Top 5 Facts How Virtual CFO Helps In Fund Raising Process For Your Business

Being able to control finances is extremely important for a business. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it sounds. A large number of businesses lack visibility or control over their finances. For many financial teams, accountants, or bookkeepers, keeping an eye on finances is a tough job. Although a common situation, this can be avoided by bringing a Virtual Chief Financial on board.

A Virtual CFO will act as your financial leader who will provide oversight of an accounting team to provide in-depth financial insight that helps entrepreneurs make more informed business decisions. Unlike an internal CFO who works for a single business, Virtual CFO works for many. Those having significant experience are capable of handling any and every tasks that are handled by an internal CFO or finance team.

As a small or medium sized organization, you may not have the resources available to hire a senior finance resource, despite needing access to that level of expertise.

A Virtual CFO can provide the level of expertise you need as a part-time contracted resource. Virtual CFOs will work with you to manage and build your business by ensuring that your financial resources are well managed and available when you need them.

Why Your Small Business Needs A Virtual CFO?

A CFO is what all successful businesses need, the reality is that many growing, small to medium sized businesses cannot afford to employ a full-time CFO and nor do they require the services of a full time CFO.

Whether it is a one off project, or an ongoing requirement, our highly qualified outsourced Virtual CFO services has the expertise you require to assist you. A Virtual CFO is a finance expert who can help you keep on top of your business finances and improve your cash flow and profitability. They will work with you and/or your team to achieve success.

How Virtual CFO Can Help Scale Your Business?

Virtual CFO continues to be viewed as someone who is an ‘insider’ to the company that he/she works for.  The number of experienced quality CFO’s available in the market today is not in proportion to the number of companies that have mushroomed, grown and in some cases become large organizations.

Apart from this, there are also companies that come up every year and some of them out of these survive and even manage to scale.  Outsourcing in recent years has given mid – sized and growing companies the option to bring on board good quality CFO skill sets through a firm/company given the gap in demand and supply.

The gap lies is in between the huge chunk of companies who are neither too small, nor too large and who find it difficult to attract the right CFO talent who could fit in.

Here’s Are 5 Facts That You Might Not Know…

How A Virtual CFO Can Help Businesses Financially

1. A Virtual CFO will help you and your stakeholders understand the numbers

Whether it is making a product or providing a service, you’re an expert when it comes to your business. However, you’re probably not an expert at reading financial statements.

A Virtual CFO helps you and your other stakeholders understand accounting reports and financial statements. He/she can translate the language of numbers and ratios into the language of business — what it will take to grow your numbers and increase your profits.

2.Tax time is way easier when you have planned for it

When was the last time you did a year-end tax planning session? Many tax accountants fail to provide this valuable service to their clients. But filing a tax return is only half of the job an advisory should be doing. The other half is meeting with you periodically throughout the year to make sure you’re taking steps to minimize your tax burden when you can actually do something about it, and not when it’s already too late.

A virtual CFO can coordinate with your tax preparer to make sure that you’re making the right tax moves throughout the year.

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3.A virtual CFO can take over management of your in-house or outsourced bookkeeping

This is a biggest benefit of hiring an outsourced accounting service versus an outsourced bookkeeping service. A virtual CFO that is part of an outsourced accounting firm can help take on many management tasks that are typically time consuming for busy business owners and founders. A bookkeeper usually can’t.

This additional advisory on your team can help manage in-house bookkeeping and/or accounting staff. If they’re part of a firm, which is providing a variety of outsourced accounting services, they can also help you decide when and how to start outsourcing other services, such as bookkeeping, payroll, and bill pay.

4.Virtual CFOs help prevent fraud and control cash

Whenever money is moving around, it’s important to have proper oversight by a second individual to make sure there’s no funny business going on. One person disburses funds while another person records the transactions. Then ideally a third person reviews. This is called “separation of duties”, and is a key concept in management accounting for preventing and discouraging embezzlement.

Having your virtual CFO oversee your in-house accounting staff goes a long way toward providing this oversight and helping to prevent fraud. He/she can also make specific recommendations as to how to improve cash control procedures to minimize risk and increase efficiency in your business.

5. An advisor from an outsourced accounting firm won’t leave you hanging

When you hire in-house staff, you’re making a big bet on that person sticking around for a while. They can choose to leave at any time, and often do. This can be hugely distracting, difficult, and expensive. You have to hire and train a new employee, and the previous in-house CFO or controller may not be interested in a position to help make a smooth transition.

A big benefit of outsourcing your advisory and accounting services to a cloud accounting firm is that the outsourced firm provides continuity in the event that the virtual CFO leaves. When hiring a virtual CFO, find out if they work independently or as part of a team. Reliable cloud accountants are familiar with these concerns and will gladly address them at the outset of any business relationship.

Bottom Line

Most businesses and startups don’t require services of a full-time CFO. So the CFO ends up spending time on tasks that are beneath his/her skill set. That’s not good for the business or for the employee. Make sure that any virtual CFO you consider is familiar not only with proper procedures, but also with the technology to implement those procedures.

Having your virtual CFO oversee your in-house accounting staff goes a long way and beyond toward providing this oversight and helping to prevent fraud. He/she can also make specific recommendations as to how to improve cash control procedures to minimize risk and increase efficiency in your business.

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