time poor

Managing Your Business When You are Time Poor

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One of the main constraints owners face is the fact that there is only 24 hours in a day. The needs of a successful business can take up more than 24 hours in any given day rendering them time poor. Below are top tips for managing your business when you are running out of steam daily to help reorganize your company’s structure.  

 

Expand Your Team- 

 Having the right internal and external team can help balance the hours in a day. While your company is in the growth stage the balance between hiring your own key staff members and using outsourced companies is important to redistributing the work load. Startup and growing companies alike should focus their hiring efforts on employees who are involved with the product or service creation and delivery. This will allow the business to stay focused on what they do best and not get weighed down by day to day support tasks. Owners should look to outsource support services such as social media management and accounting.  Creating a balance between internal/external teams helps you redistribute tasks, maintain efficiency,  while minimizing your total costs.  

 

Have a Clear Vision for Each Day: 

 Before beginning each workday take the time to have clear priorities on what needs to be accomplished. Your business priorities should not only be set for you but for your internal team and external partners. The next step is to recognize any distractions that need to be handled before starting your daily tasks. This can include any fires that need to be put out or personal items that need completion so they don’t distract you the rest of the day.  Create weekly check-ins with all of your internal team members and bi-weekly check-ins with your external teams. This will help you stay on top of what is happening and able to change focuses as your business changes.  

 Another way to manage your day to day work is to set up calendar blocking allowing you to focus on each aspect of your business uninterrupted. This is the practice is separating out chunks of time each week to focus on specific tasks or portions of your business. You can set aside Monday mornings for marketing, Friday afternoon for employee checks, etc. This practice helps you focus on and complete tasks in a more efficient way.  

Redefining how you manage your 24 hours a day through internal and external resources can be the difference in creating dynamic growth.

 


Using a Slow in Business to Your Advantage

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Businesses have stagnant periods throughout their longevity that sometimes are caused by actions that are out of their control such as large customers going out of business, changes in the supply chain, or pandemics.

Currently, the world is facing a business slow due to COVID-19 that companies haven’t experienced before. Employees are quarantined, customers are shutting down for extended periods, and states are calling for mandatory shut-downs. While many executives see this time as a negative to their bottom line there is a silver lining- It’s a time to complete improvement projects that will allow your organization to come out stronger. We have pulled together three ways executive teams can maximize a slow-down.

• Accessing current processes and how they can be improved
Many times executives are faced with needing to automated and improve processes but they lack the time to get these projects completed efficiently. With the inability to travel, and the reduction of travel time from everyone’s day there is more time to look into how to upgrade technology and eliminate manual work. Where should a company start? First look at the processes or business tasks that currently can’t be done remotely. Is there a solution that would allow team members to executive this at home? If so, set up a demo and evaluate the pros and cons of implementing it now. Secondly, take time to follow up on current best practices for HR, finance, sales, and marketing. Is there anything your team has tabled for the year that would be a benefit if you took the slow time now to evaluate? Any improvements that can help with a remote team will only increase your overall strategic power once COVID-19 is controlled.

• Elevating Your Customer Experience
This is a great time to check in with your customers and find out how they are doing during this economic crisis. It’s also a great time to send out a survey through your preferred platform on how they enjoy working with your company. It’s a great time to find out what your team does well, and where opportunities lie to improve.

• Education
Many companies are offering FREE webinars, web series, and information daily to provide thought leadership and helpful advice. Take advantage of these opportunities and use them for the above two bullet points. Rarely in the day to day operations do we have time to work on improving our business

Not just focusing on the bad during the time, but the ways you can improve your own business, and provide value to your customers. At rinehimerbaker, we can help you evaluate your current finance processes and technology package. Contact our team through the form below to get started today.


Accounting Trends in 2020 Video

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Find out the top three accounting trends in 2020 to implement in your business to sail past your competition. Then fill out the form below to find out how our team can help you execute all three trends.

 


2020 accounting trends

Top 3 Accountings Trends to Follow in 2020

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Three main 2020 accounting trends will change the landscape of finance departments in companies of all sizes: automation & artificial intelligence, cloud accounting solutions, and outsourced accounting functions. What do all of the trends have in common? They all focus around eliminate time spent on unnecessary manual work in order to spend more time growing your business.

 

  • Automation and Artificial Intelligence

 

According to Firm for the Future, 86% of current accounting tasks can be automated. With that in mind, finance executives are looking at how advanced artificial intelligence can automate their company’s current manual accounting processes. By removing hours of manual work team members can refocus energy on being strategic leaders and streamlining processes.

 

How can you take this trend to your company? Look at all of your current solutions, not only for finance, but HR, sales, and marketing. Do they work together? Does your team export report to manipulate data? Are they spending hours typing data into multiple systems? Do any of the solutions have an open API to connect them? Assess your answers to these questions and then evaluate which systems don’t have the capability to automate workflows.

 

  • Cloud Accounting Solutions

 

Accounting Today reports that cloud accounting solutions currently account for 45% of small businesses, 57% medium-sized businesses, and 58% of large-sized businesses’ accounting solutions. This number will continue to grow as companies become more fluid and dispersed across the country and internationally. Moreover, 67% of accountants think cloud-based solutions make their job easier.  Ease of access, connectivity with solutions from other departments to eliminate duplicate work, and less reliance on IT are pushing droves of accountants to evaluate cloud ERP solutions.

 

What can you do to adopt this trend? If you don’t already have a cloud-based ERP, make it a point to evaluate what your current on-premise solutions do well and where there are automation gaps. Then start to look at cloud solutions that fill the automation gap specific to your industry. Lastly, prepare your 2020 budget to accommodate for implementation of a new cloud solution.

 

  • Outsourcing Accounting Functions

 

For small to medium-sized businesses, outsourced accounting functions have become a popular option and will continue to gain popularity as companies want to remain streamlined.  Using an outsourced accounting partner gives companies top accountants to manage their finances while using their limited resources to focus on increasing profitability and grow their passion, which for most is not accounting.

 

How can you adopt this trend? Look at the time you and your employees are spending on accounting functions. Are you staying up late to make sure the accounting is being completed? Do you have limited insight into financial data? Is someone on your team taking away time from their actual job to make sure that invoices are being sent out and getting paid timely? If you don’t have a strategic finance team in place, we urge you to weigh the costs of adding an additional staff member vs. hiring a highly regarded outsourced accounting company vs. the cost of doing nothing about your financial pains.

 

rinehimerbaker is an outsourced cloud accounting company that can do it all. We offer consultation and implementation of cloud-based ERP solutions, outsourced accounting, and more.  Contact our team at accounting@rinehimerbaker.com to find out more about how we can help you keep up with 2020’s biggest accounting trends.


data driven

How Financial Leaders Can Become More Data Driven

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As we head into the next decade, financial leaders of fast-growing companies are focused on how they can better drive decisions based on real-time data. Having access to financial and operational metrics in real-time can influence strategic company decisions. Below are some ways the tech-savvy leader can continue to evolve.

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1)    Eliminating manual work through technology – The top way that financial leaders can become more data-driven is by eliminating manual work by modernizing technology. Companies that are taking advantage of integrated solutions and automation have shorter month-end close cycles, streamlined processes and reliable, real-time information.  By moving to the right cloud-based financial solution, finance departments gain the ability to use seamless API’s connecting multiple systems in one low maintenance ERP solution. Open API allows organizations to choose the systems that work best for them.  Having integrated systems eliminates duplicate entry, reduces the risk of human error and improves job satisfaction. Utilizing cloud technology allows leaders to have visibility to critical data and attain real-time insights.

2)    Shift the direction of the finance department to value-add analysis – Once manual work has been eliminated, your team can now focus on understanding the story the data is telling and predicting the future. By reducing the amount of time spent recording transactions, resources can be redirected to support organizational initiatives such as cost savings, growth, and pursuing your organization’s strategic mission.

3)    Use financial data to create strategic goals – Financial leaders are in a prime position to drive company goals, set KPI’s and achieve measurable results when they have accurate and timely data.  Key performance metrics may include those related to revenue, margins, sales cycle, or other operational measures of success.  A fully integrated, flexible, cloud-based ERP system allows Finance Leaders the ability to quickly model scenarios and analyze the impacts on revenue, profits and cash flow.

Make this decade one of distinguishing your organization’s strategic vision and differentiate yourself as a leader who adds value, drives growth and sets your CEO up for success.  How? Make technology a priority and move to the cloud. It is the first step in driving your company forward and becoming a data-driven financial leader.

 

Contact rinehimerbaker at accounting@rinehimerbaker.com  to find out how you can become more data-driven. 


Sage Intacct Advantage

rinehimerbaker’s customer recognized at Sage Intacct Advantage

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At this year’s Sage Intacct Advantage conference, our customer MemberClicks was recognized as a recipient of the Sage Intacct Customer Success Award, an award designed to celebrate customers who have made dramatic improvements to their business and financial operations using Sage Intacct.

MemberClicks’ mission is to “Empower member-based organization to thrive through refreshing technology and a heart for service.” Their purpose-built suite of technology and customer-centric culture helps them achieve this allowing their customers to focus on serving its members.

For MemberClicks, 2017 was a year that largely focused on growth. With that came the challenges that all growing companies face and in 2018 they decided it was time for a new system that would help, not hinder, their company.

Sage Intacct was implemented for its ability to automate their order to cash process, manage customers’ subscriptions, and automate revenue management to keep them compliant with ASC 606, along with many other benefits!

Using Sage Intacct, MemberClicks was able to increase efficiencies throughout the organization with capabilities like:

  • Producing consolidated financials from multiple entities with various currencies in just a few clicks
  • Closing their books in just four days and spending the ten days they saved to analyze the data rather than reconcile it
  • Seamless order to cash process starting in Salesforce and creating contracts when deals are closed/won
    • Automating revenue and billing management across 3,000+ contracts
    • Automating customer payments through recurring subscription billing

Using Sage Intacct, they now have a consistent customer experience across the entire organization from orders to renewals to payments and everything in between. This consistency provides key members the visibility into every stage of the contracts’ lifecycle.

rinehimerbaker worked with MemberClicks to design and deploy this fully integrated solution centered around Sage Intacct. As a group, we were committed to helping migrate the company’s entire accounting operations onto a system up to the challenge of supporting their dynamic organization.

With MemberClicks recognized as one of a few winners selected out of hundreds of applicants, the journey for them proved worthwhile and demonstrates that success like this can be achieved by organizations of all sizes when you work with people and software that strive to achieve great results!

Congratulations again to MemberClicks from the entire rinehimerbaker team!

Find out how rinehimerbaker can help your company get similar results by reaching out to accounting@rinehimerbaker.com.


Sage Intacct Advatnage

Sage Intacct Advantage Conference Recap

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The annual Sage Intacct Advantage was an amazing event again this year with great opportunities to learn about the future of finance, network with our customers and the Sage Intacct team, and enjoy Las Vegas! Below are our team’s top takeaways from this year’s conference.

Sage Intacct Advantage

1) MemberClicks won a customer success Award- rinehimerbaker’s customer, MemberClicks was honored with the customer success award this year at Advantage! This award celebrates customers who have made dramatic improvements to their business and financial operations using Sage Intacct.  Congratulations Brent Stringer and team!

 

2) Change in Thinking-There was a strong focus on how the accounting function is moving from the age of information to the age of answers. Gone are the old ways of simply reporting “what happened”; now we are focused “why it happened” which is quickly moving to “what will happen next and what should we do about it”. This focus shows how finance teams are moving away from manual work and utilizing technology to deliver strategic value so that organizations can further their mission, grow and scale more quickly.

 

3) Eliminating the Close– Sage Intacct continues to look for innovative ways to make accountants lives easier. They are currently working on AI capabilities that are embedded directly into the Sage Intacct Intelligent GL.  The goal is to have continuous GL and eliminate the close. How? By using AI to accelerate the capture of data, to detect anomalies and ensure data is accurate and compliant, and to analyze and make intelligent decisions.

 

4) Sage People– This was an exciting announcement. Sage People is a new HR/benefit/onboarding/payroll solution that will be fully integrated with Sage Intacct. With this full integration, users will be able to quickly and easily view analytics, reports, graphs and dashboards related to the HR function.

 

5) Growth in Use– Currently 38% of the top CPA firms are using Sage Intacct. The continued growth of users shows how impactful Sage Intacct has been in revolutionizing the cloud accounting world throughout many different industries. The fastest growing verticals adopting Sage Intacct are hospitality and healthcare.

 

6) Orlando in 2020– Next year’s Advantage conference will be held in Orlando, FL the week of Oct 13th. For everyone that couldn’t make it this year, mark your calendars for next October. It will be a great week to learn, and network!

Sage Intacct Advantage


Cloud Solutions

Hospitality Companies Score a Hole-In-One with Cloud Solutions

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Hospitality companies can grow quickly with new locations, and new business lines (such as an additional bar, restaurant, golf lessons department, etc). With quick growth companies who aren’t using the best software can feel growing pains and create their own automation gap unknowingly. Below we review what the top pain points are and where the automation gap is created. At the end we discuss what the best steps are to eliminate your growing pains and get rid of the manual work through cloud solutions.  

 

Hospitality Company Growing Pains 

Growing pains can be sometimes be hard to distinguish because you find them becoming an accepted part of your day-to-day operations. Only when you start looking at best practices and how competitors are operating do you realize you are behind the curve in technology that gives time back to your organization. Top growing paints for hospitality companies are: 

  • Less time to focus on financials therefore you are taking shortcuts which is creating errors 
  • Your current team has a lack of finance or accounting knowledge leading to more time trying to figure out how to do basic bookkeeping vs. Leading the company to growth 
  • Multiple locations or lines of business (such as a country club with different entities or a franchise with 3 locations) 
  • Currently you have a lack of visibility and control into the total company 
  • Have a need for consolidated reporting that gives insight into your vendors across all business lines or locations 
  •  

Where the Automation Gap can be Created for Hospitality Companies  

The automation gap is created in hospitality companies when their growth is faster than their current software solutions can scale. This leads to manual processes for your team and creating hours of additional work. While at first this process many seem simple such as signing 5 checks a week, by the time you get to 40 checks a week you are now taking up hours a month on something that could be automated. Another example is timesheets. When you start out with one business area or location you may have four people which is easy to do manually. You oversee this team directly and can validate they worked the hours they have written down. By the time you have 35 employees you are looking at additions to your total business, more on your plate taking you out of the day and day, and managers that are now in charge of payroll. By leaving this process on paper and manual you will be prone to errors as well as inaccuracies because you aren’t there to know exactly what time everyone worked. This is the automation gap.  

 

If you have said yes that is an opportunity in my company, yes I face that same difficulty every week, then we have a few solutions that will work for you. Read through the chart below to identify where your company falls, and then fill out the form below to talk with our team.  

 

Current Accounting Situation 
  • Owner Operated 
  • Currently don’t understand your books 
  • None to limited reporting  
  • Results take 6-8 weeks to get 
  • Budget doesn’t allow to hire a controller 
  • Searching for professional advice 
  • Currently have an accounting staff  
  • Your team isn’t efficient because of manual processes that are time consuming 
  • 1-2 people currently working on your books 
  • Reports are error prone 
  • Your accounting team is new and could use guidance on how to purchase software 
  • Writing checks 
  • Complying special reporting 
  • You can’t access your data anywhere 
Solutions  Find an Accounting Solutions Firm that has an experienced team that can advise on new technologies, implement best practices, and lead your company to growth.  

They will provide: 

  • Real Insight into your operations  
  • Have ME close in 10 or less days a month 
  • Establish and provide a monthly report package 
  • Advice from a team that works with top companies in the hospitality industry 
 Find an Accounting Software partner that can implement a cloud-based solution that eliminates manual processes, and provides data faster 

 

They will provide: 

  • A list of cloud-based technologies that all integrate together to create a best-in-class solution specific to your company 
  • Enhanced insights and analytics 
  • Vendor insight for all locations or businesses 
  • Dashboards specific to real time data you need 

 


Closing the automation gap

Closing the Automation Gap in Finance

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Closing the automation gap in finance is key to running an efficient business capable of scaling. Growth in your business, by product diversification or acquisition, creates additional work on your team. If the system is designed around manual tasks and spreadsheets, your company won’t reap the rewards or experience the profit growth you expect. Closing the gap allows finance teams to transform from error-prone clerical workers to strategic advisors capable of providing data and insight in real-time. 

What is the automation gap? 

The automation gap is the space between what can be automated within your current system and the actual processes your staff is executing.  The gap essentially represents the manual processes your team completes in order to run your business effectively.  As companies experience growth, the automation gap generally increases and can overrun a finance department. 

A great example of how the right system can close the automation gap is Sage Intacct’s multi-entity management capabilities. By automatically consolidating multiple companies and automating closing entries, when you grow by acquisition you no longer need to manually track the activity in spreadsheets and manually consolidate the books! With Sage Intacct, finance teams can rapidly close the books and reduce errors along the way allowing them to provide meaningful information to your management team faster. 

 

Growing through product diversification is great but that also means companies need to understand how that impacts their compliance standards such as ASC 606. Once you understand your compliance requirements, you then need systems in place to uphold them. 

When your current software doesn’t automate this for you, companies typically lean toward a spreadsheet as their process. Managing compliance in a spreadsheet is not sustainable over the long term as you experience continued growth and create new products. 

 Watch the Webinar: Closing the Automation Gap Now

Processes built around spreadsheets are extremely manual and the responsibility of managing and maintaining them typically falls on one or two employees who truly understand how the document works. We often find that the documentation and instructions of the process are nonexistent meaning all of that process knowledge leaves the company when the employees leave your organization. 

Managing complex processes using spreadsheets is not without risk. It’s not a question of “if” there is an error, it’s a question of “when” the error is going to occur and how big of an impact is it going to cause. 

Companies are trying to close the automation gap by hiring talent. However, hiring high-level talent that can create and understand complex spreadsheets comes at a premium. Continuing to hire employees at top salaries to perform these tasks is not sustainable over the long term. This also contributes to creating a company culture where the focus is on clerical work rather than strategic work. 

Watch the Webinar: Closing the Automation Gap Now

Why is closing the gap important? 

90% of the decision-makers are under pressure to make decisions faster but only 28% trust the data in their reports. This is largely due to the almost guaranteed mistakes that happen when a company relies on manual processes instead of working with a system that closes its automation gap. 

Current CFO’s have more responsibilities than ever to strategically lead their companies with real-time data. Reacting on three-week-old data that is almost guaranteed to have some error within the report is no longer acceptable or the norm. 

Are you unsure of how to discover your automation gap and implement a solution to close it? The rinehimerbaker team can help you evaluate your current processes, identifies your opportunities, and build a plan on how to close your automation gap. 

If you would like to find out more, click here to watch the full Closing the Automation Gap Webinar. If you are ready to discuss closing your own gap, please fill out the form below to speak with a representative at rinehimerbaker.  

 


ERP Upgrade

Controllers: How to Make the Case for an ERP Upgrade

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Making the case for an ERP upgrade can be a daunting task.  Below is our cheat sheet on how to know when you are ready, tips for making your case, and what to expect once you have the approval to move forward. 

 

How to Know When it is Time for an Upgrade 

There are different types of “key experiences” you can have that would signal it is time to upgrade your software solution. Being able to recognize these signals early on will save your company money, time, and keep you ahead of your competition. Read below about the different signals that show it’s time to make the case and present it to your executive team.  

 

  • When your close is taking too long– When your end of month close is taking 6-15 days causing your executive team to work off “old data”. Real-time data is key to growth for a company. Decision-makers within a company need data almost instantly in this technology-driven time.  
  • When the manual processes become too much– It is time to upgrade when manual data entry is taking up too much time, leaving your finance team constantly behind. Also, manual entry becomes a problem due to data entry errors. 
  • When it takes too long to understand your data- Your data should work for you. Reports should be easy to create based off dimensions you set. In a cloud-based ERP solution, you can slice and dice your data any way you need quickly to make decisions and create dashboards to quickly find key indicators that drive critical business decisions. 
  • You are adding new entities (additional locations or brands/product lines)– Being able to have granular insight into all locations as well as consolidated reporting is key to being able to grow. 
  • When you are adding new staff and want to limit their access to certain sensitive data- a cloud-based ERP will allow you to restrict user access to specific entities and allow you to control their permissions to perform certain tasks or view types of sensitive data such as payroll.    
  • You are expanding to multicurrency– When you are adding an additional currency you will need to evaluate if your system allows more than one currency and if so, does it have the capabilities to produce the consolidated reporting you need? When evaluating the capabilities of your current system, look for the ability to automate conversions for transactions or reporting. Also, having the choice on which currency reports will be produced in is important.  

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How to Make Your Case 

The best way to make your case for an upgrade is to show your executive team the time you can save, the money they can save, peace of mind they will have by having a more secure system, and the impact of adding capabilities that will help them make decisions that can grow their business.  

For time savings, show how you can cut your closing time in half by having data available almost immediately. You can also demonstrate how you and the finance team will be able to cut down on manual processes through automation, freeing up time for new, value-add projects all while limiting the need to hire more finance employees in the future.  

Money savings are key when asking your executive team for an upgrade. The right cloud-based ERP solution can save money by cutting down on manual processes, improving employee engagement and growth, the ability to do more with a smaller team, and cutting closing time in half. 

Security for your data is extremely important as your company is growing. With Sage Intacct, the days of worrying about loss of data are over.  You also have the flexibility to restrict user access from viewing sensitive data.  User permissions can be set for only what a team member needs to access.  User permissions are granular with options down to letting a team member view but not edit or edit but not delete. This allows for peace of mind, and complete data security. 

Upgrading to a cloud-based ERP solution means that it is cloud supported with automatic upgrades multiple times a year. You will be able to operate with a lean team and your IT staff won’t have to complete or test system upgrades/changes for you. This helps cut down on time spent in-house trying to solve problems and empowers your finance team.  

Lastly, and an important part of getting approval is showing how the system will give your executive team better insight, better data, and flexibility. With a cloud-based solution, the executive team would have access to their own log-in that show cases Dashboards built specifically to their needs with real-time data that can be accessed from anywhere. With Sage Intacct, you have the ability to see your full customer experience from end to end. You can connect your CRM such as SalesForce, into Sage Intacct. This gives complete visibility for your sales team and improves your customers’ experience with your company.  

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After Approval to Move Forward 

Once you have received approval to move forward, the next critical step is finding a consulting firm that will meet your needs. At rinehimerbaker, we strive to identify your pain points during our discovery session and find solutions to make your life easier. Listening to your needs, helping identify areas or processes that are holding you back and finding solutions is what we are all about! 

Following the discovery session, we typically schedule a time for a live demonstration so you can see first-hand the functionality and just how easy it is to use Sage Intacct.  As your trusted partner, ensuring we meet all the requirements outlined during discovery is critical. After discovery and demo, we will document an implementation plan that works for you including what you can expect before and after go-live.    

At rinehimerbaker, we are dedicated to understanding your business so we can help you move faster with greater clarity.