If you want to know how your business compares to the competition, you can find your answer in industry benchmarks. Benchmarks are industry standards, or guidelines, for key financial metrics. Basically, they represent the average of key numbers collected from many different businesses and then sorted by industry.

Are you happy at work? Do you find satisfaction in the way you spend your day? Is work-satisfaction something you even think about? Advisory services could be your answer.

When you’re looking toward the future, one of the best ways to ensure that your predictions are accurate is by looking at the past. 2018 was a year full of technical advances and major changes. AI, VR, AR, and machine learning were everywhere.

“My clients don’t want this.”

This is what I hear from many accountants when I talk to them about Strategic Advising.

“I wish my accountant would explain things better.”

This is what I hear from small businesses owners—even my artist friend who I saw last week. We were catching up and I began talking about Strategic Advising. “What?!” he said. “I would love it if my accountant would provide that kind of help!”

Somewhere there is a disconnect.

Here’s the simple truth of business: Without customers to buy your products, you’re not going to make any money. Almost every decision you make—what you sell, how much you sell it for, where you’re located, who you hire—is made with the intention of bringing in the maximum number of customers to your store, and to optimize the likelihood that they’ll buy your products while they’re there.

I’ve done strategic planning for organizations of all kinds: public, private, growing corporations seeking IPO, and nonprofits. At the core of this work is financial modeling and forecasting. It doesn’t so much matter the type of business—the work is essentially the same:

We’ve had a great year teaming up with Mark Wickersham to help more accountants adopt value-based pricing for advisory services in their firms. In the past few years, these two concepts have grown from buzzwords to important strategies for accountants, helping them get paid fairly for their services in a changing industry.

LivePlan’s mission is to help people succeed in business, both accountants and their small business clients, which makes QuickBooks Connect the ideal conference for us.

We’ve just released some exciting updates to LivePlan that make it easier to create new financial forecasts. We’ve also given you a new option to forecast cost of goods sold and improved how we provide help.

Few professional experiences can be quite as exciting, rewarding, or potentially overwhelming as starting a new business. As a new business owner, you’re going to need all the practical and impartial advice you can get.

Small businesses want help from accountants on strategic planning and financial forecasting. This word cloud represents a summary of popular responses from small businesses when we asked them this question:

“If you could get help in one area of your business right now, what would it be?”

A SWOT analysis is an incredibly simple, yet powerful tool to help you develop your business strategy, whether you’re building a startup or guiding an existing company.

When starting a new business, surely your focus needs to be on getting the business and the product up and running. You only have a few employees at most, so there’s nothing to worry about on the “people” front.

Right? Wrong.

Summer break is ending, and I can feel it.

With three weeks remaining before the beginning of a new school year, there is a need to get it all in! There were big expectations for our summer plan: night time bike rides and star gazing, s’mores, family reading, and pool time. Maybe a trip to the mountains, and if we are applying stretch goals, the ocean too!