Blogs

Have you heard the joke that the CEO of a company’s primary job is to have the CFO tell them what to do?

Humorous, but it does contain a specific truth: the CFO has immense sway over a company, and with that immense sway comes immense risk. CFOs face tremendous challenges in their roles and must be prepared to face new challenges. We want to help by revealing some challenges you may face this year.

Tell me something, do we live in a perfect world? Is every day just sunshine and every night a veritable kaleidoscope of celestial splendor? The answer is no. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Because we do not live in a perfect world, we must set up safeguards for ourselves, and in the world of business, one of the most powerful safeguards is accrual. Accrual is a vital accounting strategy specifically designed to keep a business on the positive side of cash flow and ensure it lives to see another day, sunny or not.

When it comes to the world of business, all organizations and entities must have legal, regulated means of organizing their monetary movements, or fund accounting, despite their ultimate goals often being very different. Our friends in the for-profit business world look to maximize their profit and revenue streams. The do-gooders in non-profit seek to accomplish a goal within set parameters, and governments make plans to satiate and organize the masses lest they fall to the 1906 quote by Alfred Henry Lewis: “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” And all of them must have ways to report their finances and their actions.

The Cash Flow Statement (CFS) is a vital document for all businesses that want to run well. You don’t need a Cash Flow Statment or need to know how to use it if you don’t want to run successfully. But if you do want to be successful keep reading. As one of the main three financial statements (the others being the income statement and the balance sheet), the CFS is a guiding lighthouse through the murky waters of financial reporting. Here I will attempt to guide you to the … world of CFS.

Dear Reader,

Is it truly just a few short days away from the New Year? It seems like just last week our neighbors were lighting holiday candles in mid-October. For us here in the corporate world Christmas came all at once this week, and while most companies like to take stock of the year gone by, we are driving full throttle towards 2023. We haven’t had a lot of spare time to celebrate, so while you sit back and start cutting out snowflakes, I will be delighted to share a few highlights from 2022.