Funding Your Business Growth

Regardless of how much money your business needs, there are only two ways to get it. You business can either borrow the money through debt or you can trade the ownership of the company through equity funding. Whether you use one or the other or both to raise the money your business needs for growth, it depends on your personal preference for control, the type of assets your business has, the type of activities your business is funding, and the cost of each funding option. If your company's operational expansion relies on the purchase of certain real estate or heavy equipments, and preservation of control is your concern, then your business can consider financing its growth through leases or loans backed by the asset itself. However, by issuing equity for money, you can potentially increase your business's creditworthiness even though you have to reduce some of your ownership in the business. And of course, you can always fund your business through a combination of debt and equity that maximize growth. But however you want to structure your funding mix, the principle of matching always rules: short-term loans for short-term needs, long-term loans or equity for longer-term needs.

At Starr Judson & Co.,LLP, our experienced Certified Public Accountants will examine your business operation to help you explore the various funding option and identify one that will best match your business's need. We will conduct cost analysis on the various funding option available so you can make a better decision on selecting an option that your business can better afford. At the end of the day, regardless of which funding option your business is pursuing, a well presented financial statements and budgets made available to lenders and potential investors is key to make or break your financing deal. With the help of our CPAs, we will help you prepare and present financial statements that can best reflect your business potential and that makes the most sense to the lenders and investors.

Securing funding for your business is not an overnight venture. It requires meticulous calcuations and preparation. Successful businesses don't wait for the moment when they are cash stranded to start looking for extra funding. Instead, they make sure that various sources of funds are available for them to tap into when they need it. So, don't wait, call us now and let us help you get prepared. It takes a strong business to structure strong financing and it take good accountants like us to help you know your numbers that are so important in sealing any deal.

Is Your Accountant Good Enough For Your Business?

From our experience in working with small businesses, we have seen that one of the main reasons why many small businesses remain small and stagnant in growth is that they do not perceive the value of retaining a good CPA. Small businessess often see a CPA as the tax preparer with whom they only need to visit once every year to file their taxes. In fact, if a tax return is what you can get from your CPA or accountant, then may be you should think about retaining a better CPA who can give your business better intelligence. This is because when you think filing a tax return for your business is just a tedious one time ordeal every year, your competitors' businesses are engaging their better qualified CPA to make the best out of all the information they turn in for their tax preparation, to help them formulate strategies to improve performance.

So before retaining someone to prepare your business tax return, ask yourself if you want a key-punching tax preparer, or you want a qualified CPA who can guide your business beyond the tax filing deadline and contribute to your business's future. To find out if your current accountant or CPA is good enough for your business, ask yourself the following:

1) Did my CPA or accountant ever contribute solid ideas to help me improve my business in any way?

2) Did my CPA or accountant ever make a consistent effort to excel in servicing my business?

3)Did my CPA or accountant ever help me identify errors or mistakes that my business made? Did he or she help me avoid repeating the mistakes?

4) Was my CPA or accountant an effective problem solver for my business's tax or financial issues?

5)Did my CPA or accountant make effort to meet my business's expectation of his/her service by periodically asking me for feedback ?

6)Did my CPA or accountant care a lot about my business's future success?

Now, when you accept someone's offer to do your business's tax return at a low charge, you know how much disfavor you can be doing to your business.

At Starr Judson & Co., LLP, we are more than our clients' tax preparer, we are their reliable business advisors.

Business Sucession and Tax-Saving Strategies

Most small business owners work very hard on building their businesses, little do they realize that the government will become a fat beneficiary of their hard work if they don't start formulating a tax saving succession plan early on. After a small business has built up substantial assets and net worth, any transfer made through gifting or passed down at the death of the business owner can incur costly gift tax and estate tax.

To help our clients keep their businesses in their family in the event of death or retirement, our CPAs at Starr Judson & Co., LLP, offer our clients advance succession planning while minimizing the tax consequences. Working with our clients' estate attorneys, our CPAs help our clients:

Define and articulate their thoughts.

Translate thoughts into courses of action.

Suggest ways to value the business.

Show how the business will be paid for.

Quantify their choices.

Develop choices into an action plan.

Project the cash flow from each decision.

Structure the transaction to achieve maximum tax savings opportunities.

Structure the payment method, time schedule and nature of the collateral, if any.

Illustrate clearly where each path takes them.

Plan the retirement income for them, their spouse and other family members.

Offer choices to minimize the displacement of loyal, long-time employees.

Assist in planning the business owner's estate.

Coordinating transactions of the succession, the efforts of other professionals, including the attorney, insurance person, appraiser, investment banker, outplacement specialist, realtor and other individuals involved.

Prepare clear presentations for the owner’s spouse and others who are directly affected by the transaction.

Identify problems that may develop among family members who are not involved in the succession plan, and offer suggestions on how to deal with them.

Succession planning isn't a single event; it’s a process that establishes new company ownership and management, and provides the means to put them in place with a reasonable likelihood of long-term success. There are many ways in which a business owner can plan for a tax efficient succession against the unforeseen, unintended and perhaps inevitable future events when the owner can no longer be with the business. If your business has not yet thought of succession planning, don't wait, contact us now to develop a plan that works best for your business and your family's interest.

How Are Your Businesses Doing In This Economic Shake-out?

Today the stock market dropped significantly again due to worries about the economy and the rising oil prices. Today is the day our firm starts this blog because we think that at this difficult time when everybody's housing value and stock investment are taking a big dip, we may use our wisdom to contribute our part to give everyone some comfort, or may be some guidence. After all, we have been around for quite sometime, since 1947. We've seen it all.

Just like any other economic crashes our firm had lived through, we believe that businesses that have strong foundamentals are going to come out of this recession better and stronger. This is why we keep reminding all our clients that they have to cut their expenses, change their strategy to generate more revenue and to be watchful for opportunities to diversify. In order to do that, they need accurate numbers about their business, numbers that tell them what startegies aren 't working, where money can be saved, and whether their exsiting resources allow them to diversify. But are your businesses one of them? Do you know your magic numbers? How do your book-keepers or accoutants help your business besides filing invoices and generating generic reports or routine print-outs that make no relevant sense to you, that you don't even bother to read?

It's like a storm that cleanses the earth and brings in new life, fresh air and new vegetation afterwards, we are confident that this economic storm will bring in new opportunity and new prosperity for our clients who are now, re-aligning their financial resources and business strategies, gearing up for picking up the next bargain deals to expand. When we will be there, every step along the way with our clients, holding the map for them and helping them navigate, what will you be doing?