When you think about small business accounting firms, your mind automatically goes to tax accountants, and sure, you can find tax accountants sprinkled all over your area. What you may not know is the right small business accounting firm can do more than your business taxes.
As a CEO, it’s easy to hire a bookkeeper, maybe even one with a few years of experience, and then hire a tax accountant or CPA, and call it a day. However, if you are interested in efficiency and a team that can support your big visions, you need to consider a deeper search for the right small business accounting firm for your business and your vision of its growth potential.
What to look for when selecting the small business accounting firm that’s right for you.
Searching for the right accounting firm for your business can be exhausting. It’s hard enough to find time during your busy day to accomplish what needs to get done to even begin searching for the right accounting firm for your needs. Sadly, some accounting firms may not be as responsive as you need them to be.
A good accountant typically works at a firm in town and may even be a CPA, but a great accountant can:
• Oversee, train, and support your bookkeeper.
• Use practical GAP standards that benefit your specific business.
• Understand or have experience in business operations.
• Sees your big vision and can influence your bottom line.
• Prepares taxes for you efficiently to save time and money.
It’s not only important to know that a small business accounting firm has experience in business operations, but you also need someone you can rely on to understand your specific needs. To know exactly where you are financially at any moment, know the ins and outs, the products and services you provide, and understand your vision for growth. The path to business stability, success, and continued growth takes a team that can work alongside you and continues to provide beneficial information.
When to look for a small business accounting firm.
As a CEO and owner of a small business, you know first-hand the challenges of juggling your work with managing others and even jumping in to assist when necessary. You may be taking on multiple “job functions” such as acting as your own CFO and preparing the necessary documents for your CPA or accountant, and even mild bookkeeping can’t be ruled out. But how can you really know where your business is at any given moment?
When questions like this arise about your business finances, it can be difficult to get a hold of your accountant if they aren’t working closely with you on a daily basis. Your accountant or CPA most likely has many clients, and you are basically taking a number and waiting in line until they can get to you. They don’t understand your specific business needs so they will provide basic, vague, one-size-fits-all answers.
What you need to grow is knowing that you have a small business accounting firm that works alongside you as your guide to build the financial foundations that are critical to your business. It’s more affordable than you may think.
Clarisent offers financial stewardship encompassing the advanced skills of a bookkeeper, knowledge of an accountant, management of a controller, and leadership of a CFO. We work with you to build the foundation you need to build a stable, thriving business through real-time reporting and strategic leadership. Instead of spending hours or even days assisting with basic accounting, you can get back to running your business.
We meet with our CEO clients regularly to provide crucial information that impacts their business and then work with them to set operational and financial goals. While we don’t file taxes for our clients, we find ways to save time and money that could cost you during tax season. Each year we provide a package for your tax accountant with 90% of the work completed, saving your business hundreds of dollars each year.
Business accounting is just a small part of managing your business’s financials. There are five critical steps we take with our clients to get them stable where they are today and set them up to grow. Not having a reliable pulse on your financials could be one of the many reasons your business is keeping you up at night.
Your business is telling you where it’s at this very moment. Do you speak its language?
Every decision you make, every step you take in your business produces a result. They can be good ones, bad ones, and even neutral ones. Every single result shows up in your business as a number. Numbers are the language of business. It takes real experience and knowing how to speak this language to interpret what they mean. That’s what we do at Clarisent.
With over two decades of speaking numbers for businesses with $1-8 million dollars in revenue, often with complex accounting needs, our passionate strategy financial services team takes a compassionate front-view / rear-view strategic approach to financial stewardship and forecasting, and reaching financial goals. We provide affordable, outsourced bookkeeping, accounting, controller, and fractional CFO services for small and mid-sized businesses.
The most successful financial strategies for a business comes from a team that offers reliable support and peace of mind. We pride ourselves on being flexible and solving problems unconventionally. We are creative and strategic. Not often found with strategic financial services. Our focus is on the goals of our clients, not just the bottom line. We are about the lives that the numbers serve.
To us, success is not solely financial. It’s personal. It’s setting, tracking, and achieving life goals as well, Better relationships. Better health. Happy staff. Giving to causes that make the world a better place to live. Feeling fulfilled emotionally, mentally, and physically. All of these riches are possible as the CEO of your own business. We don’t just say they are possible. We are certain they can be achieved.
Clarisent Certainty Pyramid™
Strategic Planning
Revenue Growth
Profitable Decision Making
Stakeholder Management
Annual Strategic Financial Plan
KPI Development
Fundraising
Acquisition/Exit Planning
Strategic Planning
Revenue Growth
Profitable Decision Making
Stakeholder Management
Annual Strategic Financial Plan
Budgeting
KPI Development
Fundraising
Acquisition/Exit or M&A
Management & Monitoring
Accurate Reporting
Deep Analysis
Internal Controls
KPI Management
Improvements & Recommendations
Cash Flow Management & Projection
Profitable Decision Making
CPA Support
Business System Check-up
Management & Monitoring
Accurate Reporting
Deep Analysis
Internal Controls
KPI Management
Improvements & Recommendations
Cash Flow Management & Projection
Profitable Decision Making
CPA Support
Business System Check-up
Data Entry
Expense Management
Vendor Management
Data Entry
Expense Management
Vendor Management
Invoicing
Payroll
Invoicing
Payroll
Data Entry
Expense Management
Vendor Management
Invoicing
Payroll
To accomplish this certainty and clarity yourself, you would need to be your own:
BookKeeper
A ground-level day-to-day manager, categorizing all business transactions, handling bills and invoices, reconciling bank accounts, and preparing key monthly reports. Taking the daily, weekly, and monthly financial pulse of your business.
accountant
A highly focused specialist, compiling, analyzing, verifying, and preparing financial records. Creating documents to ensure lawful, efficient, and compliant business practices and making sure you are ready for taxes.
controller
A high-level strategic manager overseeing all financial tasks and reporting procedures. Supervises and guides your bookkeeper and accountant.
CFO
A highly experienced, specifically skilled leader responsible for tracking cash flow, financial planning, analyzing your business’s financial strengths and weaknesses, and proposing strategic directions.
Every one of these roles offers a unique and critical vantage point that supports you and your ability to make decisions to grow your business. How can you expect to take on each of these critical roles and still be able to lead from your strength? Which is your big vision. Honestly, you can’t.
It’s no wonder you are:
Why our clients sleep well at night
These are the 7 crucial financial factors Clarisent always has it’s eye on to ensure that you maximize your financial decisions:
If you are unaware of your inventory, manpower and operating expense details, you can miss important profit dynamics. With Clarisent looking deeper at your cost structures, you can consolidate vendors, reduce product costs and reduce shipping and labor costs with an eye to increasing your margins. This factor can result in thousands of dollars in potential savings or operational efficiency that goes directly to your bottomline.
You can trust that with Clarisent, money flows to keep your business humming. We work to balance your inflows with your outflows so you don’t face temporary deficits. We help you collect money faster and ensure that payments are made to the right people at the right time.
Don’t spend valuable time each month forecasting sales and income projections, thumbing through tax forms or creating expense spreadsheets. Clarisent can save you time and money through proper preparation, organization and month summaries of all key performance indicators, including:
Sales
Expense
Profitability
Marketing Performance
Financial Account
Cash Flow
A detailed chart of accounts and accurate reporting maximizes your productivity, gives insight for better planning and builds trust with shareholders, investors and creditors. With proper procedures, you can rely on the financial data that we provide. Clarisent’s full service clients enjoy our near real time ClearView Dashboard™ complete with insights and recommendations that will help you make smarter business decisions. On-demand fractional CFO support calls are included as well.
It’s not enough to know what you did in the past. It’s also important to look forward based on the past and see what’s coming in the future. Successful businesses use profit and cost centers to monitor their activities and manage cash flow. Clarisent clients use our proven financial systems to illuminate what they should do next.
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) measure key business drivers and the correct focus is placed on performance, strategic planning and operations. Clarisent provides you with a personalized ClearView Dashboard™ so you can make better financial decisions.
A business is only as successful as the team they have in place. Clarisent provides navigation, strategic planning and results-driven advice to their clients at the fraction of the cost you may pay to hire a CFO.
Back to where you are right now. Big vision, flying blind, and not sleeping because you are unclear where your business is financially today.
Wouldn’t it be better if you:
- Have laser clear and highly usable data from your business so that you can make better decisions every time?
- Have trackable financials that clearly aligned with your goals and vision?
- Have a precise snapshot of your cash flow at your fingertips?
- Can predict your business’ future despite uncertain times?
- Have an open door to capital and financial growth and protection tools so that you can take advantage of opportunities when they arise?
All of this is yours today for free.
Happy CEOs
“Clarisent has been a critical success factor in our growth from a sole proprietorship to a larger international joint venture business.”
Sabine Amend, TI Communications USA
“As a small business owner, prioritizing my time is critical. After years of looking for a quality bookkeeping service, Clarisent has stepped in and taken control of a crucial piece of the business which allows me to focus on growth.”
Guy Peters, Mop Stars
“Clarisent has given me the tools and support I need to start my new business. I can tell they really care about helping us!”
Paula Devillier, Focus Construction
“Clarisent has been such an amazing resource to my firm and my only regret was not finding them sooner! I have more clarity with my finances, my books are much more organized, and most importantly, I can spend time on revenue-generating activities for my business instead of attempting to run my own books! It was simply costing me more to NOT have them, so their fees are an investment and in return I get my time back. I’ve already referred many others to Clarisent and will continue to do so. I highly recommend their services.”
Steven Harp, Colorado Wealth Group
“Clarisent worked directly on the financial projections for a launch and scale of a large organization that I created. Clarisent was effective in working with the team and contributed valued input that went far beyond the industry standard and into our thinking process. The result strongly impacted the ultimate success of our strategic plan. Clarisent is a highly professional CFO Service firm that I recommend.”
Mark Borough, Borough Wealth Management, LLC, Managing Partner, Spiritual Capitalist association, Chairman
“Knowledge of how all the pieces of a business works is truly difficult to find from CPAs and other Financial Professionals. Clarisent not only had the financial knowledge, but they asked the right questions and presented excellent alternative approaches to solving business problems. I wouldn’t be where I am with my business without them.”
Jeff Gibbs, CEO, Clearstone Sports
“Clarisent is more than an accounting service, they provide financial leadership to my organization and I view them as a strategic partner in helping to grow our mission of advancing women in business.”
Kristen Blessman, Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce
“I met Clarisent at a time of great transition in my business and was needing an overhaul of my financial management systems that, at the time, were a mess. My bookkeeper had made many mistakes that were costing me money, and my vendor relationships were mismanaged. Clarisent was able to very quickly and skillfully analyze my business, make sense of the problems, and then go on to recommend viable, effective solutions unlike any financial consultant had ever offered. I was so impressed I immediately hired Clarisent to provide CFO services for my small business. It has now been 14 years of working together and I can’t imagine running my business without him! Clarisent has consistently saved my business money in a number of areas, has transformed our financial management to be a seamless process, manages vendor relationships with utmost professionalism, and provides me meaningful, insightful reports that allows me to know exactly where my practice is at any given time. Beyond that, Clarisent has the uncanny ability to ask the questions most people would never think to ask regarding financial strategy, and is consistently supportive in innovating and improving our business practices. I appreciate that Clarisent always shows up with the highest integrity, and have come to really lean on him for support and clarity; his services are integral to my business. I unreservedly recommend Clarisent for CFO services for any business!”
Todd Nelson, CEO, Tree of Life Wellness Systems
“I am SO glad I met Steve Breitman! His service has saved me HOURS and HOURS of work in an area I don’t know much about and don’t want to. Taxes are a cinch to do now. That is priceless. Everything is set up properly for my corporate records and that peace of mind is significant. Thank you Steve and Clarisent!”
Jayne Sanders, CEO, Hands to Success
“Clarisent has provided bookkeeping services to my company, Sunshine Sciences, for several years. They’ve made preparation of my sales tax returns a snap. I also love that they are patient and great teachers.”
Linaya Hahn, CEO, Sunshine Sciences
“The ability to outsource our bookkeeping and accounting consistently saves hours in time and – consequently – money! By freeing us up so that we can focus on our core competencies, Clarisent has become a truly valued partner for our business”
Lindsey James-West, LKJ Financial
“Clarisent is always ready to proactively create a new system or retroactively solve a problem for their clients. It’s good to know they’ve got your back.”
Matt Tatusko, CEO TrueSight Media
“Clarisent is my true partner in the growth and development of my law firm. For the first time in my business life I can effectively plan and execute on our growth because, thanks to Clarisent, our books are always up to date, cash flow is clear and I can project revenues in a reliable manner. Thank you Clarisent for peace of mind that lets me sleep well at night.”
Tom Jurgensen, Optima Law Group
“I have worked with Clarisent for a few years now and would highly recommend them. I can always count on them to get back to me the same day, if not the same hour. I have delegated all of my bookkeeping to them which allows me to focus on the growth of my business. Clarisent is very helpful and always puts in the extra time needed when necessary. Clarisent gets two thumbs up from me.”
Dr. Keppen Laszlo, Executive Director, Discover Health and Wellness
“Our tax accountants and bankers have been very impressed by the quality of our financial reports created by Clarisent. Clarisent’s high service level is always evident in the deliverable.”
Lynn Coit, CEO, Elsy Studios
