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How to Know When it’s Time to Upgrade from a Bookkeeper to a CFO

How to Know When it’s Time to Upgrade from a Bookkeeper to a CFO

by | Apr 23, 2019 | Finances, Goals, Operations, Systems, Time

As your business grows, financial management turns into an increasingly delicate task. To stay on top of the books (and stay ahead of problems later), you need a rising degree of financial intelligence.

But you’re also running all other aspects of your business. To focus on more critical duties, and—ideally—take a big step back from the business so that it can start to run itself, getting those time-consuming financial activities off your plate is crucial.

You probably already have a bookkeeper, whether remote or in-office, part-time or full. So, when do you know it’s time to delegate all your financial responsibilities to a Chief Financial Officer (CFO)?

Here, we’ll explore the key differences between a bookkeeper and a CFO to understand which will have the biggest impact on your business according to your needs, right now.

WHAT DOES THE AVERAGE BOOKKEEPER DO?

You probably already have a bookkeeper or use a bookkeeping service, and here we’re going to review what their responsibilities generally include.

A bookkeeper is generally employed by a small-to-medium-sized business to record and track transactions and reconcile accounts, including but not limited to payroll, invoices and expenditures.

That said, a bookkeeper’s role isn’t limited to entering numbers into spreadsheets. Especially if you contract a bookkeeping service, their expertise and knowledge also include leveraging key accounting software to take care of things like:

  • Training you or other staff on accounting software
  • Cleaning up mistakes and validating accounting data
  • And streamlining all bookkeeping tasks

These responsibilities take an enormous weight off a business owner’s shoulders. However, you’ll see that these tasks still require someone to manage the bookkeeper and step in when it comes to more complex to-dos.

Spoiler alert: if it is time to upgrade to a CFO, you’ll have more accounting needs than those listed above.

WHAT DOES THE AVERAGE CFO DO?

As your business grows, managing your finances becomes too complex for a bookkeeper to handle. And without the right pieces in place to keep finances managed well, this can become a strain for future growth, particularly when it comes to investments and strategic planning.

This is your first sign that it might be time to hire a CFO.

But back to basics: a CFO is brought into a business as the bearer of all financial activities. The CFO not only has the knowledge and skills to handle accounting independently, but takes ownership in the success of your business.

Ideally, a CFO ends up becoming a right-hand man or woman for your company, with responsibilities such as:

  • Strategic planning to assess the operational and financial impacts of strategic business initiatives
  • Annual budgeting and quarterly forecasting, including recommending adjustments, as needed, to properly manage the business
  • Operational and financial reviews with actuals vs. budget forecasts and operational efficiency metrics to make better day-to-day and strategic decisions

A CFO will be responsible for everything from general accounting to protecting the financial future of your company, keeping a pulse on how stable your company is at a given time.

Though, as you can imagine, hiring a CFO is a big decision for any business owner and has to be done at the right time.

LET’S TAKE A MOMENT TO TALK OUTSOURCING

We can outsource just about everything these days. With a tap of the smartphone, we can open apps to communicate with freelancers and contractors around the globe who are playing an increasing role in capacity building and scaling for small and medium businesses.

Outsourcing is common, too, with bookkeepers. Whether it’s an independent bookkeeper or a service you contract, working from the cloud gives businesses the financial controls they need without having to hire in-office.

Looking for a bookkeeper online today is easier than ever, too, with multiple certifications you can check for and validate. For example:

  • Certified Bookkeepers (National Bookkeepers Association)
  • Certified Management Accountants
  • Certified Accounts Payable Professionals
  • Certified Accounts Payable Associates
  • Certified Payroll Professionals
  • Tax Certification

But did you know you can outsource your CFO, too? This is most appealing for businesses without a physical office, and for those who are aching to get the help a CFO can offer but still aren’t sure about finding and hiring someone local full-time.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IT’S TIME TO HIRE A CFO?

We’ve talked about the increasing complexity of business finances. So what are some of the triggers that might indicate it’s time to start thinking about hiring a CFO?

If any of the following are true, that will be a big flag that you’ve grown enough to start thinking about hiring this important team member:

  • If you have investors interested in supporting your business, they’ll want to see detailed financial statements and financial plans. This is something that almost always requires contracting a CFO, unless you want to be stuck doing all this work yourself.
  • If your company revenue has increased significantly or rapidly, it’s wise to look for a CFO to help manage your cash flow. Planning appropriate cash usage is another strategic “must” that a CFO can manage for you.
  • And, as your business grows, banks will start insisting on thorough audits of your financial statements when you come looking for loans. These types of audits can include digging into even the most minute details, and can be intimidating—not to mention a major time suck. A CFO would take care of this for you, also ensuring that financial statements are up-to-date without discrepancies before that audit even comes.
  • For any company that’s grown significantly beyond “what it once was,” understanding and managing risk becomes more difficult. Hiring a CFO gets you the insights you need for proper risk management, strategizing and protecting you against all the “what ifs” that are likely to occur.

Now that the wheels are turning on the “when” and “why,” the rest is up to your gut. You’ve made business decisions a million times before, and now you have some key considerations on a silver platter. So, what do you need? And what do you want? Do you have the time to handle finances on your own?

If it is time to hire a CFO, this will mean handing all that responsibility off to someone uniquely trained and positioned to not only handle accounting, but the necessary financial strategy to keep your business running successfully.

BONUS: HOW DO YOU HIRE THE RIGHT CFO?

Hiring anyone for your company is a delicate matter. Even the entry-level representatives answering the phones act as the face of your business, so there is no “small” job in your business.

That said, a CFO will act as an especially important player. Looking for talent isn’t as hard as you think, and so if it is time to hire a CFO, start looking now.

And then, pat yourself on the back, because your business has grown so much that you’ve arrived to a major turning point. This will be another day you remember.

Have a financial situation you’re not sure about? Want to learn more about what a bookkeeper or CFO can do? Connect with us today!

3 Tips For Delegating The Correct Way

3 Tips For Delegating The Correct Way

by | Mar 8, 2019 | Goals, Operations, Priorities, Team Management

Your business is “your baby” and nobody can do it like you can, right? WRONG! SO many business owners get caught up believing that they’re the only person who can do the work in their business to keep it running, and this thinking is what keeps them stuck, working around the clock.

Sure…you’re unique and no one is exactly like you. But doing everything yourself is a quick road to frustration, exhaustion and burnout. Not to mention business stagnation.

Delegating work effectively is absolutely crucial to your long-term success.

The prospect of delegating may make you cringe because of the amount of time and effort it takes up front. In the long term, however, it will save you exponentially more time and help you conserve exponentially more energy, allowing you to focus on bigger, more important aspects of your business.  

Not sure if you’re ready to “let go” and allow your team to help you? Here are three tips for delegating the correct way.

Decide What Needs To Be Delegated

To decide what you can delegate to team members, first start by examining yourself. You undoubtedly have many fantastic skills. You probably even have a few skills that are unique to only you and nobody else on your team. There are also things that make you jump out of bed in the morning, eager to get into the office. But what about the tasks that aren’t your expertise, your motivation or your passion?

Starting out by delegating things you aren’t the best at or don’t enjoy doing, is a perfect place to begin. If there’s a task or activity that you aren’t very good at, chances are there is someone on your team that is excellent at it, or that you can find someone who would be excellent at it and add them to your team. Delegating that activity or task to them will not only allow them to excel, it will also give you a much better end result.

Delegating those things you simply don’t enjoy (or maybe even dread) doing is also a great place to start. Just because you may not like a task or activity doesn’t mean everyone dislikes it. By getting it off your plate, you are getting rid of negative energy and are able to focus more positive energy and efforts on the work you love and excel at.

One pro tip here to consider is that while getting everything you are not great at or dislike off your plate all at once may be tempting, don’t go overboard. Start small to make sure the process runs smoothly and orderly and you’re satisfied with the outcome. As delegated work gets done and your systems get ironed out, you can then continue to delegate bigger and bigger tasks and activities.

Set People Up To Succeed

As you are delegating, remember that you want to give your team members every opportunity to succeed.

Part of doing this successfully is granting them the true authority to perform the work you are delegating. Do anything less, and you will place a potentially insurmountable obstacle in the path of your employees, requiring them to rely on you and causing yet another bottleneck. Examples of authority include monetary or personnel resources, decision making power, etc.

Equally important to empowering team members with the authority required to complete a task or activity, is making sure you are extremely clear when making the request. This includes communicating a deadline, providing a detailed explanation of the physical outcome you expect (what it will look like, etc.), conveying why the work is important (it’s purpose), and sharing any and all information, training, messages, etc. the person will need in order to have the background necessary to complete the work to your level of satisfaction. This is often where the delegation train goes off the rails. Take the time to plan your delegation, and err on the side of over-communication and overtraining.  

Evaluate And Refine

Another very important factor to take into consideration as you delegate work to your team members is to keep the lines of communication open and establish a structure to regularly discuss how tasks and activities are progressing. Doing so will allow team members to surface any breakdowns more quickly, and to share their recovery plans to address those breakdowns. This is the way that you stay in coordination with the folks doing the work, without needing to be involved directly in the doing.

As you delegate more and more, and you start to see common breakdowns or pitfalls, you’ll be able to establish practices, guidelines and procedures that minimize those same issues from surfacing in the future.

Delegating tasks and activities in your company may feel daunting, but the rewards and gains in productivity you’ll see from it will pay you back exponentially in business growth and scalability. At Kleriti Business Solutions, we partner with business owners to build the muscle of effective delegation, grounded in the processes and workflows that allow their businesses to operate consistency and with high quality. If you want to be able to delegate more, step away from the day to day of working “for” your business, and begin working “on” your business, contact us today.

3 Questions to Create the Future

3 Questions to Create the Future

by | Nov 16, 2018 | Goals, Operations, Processes, Team Management

People might think of running a business as a solo endeavor, but the truth is that none of us can do it alone. In order to make a big impact in or contribution to the world, we need to share our vision with others, inspiring and motivating them to join us. This is leadership: creating a shared future together and working to implement it. And all of that happens in communication.

After returning from the Institute for Generative Leadership’s Foundations Workshop, the essence of leadership has never been clearer to me. While the program is truly an immersive experience, and one that I highly recommend business owners and leadership teams attend, I had a few key takeaways that I want you to start benefiting from now. So here are my thoughts distilled into three key questions for your team to ask every day to create strong communication and therefore greater business success:

1. What do we care about?

What we care about as individuals shapes every aspect of our life and work. When we’re connected with what we care about, we have value, meaning and satisfaction in our lives. When we don’t, we feel unfulfilled, unsatisfied and unhappy.

Similarly, every business owner gets into business to take care of something, to solve some need we identified in the world, and to do it our way. When we live and work in alignment with that care, things click and make sense, and we’re able to find flow. When we are surrounded by team members whose care is in line with ours and see them contributing to it, we flourish.

Yet so often, we’re distracted or cut off from our care. We bring team members into our organizations without clearly articulating our care or taking the time to understand theirs. Or we post our care on walls and in notebooks without living it day in and day out. The result is breakdown and burnout.

Define your care and keep it front and center every day. Don’t merely state it. Live it.

2. What shared language and understanding do we need?

Everyday we throw around words like “customer satisfaction,” “revenue” and “team.” Business conversations and meetings focus on the “how” around these ideas. How to increase customer satisfaction. How to bring in more revenue. How to build a team. But what if I have a different definition of what customer satisfaction is than you do? How can we possibly get on the same page when our language is not aligned?

We often make the unconscious assumption that others see the world how we do, because our history and our stories are so close to us. We fail to realize that there are other histories and other stories that shape the way those around us see the world — and the way they define words.

Generate a shared understanding of what words mean. Ask “what” before “how.”

3. What are our standards?

When standards are assumed and not spoken, it’s the same as asking other people to be mind readers. It’s simply unfair and unrealistic. When we assume that someone understands what we’ve never stated, we can bet that communication will break down. That in turn generates waste, dissatisfaction and distrust.

Our teams make many promises every day – to team members, promises to customers and vendors. In order for these promises to be trustworthy and shape the right action, we need to ensure that our standards mean the same thing to everyone on the team.

Clearly define and articulate your standards.

All of these questions manifest themselves in communication – the conversations we have, and the conversations that are missing. With alignment on care, a shared language to use in expressing that care, and commitment to standards, you have a “we” orientation from which to create the future together, one small step at a time.

Could your business use guidance in how to build better communication that drives success? Contact Kleriti Business Solutions today. We’ll help ensure that your team members have a shared understanding of future goals and how to reach them.

Make Q4 Count: 4 Plans to Jumpstart Your Company’s Year Ahead

Make Q4 Count: 4 Plans to Jumpstart Your Company’s Year Ahead

by | Oct 16, 2018 | Finances, Goals, Marketing and Sales, Operations, Processes

How was your year? Of course, we still have a few months left. But it’s important to start reviewing what worked, what didn’t work, and why not, so that you can hit the ground running once January arrives.

Q4 is the perfect time to plan. And no matter what stage your business is at, these four essential plans are key to achieving your business goals and growing in the year ahead.

Operations Plan

An operations plan covers all of the things that are necessary to the day-to-day life of your business. They’re so necessary, in fact, that they might seem obvious to you. But writing them down helps you plan in advance, making sure that you have what you need before you need it.

Questions to get you started:

  1. What do we need physically to get things done? (e.g., location, equipment)
  2. What goals aren’t we achieving? How can we achieve them every day?
  3. Which processes are inefficient or ineffective and need to be improved?
  4. What kind of budget do we need to implement our operations plan?

Personnel Plan

A business is only as good as its people. Having a personnel plan in place ensures that you assemble the best team for your business. And if you already have an amazing team in place, knowing how you will support their development in the coming year is invaluable.

Questions to get you started:

  1. What kind of team do we need to achieve our goals? What roles need to be filled and what do ideal employees bring to the company (education, background, skills, etc.)?
  2. How can we further develop our current talent?
  3. How do we recruit, onboard and train new employees? How can that be improved?
  4. What do employees need from us when they start?
  5. What kind of budget do we need to effectively recruit, onboard and retain star players?

Marketing/Sales Plan

We’ve talked a bit about sales in the past. Finding, qualifying and onboarding the right customers is just as important as finding, qualifying and onboarding the right employees. Sales and marketing go hand-in-hand, so it’s a good idea to plan for them together.

Questions to get you started:

  1. Who is our target market?
  2. What is our unique selling proposition?
  3. What’s the current ROI on our marketing activities? How do we want that to change?
  4. Are our services and prices fair and meeting the needs of our target market? How are we communicating that?
  5. How can we generate qualified leads that result in sales?
  6. What kind of budget do we need to achieve our sales and marketing goals?

Financial Plan

You might have noticed that each of the above sections ends with identifying a budget. Finances are important, and if you identify your company’s financial needs early on, it will help you invest in and take action on each of the plans you’ve created.

Questions to get you started:

  1. What’s the profitability of our clients, service lines, etc.?
  2. What are our monthly financial projections, based on anticipated income and expenses?
  3. What’s the most optimistic financial scenario?
  4. What’s the most pessimistic financial scenario?
  5. What’s the most realistic financial scenario?
  6. What are our financing needs for the year and how can we work toward achieving them?

Does your business struggle to create actionable plans that your team will follow through on? Contact Kleriti Business Solutions today. We’ll help get you on your way to your most successful year yet!

Stop Spinning Your Wheels: Implement Your Strategy and See Real Change

Stop Spinning Your Wheels: Implement Your Strategy and See Real Change

by | Sep 19, 2018 | Goals, Operations, Processes, Systems

There are two steps to achieve a goal: plan and execute. Yet so often, businesses get stuck in planning mode and never move into action.

This is exactly what happened for years with a new Kleriti client. During a recent strategic planning session with them, members of the leadership team told me how they never gain traction or make progress because they’re stuck spinning their wheels talking about what they should do. This lack of execution paralyzes them, holding them back from realizing success.

For your business to get where you want it to go, both parts of the goal-achievement equation must be in play. In fact, entrepreneur and author Tim Berry goes so far as to argue that, “Good business planning is nine parts execution for every one part strategy.” Without the action, the words — and planning — don’t count for much. They certainly won’t get you to increased profit, a powerhouse team or more efficient workflows.

Overcome this stall-out and translate your strategy into action to realize positive change with these 5 practices.

Determine The Decision-Making Process

Lack of clarity on who is empowered to make which decisions is a quick way to hit a wall when it comes to execution. Decide how decisions will be made up front and by whom, to save your team time, confusion and even contentious debates as you implement the plan. How you handle decision-making will be influenced by your company’s culture. For example, if you encourage employees to share their opinions, you may include them in a vote. If you hold decisions closer to the vest, your leadership may come to consensus and communicate decisions downward.

Establish Deadlines And Responsibility

As you outline who makes the decisions, also decide on other key aspects of each person’s role in the strategy’s implementation. Clearly communicate to every relevant party what you expect from them, and by when. Your team can best implement the strategy when they have complete clarity about what they’re responsible for.

Define 90-Day Milestones

Delaying tasks until it’s absolutely necessary to do them is human nature. Research shows that up to 20 percent of people are chronic procrastinators. So it stands to reason that team members will wait until the deadline is staring them in the face to complete a task. Break your plan into chunks with milestones every 90 days, and to dos every week. This allows you to focus on smaller, immediate steps and to feel the motivation and satisfaction of making continual progress.

Hold Regular Check-Ins

Keep your team (even the procrastinators!) on track with ongoing check-ins. We suggest structured weekly meetings — one for leadership and one for each team or work unit. This drives appropriate focus at all levels of the organization. Confirm whether the previous week’s to dos were completed or not, and allow team members to share the issues facing them. That way you can overcome challenges and continue moving forward.

Avoid ‘Shiny Object Syndrome’

It’s easy to become distracted by a new idea or change in direction. Avoid this tendency like the plague, and keep your eye on the ball. Don’t allow anything else to come into the plan unless it passes the litmus test of aligning with your company’s vision and mission, and supporting the goals you’ve set. And if you do opt to add something, take something else out to help keep your team and the action they’re taking on track and manageable.

Does your company struggle to translate your strategy into action? Contact Kleriti Business Solutions to get you moving. Our consultants will partner with you to break the trend and realize execution momentum like never before.

What Improv Classes Taught Me About Business and Life

What Improv Classes Taught Me About Business and Life

by | Aug 7, 2018 | Goals, Operations, Processes, Systems

I recently wrapped up Level I improv classes at the Bovine Metropolis Theater in Denver. Going in, what I knew of improv came from “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” – a show I used to love! I admired how the artists on stage created real life out of thin air. They cracked the audience up, while seeming to genuinely have a blast themselves. I wondered how they could possibly think and act that quickly. My introverted, planner self who thinks everything through first decided that now was the time to find out what this art form was all about (“There’s no time like the present” and all)!

While I did, in fact, learn how the comedians on “Whose Line” did it, I also came away with much more.

Here’s what I learned from improv classes that carries over into business and life.

 

Let go of expectations

One of the foundational tenants of improv is, “Yes, and…” When you or your scene partner put something into the world (“Wow! Look at this beautiful purple river,” or “Hi, what brings you into Lucky Mart today?”), the one thing you CANNOT do is explain that the river is in fact clear or that we’re in Lou’s Bakery. You accept what is given and build onto it, which, to me, means remaining open and accepting and going with the flow. And when you’re in that state, what you cannot do is hold onto your expectations of what’s going to happen. There’s no place for expectations in improv. You have to let them go — all of them.

 

You may think you’ve started a scene as an office worker, when all of a sudden a college student enters the scene to apply for a job at your bank. And wham, bam. You’re in a bank. This is also called “give and take” or “win and lose” in improv. At the end of the day, sometimes you have to let go of your expectations and your ideas in order to make a great scene. So you do. You have to let go of your ego and what you think might be right in service of your fellow players and the world you’re creating together.

Bovine Metropolis Theater in Denver - photo by Sarah Krivel Kleriti Business Solutions - Improv Lessons for Business and Life

Tune in

In order for a scene to be believable (dining in a restaurant or pulling in a fishing net), it has to truly look to the audience like you’re really there doing it. This means that every part of your body has to be engaged. You have to see it, taste it, and especially feel it (the fork you’re eating salad with, the slippery floor of the fishing boat). No matter what it is, you have to be fully there. It goes from being make-believe to being your reality. And when you step out of a scene and realize how fully you had embraced being inside of it, like you really were enjoying a delicious meal with a friend or hauling in a giant catch at the end of the day, you realize the ultimate presence. If that presence breaks for even a second, the impact is palpable to the audience. So you stay there.

 

Trust yourself to make the best choice you can in that moment

Early on, we played a game where one partner acts out an everyday repetitive activity (think brushing your teeth, driving your car) and the other partner mirrors them until both are in sync. Then the second partner evolves that activity to something entirely different. Our teacher, Holly, coached us to slow down the action and listen to our body to change it. We don’t change it, our body does — a truly crazy concept for someone as heady as me to grasp. And that’s exactly the point.

 

When it came my turn to evolve the activity, I did what Holly instructed, and literally came up blank in my mind. I had no expectation, nor clue, of what I was going to change it into. I felt confused, at a loss, and a bit bewildered. And instead of fighting those feelings, I stayed there. I slowed it down and listened to my body until low and behold the barbell lifting activity my partner sent me became painting a portrait. After the fog came incredible clarity. But I had to slow it down and remain open to the process to get there. In improv, there’s no right and wrong. There’s no pre-meditation. You just have to “jump” – to enter a scene, to start to speak, and believe that it will come. It’s amazingly freeing to have a space where nothing is wrong, and everything is right.

It can be scary to get outside your comfort zone and force your brain into a new way of thinking like I did with improv, but the new insights you gain from it can be amazing. Fortunately, Kleriti Business Solutions can help you see new perspectives on your business challenges — and we won’t require you to put yourself out there in an improv class to make it happen! If you feel stuck with where you are in your business and want to break through to greater success, contact us today for your free Spotlight Session.

As for me, it’s on to Level II!

Is there a business challenge that you’ve struggled with for too long and could use outside perspective on? Tell us in the comments below.