and loyalty, leading to long-term relationships and a strong reputation.

A resilient business will have contingency plans for finances, creating buffers to mitigate the impacts of short-term shocks so investments in long-term growth continue. Also, where competitors may struggle to cope, resilient companies may not simply continue to operate but even capitalize on new opportunities that arise from the changing landscape. When a business is prepared for disruptions, it can focus on growth and innovation rather than mere survival.

Technology plays a big role in developing resilience. Cloud solutions can ensure data is backed up and accessible from anywhere, cybersecurity solutions help protect businesses from cyber threats, and automation technologies streamline operations while reducing dependency on manual processes.

Prioritizing resiliency is crucial for small businesses to navigate uncertainties and thrive.

Mendelson Consulting and Noobeh cloud services help businesses of all sizes improve their agility, streamline operations and implement the technologies and services necessary to shore up business and operational continuity and improve overall resilience.

jm bunny feetMake Sense?

J