Business opportunities by knowing your business

I was recently approached to help draw up a business plan for a company who was hoping to attract an investor and raise much needed funds for their company. I agreed and a meeting was set up with the owners of the company. This company had been trading for nearly 2 years.

At our first meeting I asked a few questions :

The owners of the company looked at each other first and then at me and replied “I do not know.”

So the next logical step was to obtain this vital information. How – EconoAccounting of course.

(At this stage I must just tell you all that they did have an accounting package and that they were paying R 500.00 per month to an accountant. “What for?” I ask. He was not providing them with any management accounts or information about their business. He also had not given them financials for their previous financial year end.)

The software was duly loaded onto the PC. The company banks with FNB, so 65 days of data was imported immediately on to the system. This data was allocated and very quickly we had some idea of how the business was doing and where it was going.

It was very necessary for us to get all the data onto the system to give us a much clearer picture. The bank statements for the last 20 months were captured into Excel. This was a laborious and tedious task and it was necessary to keep on checking that the correct figures were typed in. This task took approx 3 days. The spreadsheet was then correctly formatted and imported into the software. A quick check that the closing balance was correct and we knew that the bank had been reconciled and the data was all correct. The next task was to allocate all the data. Using the “Auto-Allocate” Feature we allocated what we could very quickly and easily. All the cheques then had to be allocated.

Our time-span at this stage was approximately 10 days. The owners of the company have complete financials, they can see what their cost of sales are, their income, their expenses etc. They are able to look at their accounts objectively and come to some very important conclusions. Their future is rosy, they have a great product, and if they watch that bank account like a hawk, they will thrive!

We all know that the EconoAccounting method is mainly about watching and reconciling the bank account. If this is done, everything else falls into place. It is essential to download your bank statement every day, or at worst every week and then spend the 20 seconds importing it into your EconoAccounting!

BEE and your accounts

Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment has made it vitally important to keep accurate accounts. When calculating your BEE scorecard you need measurable figures which comes from your accounting system. Almost all elements in Broad Based BEE needs accurate accounts. Procurement spend, payroll, money spent towards Enterprise Development and Charitable Donations. With all the separate Elements and Indicators of BEE and all the calculations, this becomes very difficult to calculate even with accurate accounts.

EconoAccounting is going to make it easy to calculate your BEE scorecard. A future version of EconoAccounting will enable you to track your BEE spend and BEE suppliers. This will be a free upgrade to all registered EconoAccounting users. We will flag all BEE transactions to make it easy to see where you are getting BEE points and even potentially improve on your BEE score. All spend will be seen in your income statement and all procurement spend will also be seen. EconoAccounting will therefore allow you to calculate your preferential procurement BEE score.

Buy EconoAccounting Now

We know that when you buy EconoAccounting you can do all your accounts yourself. We also know that you can do up to two years of accounts in as little as one day and then keep an up to date income statement and balance sheet in as little as five minutes per day.

This is possible by importing your bank statement every single day into EconoAccounting. You probably already look at your bank statement every single day because you need to know when you have been paid etc. Then as if magically we auto-allocate transactions that are commonly seen in your bank statement saving you up to 80% of all accounting work.

Its so simple:

Download bank statement, import, allocate non common transactions and view your accurate management accounts. At the same time without knowing it you have reconciled your bank account and produced the all important income statement.

Buy EconoAccounting now for only R2900.00, to get your accounts completely up to date.

Our website has been updated

We have our new website. The great benefits of this site is we have an extremely large FAQ section and a knowledge base. You can even read this and all the other newsletters on our website.

Comrades

Its been a while since our last newsletter and in it, I said I was running the Comrades Marathon. In fact its been so long that I have already started training for next year. I am very pleased to announce that I did finish although with only 3 minutes to spare. This brings my total finishes to 9 so I have no choice but to run next year and to get my all important green number.

That's it for the time being,
Regards

Keith and the EconoAccounting Team