The LEAN Accountants

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Expands Grant Programs

The State of Pennsylvania recently was awarded a grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration which resulted in the expansion of the Market Access Grant program. The new program, called Global Access Program (GAP) provides up to $5,000.00 in 1:1 matching funds per year to qualifying Pennsylvania companies. GAP is designed to provide flexibility and encourage innovative use of funds to meet the specific international needs of PA companies. Qualifying activities include: overseas trade mission or trade show participation, domestic trade show participation, foreign market sales trip, subscription to USDOC service, independent consultant assistance for CE mark, CSA, ISO, REACH, CITRA, etc., export training workshops, product certification, international marketing media design, website internationalization and marketing literature translation fees. To learn more about this program contact the World Trade Center of Central Pennsylvania at www.wtccentralpa.org

New Trade Adjustment Assistance Guidelines Qualify More Manufacturers

The Trade Adjustment Assistance program was established by the U.S. Department of Commerce to balance global competitiveness and to help those manufacturers that lost business due to foreign competition. The federal guidelines were recently updated to make the application process easier and allow more manufacturers to qualify for the grant dollars, even if they tried unsuccessfully once before. Qualifying companies can be approved for matching dollars up to $75,000. Locally, manufacturers can access the grant dollars through the Mid-Atlantic Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (MATAAC). MANTEC has established an effective process with MATAAC to make the paperwork as painless as possible and help manufacturers access the funds sooner. For more information, please contact Leigh Ann Wilson at MANTEC: (717) 843-5054 x223 or wilsonla@mantec.org

For further information on these grant programs please contact the organizations above or contact the LEAN Accountants of McKonly and Asbury, LLP.

Staying in the Money: Ten Ways to Keep Cash Flow Problems from Putting You Out of Business

The following post was first seen on mfrtech.com. the authors of the post are Tage C. Tracy and John A. Tracy. Tage C. Tracy is principal owner of TMK & Associates, an accounting, financial, and strategic business planning consulting firm. John A. Tracy is professor of accounting at the University of Colorado in Boulder and the author of Accounting For Dummies^®. 

Cash flows pose an unending challenge to business owners and managers because they have to be carefully managed. Read on to learn what you can do to make 2012 the year of the cash flow reboot for your business.

Respect and understand financial statements. According to some surveys, 25 percent of businesses don’t even maintain accounting records (let alone produce financial statements).

“The bottom line for small business owners is simple,” says Tracy. “If you don’t make an effort to prepare, review, and completely understand your financial statements, then you need to ask yourself why you’re in business in the first place. And this especially holds true for the statement of cash flows, because an abundance of invaluable information is available from this most commonly overlooked and mismanaged financial statement.”

Plan, do projections, and plan some more. Proper planning is essential to the launch, growth, management, and ultimate success of your business as measured by the ability to generate profits and, just as important, to avoid running out of cash. According to Tracy, “Having access to sound financial plans structured for different operating scenarios is an absolute must.”

Focus on capital and cash—the lifeblood of your business. One of the most common reasons small businesses fail is that they lack adequate cash or capital, not only to survive difficult times, but also to prosper during growth opportunities.

“Remember, one of the greatest losses a small business can realize is that of lost opportunity, which has its roots in not being prepared to properly capitalize on market opportunities,” explains Tracy. “The harsh reality is that this great loss is never accounted for or presented in any way, shape, or form on the business’s financial statements. Rather, missed market and business opportunities lurk in the torturous thought, Imagine what I could have achieved!”

 Understand your selling cycle. The length of the complete selling cycle is often much longer than the aspiring entrepreneur projects and/or wants to believe.

“The selling cycle in its entirety spans the time from the very start of the process when a product or service is first visualized and developed to supporting customers after the sale and developing additional products or services that may be in demand,” says Tracy. “And if not properly managed, the selling cycle generally becomes one of the largest consumers of cash in a business. Without fail, almost every aspiring business owner, at one point or another, will experience delays in the selling cycle.”

Guideline Changes to Qualify More Manufacturers for Grant Dollars

Over the past several years manufacturers have lost business due to foreign competition. The Trade Adjustment Assistance program was established by the U.S. Department of Commerce to balance global competitiveness. The federal guidelines were recently updated to make the application process easier and allow more manufacturers to qualify for the grant dollars, even if they tried unsuccessfully once before.

How do I qualify?
There are dozens of ways to qualify for the grant dollars. Some examples include if sales, employee hours, or employment head count this year is less than any of the previous 3 years. As the economy slowly improves and manufacturers rebound from the recession, the window of opportunity to take advantage of this grant will be closing for many companies. MANTEC recommends that interested firms inquire immediately.

How much can I get?
Qualifying companies can be approved for matching dollars up to $75,000. Over the summer Senator Bob Casey visited American Products Inc. (API) in York, PA to show his support for the MATAAC program. API qualified for the full $75,000 and was able to train employees in LEAN practices and upgrade its ERP system. API President Jack Eltringham commented that "the training makes us more competitive."

How can I access the grant?
Local manufacturers can access the grant dollars through the Mid-Atlantic Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (MATAAC). MANTEC has established an effective process with MATAAC to make the paperwork as painless as possible and access the funds sooner.

To start the process contact MANTEC at 717-843-5054 or at info@mantec.org. You can also contact the LEAN Accountants for more information.

Profit Audits Can Revive the Bottom Line

Don't assume you have to expand your company to increase profits. Extra cash is probably sitting right under your nose.

A thorough profit audit can uncover those dollars in every department of your company.

Here are five ideas to get you started:

1. If you're interested in borrowing money, it's important to show your banker a marketing plan. But have you considered showing a potential lender a profit plan as well?

Think of the extra capital you can borrow by showing your lender a realistic picture of your long-term profit potential.

2. Don't rely solely on traditional sales goals that are based on the previous year's performance. This encourages your sales force to coast when those benchmarks are achieved. Instead, compile some good market projections and set a higher goal.

3. Don't confine sales to the sales department. Train all your employees to spot leads around town. If the referrals result in extra sales, award those employees with a small piece of the sales commissions.

4. If you ask 10 employees what your company does best, you'll probably get a variety of answers. Conduct a few meetings and narrow it down. You'll end up strengthening the company's core operations and boosting the bottom line.

5. What products or services should you eliminate? That's a painful question for many business. Most likely, you and your top managers already know the answer. Get it out in the open so you can start focusing on more profitable activities.

To learn more about how to perform a profit audit, please contact the LEAN Accountants of McKonly and Asbury, LLP.

Using Excel to Create Master Budgets

Looking to save time and create efficiencies within your company but don't know where to start?  Developing and utilizing an Excel-based budget allows business owners, managers, and supervisors to see how changes, regardless of how small or large, impact the company's bottom line.  Taking time now to create a budget using Excel will save time in the future.  Once it's prepared, the budget can roll forward each period with few updates needed.  You can make an Excel-based budget for almost anything as long as you have a few key pieces of information.  

First, create your Data Input sheet.  This sheet may be the most important part of your budget, as it's where the supporting budgets and the Master budget will pull most of the data.  Enter all basic information, cost drivers, estimates, variables, constants, and assumptions you will continuously use within the budget.  This sheet will need to be updated each period since all the data on this sheet will be typed in (not pulled or linked).

Next, create supporting budgets on other sheets within the same Excel file.  Some data on these supporting sheets may need to be typed in and thus updated each period.  However, you should link to other sheets when possible.  It may be necessary to create a sales budget, cash collections schedule, manufacturing overhead budget, ending finished goods inventory budget, etc. depending on what you are analyzing.  The concept in creating a supporting budget is the same no matter what type of budget you create.  Use Excel functions and link cells to other budgets and the Data Input sheet as much as possible.  Highlight cells that will need to be updated in future periods (cells you type data in) so you can quickly and easily identify cells needing to be updated.  These are the keys to efficiency!