by Zane Stevens | Nov 19, 2020 | Accounting, Business, Outsourced Accounting |
Outsourcing routine tasks is an easy way to simplify and grow your business. Accounting, customer service, and marketing are easy places to start when it comes to outsourcing. None of these tasks are unique to your business but all are necessary for a successful business.
Fewer in-house employees and the legal and financial complexities that come with them mean you’ll be able to quickly adapt when the time comes to grow your business. But is outsourcing your accounting right for you?
Consider these five advantages when looking to hire an outsourced accounting team.
Save Money and Reinvest to Grow Your Company
Employee hiring can be expensive. Recruitment, pre-screening reports, training, and payroll taxes add up quickly when hiring a full-time accountant. The ongoing salary and taxes will eat into your profits even when your business is in a lull.
By using an outsourced accounting team, you’ll pay a fraction of the money you’d spend on full-time employees. And that money you’ll save can be used to grow your business.
Perhaps your winery needs to replace its aging cooperage or purchase a new point of sale system for your retail operations. Reducing your payroll costs can help fund these new investments and grow your business.
As an extra bonus, no more searching for an employee with decades of experience in the beverage industry who knows the industry jargon and nuances. You’ll have a team of winery accounting experts on hand.
Promote or Reinforce Good Business Habits
If you’ve been attempting to do your own bookkeeping and find that it’s not a priority and doesn’t get completed until the bank, the tax preparer, or an investor asks, you’re not setting yourself up for victory. Accounting is the language of business and your business needs to be fluent.
When you work with an outsourced accounting firm, you’re working with a team of financial experts with years of experience in bookkeeping, financial statement preparation, and internal controls.
An outsourced accounting team can help with calculating winery inventory costs and design internal controls to prevent employee theft. Relying on your team of experts allows you to have up-to-date bookkeeping records so you’ll always know where your business stands.
These solid habits will pay off when the time comes to expand your business. Outside investors will love seeing that you have complete control over your business and its operations.
Receive Unbiased Advice From Your Accounting Team
If growing your business means soliciting outside investors or competing in a new market, your outsourced accounting team can provide you with the unbiased advice you deserve.
Your team of experts can offer tips on how to reduce your cost of goods sold to obtain a higher profit margin to make your winery attractive to investors. Or they can help you evaluate various warehouses to find the best fit for you.
And if you’re in need of improving cash flow, ask your team how you can reduce your accounts receivable and encourage customers to pay quickly. Offering a discount for prompt payment may cut into your profits but if it decreases your need to rely on expensive short-term loans to meet your cash needs, it may well be what your business needs to hear.
Outsourced accountants can see your business from the outside, something that may be challenging for the business owner. They can see what’s working and what isn’t. And any fair and trustworthy accountant will give you an honest take on the health of your business.
Reduce Burdens on You and Your Managers
As a winery owner, you’re pulled in dozens of different directions. Harvesting, production, operations, finance, and customer relations all compete for your attention each day.
You can alleviate stress on you and your management team by letting a team of expert accountants handle the day-to-day finances. Let them get into the trenches so you don’t have to. They will keep your bookkeeping records current so that you’re free to focus on areas that need your personal touch.
Relying on your team’s expertise gives you the confidence you need to make sound business decisions.
Your expert outsourced accounting team can even help with production reporting and TBB compliance – freeing up your operations team to focus on quality production.
Grow Your Business Together
When the time comes for your business to expand, your outsourced team will be able to grow with you. You won’t be slowed down searching for and hiring additional full-time employees. Start with a team now that has the ability to meet your needs today and tomorrow.
Rely on a team of experts who can help you answer questions like:
- Am I pricing my cases correctly?
- Which customers are most profitable?
- Can I afford to offer seasonal sales incentives?
And if the time comes when business is slow, your outsourced team can easily be scaled back. You won’t have to continue incurring overhead payroll costs when revenue has dipped. Your outsourced team can fluidly adjust to your business needs.
If you’re considering outsourcing your accounting, do your due diligence to find the right team of experts to complement your business. With the right outsourced team, you’ll be able to tap into the top talent in the accounting industry setting your business up for continued success.
Let Protea be your team for today and tomorrow. Discover why we’re the premier winery and beverage accounting experts on the West Coast by requesting your complete business evaluation today.
by Zane Stevens | Aug 21, 2020 | Accounting, Bookkeeping, Financial Services, Wine Industry |
Accounting and bookkeeping are the heartbeat of the business side of your winery. Unfortunately, these critical functions are too often overlooked by busy owners. While it’s tempting to take shortcuts, or simply rush through the tasks, that can lead to inaccurate financial statements. That’s why Protea Financial offers outsourced accounting services.
While it’s certainly understandable – you have your plate full with so many other business tasks – errors in your accounting and bookkeeping can derail your business. And often without warning.
In 2019, it was reported that 82% of small businesses fail due to cash flow problems. And this infographic from SmallBizTrends shows that 30% of all small businesses are continually losing money due to poor financial management.
With business growth, wine sales and general management stealing your focus, you may consider outsourcing your accounting to ensure financial accuracy and promptness. Outsourcing your winery accounting can help reduce your workloads and divert some, or all of your financial tasks to qualified, highly-skilled accountants. The results will be evident. Once you have outsourced your winery’s financial tasks to an experienced accountant, you can rest assured that your business accounts are in safe hands.
Don’t believe us? Consider this: A survey in 2018 showed that over 80% of businesses outsourcing their accounting function would recommend their accountant to other businesses. If you’re not yet convinced, we’re going to tell you about all the benefits of outsourced accounting.
What Can an Outsourcing My Accounting Department Do for My Business?
Outsourced accounting can take some elements or even the entire function of accounting outside of your business. This will make room for other tasks – especially those that are particularly time-consuming. Whatever your current accounting situation, outsourced accounting can offer you a far more comprehensive solution. Here are 4 of our favorite benefits of outsourced accounting.
1. Accounting Firms Are Made For This
Wine accounting is a complex and challenging task. Not only does outsourcing your accounting take the work off your shoulders, but it places it in the competent hands of highly trained and experienced accounting staff. That’s right, with many accounting firms, you’re no longer relying on one person to manage your books, often you’re getting a whole team.
2. You Can Cut Your Overhead
When you outsource accounting, you will only pay for the work done. In the USA, worker illness and injury cost businesses a total of $225.8 Billion. You need not be one of them. By outsourcing your winery accounting needs, you skip the hassle of payroll taxes, sick leave and vacation time. Therefore, significantly improving your winery’s profit margin. You also eliminate the risk of suddenly losing staff – an issue that most businesses face when someone goes into long term sick leave or quits without notice, leaving you and your books high and dry.
3. Trained Accountants Are Meticulous and Logical
There’s nothing quite so analytical and precise as the mind of an experienced accountant. By nature, accountants are highly logical and willing to deep dive into the details in order to produce the best outcome. Often, accountants utilize highly complex software in order to manage your accounts and to produce the most accurate results possible. One of the many benefits of outsourced accounting is of course, the accountants themselves.
4. You’ll Save Money
While paying someone to do a task you managed yourself might not seem like it would save you money, it definitely will in the long run. You are now free to take care of your business in other more effective ways, or to hone your focus into one element of finance such as bookkeeping and redirect the rest. So the fee your business pays to an outsourced accountancy firm will pale in comparison to the profits from a more active business. In fact, around 30% of businesses outsourcing their accounting functions have been able to increase profit with the guidance of their new accountant.
How Protea Financial Will Bring You All the Benefits of Outsourcing Your Accounting or Bookkeeping
To remain successful, wineries need business leaders to run fast while remaining agile, as well as access to accurate financial data. The opportunity cost of not having superlative accounting is potentially enormous. Protea is here to empower you to cultivate business growth, while your outsourced accounting team manages your financial back office.
Our clients enjoy the benefit of having a team structured around your business needs. The strategic benefits of outsourcing accounting start with the savings. It’s the stack of talent that works with you around the clock to maintain the integrity of your company finances. No matter what happens, your Protea team will have your back and strive to make your job easier.
Begin your journey with Protea by requesting an evaluation today. Our goal is to design a winery financial strategy that allows you the freedom to scale at the pace you desire.
by Zane Stevens | Jul 28, 2020 | Accounting, Financial Services, Wine Industry |
It is common for small wineries to avoid raising their prices for an extended period of time. This is due to a variety of factors, including a lack of accounting input regarding price-volume trade-offs and management’s desire to preserve customer interest. Alternately, a winery may opt to make price changes based on a gut feeling. Neither of these strategies will help you maximize your profit margins and grow your business.
The Financial Impact of Price Changes
Perhaps the winery simply neglected to make price changes. That is still a decision that will impact the winery but produces exclusively negative results. When wineries choose to delay price changes, the cost of production steadily eats away at profit margins. This reduction in profit margins may go partly unnoticed or unattributed and encourage wineries to make ineffective price changes. Wineries should adjust their prices with relative frequency to match the rise of inventory costings and the value of labor. Planning for price changes is a key step for proprietors to undertake.
However, important decisions regarding price adjustments do not need to be made by a single person or section of the winery – rather, it should be a deliberate choice based on data from multiple individuals or teams. By facilitating a conversation between sales, winemaking, and accounting, a winery can make informed decisions.
Establishing a Team of Expert Staff
Each section of the winery provides valuable information. Effective accountants will be tasked with determining the true profit margins for each wine. While it may seem simpler to apply a blanket price increase, this ignores individual inventory costings. A generalized decision can negatively impact your price-volume trade-offs and result in lost profit. It’s invaluable for wineries to track data on individual SKUs throughout the year.
Each wine will have a set of associated costs: fruit costs, barrel costs, winemaking costs, and packaging costs. By keeping track of these SKU-specific profit margins, it will be easier to adjust the price for individual products.
The sales team can compile market data to estimate the price elasticity of demand. This can help guide the price change by demonstrating how much a 2-5% increase will impact the volume of sales. This insight on price-volume trade-offs is an invaluable factor for providing an estimate for a price increase range and its effect on the business’s profitability. This market data is also crucial for pricing individual wines to maximize profit. Your most valuable wine can generate a higher ratio of profit when marketed and priced appropriately.
How to Determine the Right Price Change for Your Winery
It is important for wineries to avoid making gut-feeling decisions. At best, these choices will be ineffective – at worst, they will negatively impact your profit margins and customer trust. Wineries should rely on a dedicated team to keep an eye on trends, track inventory costings, and reevaluate costs versus prices.
For the most part, wineries should plan to increase prices for their products. Production costs and the value of labor is steadily rising, and that cost should be reflected in the price to maintain a 45% or better gross profit margin. There are rare cases where a winery will elect to decrease price and increase the volume of a particular wine to reap more profit over time.
However, due to the extensive timeline needed for winemaking, it is difficult to increase product circulation quickly enough to improve profit margins. Wineries may choose to invest in additional labor and inventory to bottle more wine. Yet months will pass before a winery can sell their product to consumers. This lag between investment in the product and reaping profits (and the associated time value of money) can compound the difficulties and further reduce the return on capital caused by low profit margins.
Another possibility exists for wineries to improve their profit margins by decreasing the price of their wines. However, this is a rare situation. This is most common in wineries that already have high-profit margins, and even then, it is rare. As with all pricing decisions, choose to approach price decreases with carefully collected analytical data.
Instead, wineries will almost always increase the price (instead of the volume) to reflect the value of the product. It is likely that a winery may delay price increases due to fear of customer reaction. This is one reason why it is necessary to rely on data from the sales team. By allowing sales to collect and report data regarding market elasticity, management can make guided price adjustments and have a realistic estimation of the impact on consumers.
Employing Phase Planning
If a winery has delayed increasing prices for an extended period of time, it may be necessary to institute phase planning. Planning phases of price increases can preserve the overall price elasticity in your market, therefore encouraging consumer retention. Choosing to increase prices gradually will also allow for the sales and marketing team to evaluate the effect of each phase. This data can be used to adjust future phases as a winery restores its profit margins.
Price changes can and should be communicated to customers. This is especially true for phased planning, as the buyer will see multiple raises in price. The communication can be effectively handled by management and sales. Providing a brief snapshot of the accounting data is usually deemed unnecessary. Instead, communicate with consumers in generalities while maintaining transparency. By setting expectations, customers will be more receptive to price increases. Effective marketing has the potential to reduce price elasticity.
Though it is possible to manage larger price increases or phrased price changes, it is ideal to make more frequent changes. Reviewing costing and pricing quarterly encourages wineries to track and record data throughout the year. Insightful inventory costing is often left until the end of the year. However, this decision can harm wineries. Accountants may neglect collecting important information under the pressure of a deadline. This can easily impact a winery, as it loses the potential to prioritize marketing its most valuable wines.
Price Changes Keep Your Winery Thriving
In order to maintain profit margins and preserve positive consumer opinion, plan for price changes. Even if you do not increase your prices quarterly, it’s crucial to collect and analyze pricing and costing data on an ongoing basis. If you haven’t done so already, construct a dedicated team to address pricing. Opening this line of communication and trusting in the expertise of sales, winemaking, and accounting is the key to maintain and improving gross profits.
by Zane Stevens | Jun 22, 2020 | Accounting, Bookkeeping |
As wineries search for growth in today’s digital world, the accountant vs bookkeeper debate has become all the more relevant. Innovation, technology, and eCommerce have made traditional marketing strategies for wineries nearly obsolete.
As RaboBank recently highlighted, only those wineries who respond to market changes with the needed urgency will thrive, and wine businesses that have leveraged the power of eCommerce have already seen massive returns. In this effort, the need for winery accounting and bookkeeping management has also risen.
Accountant vs Bookkeeper: Who Does What?
Before we get into which professional is right for your winery, it’s important to highlight the differences between them; each specializes in different responsibilities between financial and operational management within your winery business.
An accountant is responsible for recording and presenting the financial well-being of a business. The most pertinent profiles for Ecommerce wineries are management accountants and tax accountants.
Management accountants take charge of representing the financial performance of your digital business through drafting budgets, reconciling balance sheets, and analyzing financial reports stored on your eCommerce platform, among other actions.
On the other hand, a tax accountant does tax reporting management. That includes calculating your business taxes and offering counsel on your business strategy to minimize tax audits and lessen the possibilities of tax law breaches.
Unlike accountants, a bookkeeper records any and every financial transaction that your winery does. They are important team members, as they are responsible for identifying, recording, and labeling the purpose of every financial transaction in your winery.
Is an Accountant or a Bookkeeper Right for my Winery?
The Ecommerce winery business model calls for both management and tax accountants. Management accountants are important as they provide you with the financial insight you need to gauge the effectiveness of your business strategy and make better financial decisions. While some winery executives feel that they can handle finances on their own, doing so will take them away from other important areas of business development, like sales and digital marketing.
Similarly, tax accountants are all the more important now than ever as winery businesses now need to enter into unchartered waters of eCommerce. Onboarding an accounting professional who has the right legal and tax knowledge in the digital field will steer you away from possible tax infringement.
Bookkeepers take care of major responsibilities. However, practice shows that they are often too bogged down by data entry tasks that they don’t have the time to deal with possible financial issues, or provide actionable analysis and insight into the business’s key performance indicators (KPIs). While accountants can absorb the role of a bookkeeper, they tend to be overqualified and too expensive for the role. Furthermore, hiring all three professionals individually is too costly for most wineries, and the winery owner or executive is still responsible for making sure all three individuals work together seamlessly.
Luckily, the solution to this financial dilemma can be solved by getting in touch with Protea Financial.
Protea Financial: Ultimate Winery Accounting & Bookkeeping Services
Protea Financial is an accounting and bookkeeping firm that designs and implements customized accounting solutions for businesses. We are not a tax preparer, but we support businesses of all sizes in managing their finances so that they can focus on other facets of their business development.
Our services include tax schedules, managing financial accounts, preparing accounting documentation, and bookkeeping.
For wineries, we have an all-inclusive service that covers responsibilities needed for tax and financial management and bookkeeping, and our services are significantly less expensive than if a winery were to individually hire each professional.
By housing all professionals under one team, we deliver the same services at a rate that’s below the average marketing-price while maintaining premium quality and accuracy. Furthermore, the winery’s leadership does not need to spend time training, overseeing, and making sure unrelated financial professionals are working together productively.
Our team, led by Zane Stevens, consists of almost 25 accountants that, together, bring decades worth of accounting and financial managerial experience to our projects. We are poised to assist you in driving your winery business to success.
Get in touch with us to set up a consultation for your winery accounting and bookkeeping needs. We will conduct a thorough evaluation of your winery financial life-cycle to develop and propose a strategy that will lead you to financial freedom.
Set up your evaluation today.
by Zane Stevens | Jan 28, 2020 | Accounting, Bookkeeping, Financial Services |
Many of our clients ask us why we talk about bookkeepers, management accountants, and tax accountants, and not just accountants.
A bookkeeper keeps track of all your daily financial transactions and assists in keeping your business organized. Receiving and paying bills, issuing invoices, categorizing expenses, taking inventory, and reconciling bank accounts are some of the daily and weekly tasks that form the core of a bookkeeper’s responsibility.
A management accountant leads the effort to provide insight into your business’s financial performance. Drafting budgets, tracking actual performance against budget, reconciling balance sheets creating cash flow forecasts, and performing inventory costings are among the duties of a management accountant to assist you in making decisions for your business.
A tax accountant provides a very specific service to calculate your taxes, minimize your chance of an audit, and guide your strategy, particularly when acquiring or selling a business or investing in assets, to minimize your potential tax liabilities.
Read About Protea Bookkeeping Services
Bookkeeping is More Than Just Crunching Numbers
While bookkeepers do a fair amount of data entry and receipt tracking, the heart of the process is labeling expenses, indicating which suppliers you paid and how much, as well as keeping a record of receipts. Your bookkeepers may also do double duty in payroll and work to prepare and issue invoices.
Even though bookkeeping work can be notably detailed, bookkeepers can be the foundation of surviving an audit. Business deductions are a huge IRS tax audit trigger. They set off alarms, which can be silenced with legal and meticulous record keeping.
What a Tax Accountant Does
Accountants perform a variety of accounting functions and are typically certified by national and professional associations. Accountants must a have a four-year college degree in accountancy. And additionally, depending on their specialty, they may have to spend up to a year earning a certification in their home state.
Tax accountants provide specialized tax advice. They calculate tax liabilities and provide strategies for legally lowering their clients’ tax liability. Business tax accountants typically have advanced degrees and help their clients with high-level strategic financial decisions. Senior-level tax accountants take more of a theoretical approach to their clients’ overall tax strategy, helping with business plans, individual financial plans—trusts, etc.—with the goal of taking full advantage of the tax code.
What does your business need: a Bookkeeper, a Management Accountant or a Tax Accountant?
In our opinion, small businesses such as wineries need all three, and should seek specialists in each field. Tax Accountants and Management Accountants can do your bookkeeping, but they are over-qualified, and you would be paying too much, as bookkeepers are the least expensive. However, bookkeepers need oversight, and a good management accountant can oversee and check a bookkeeper’s work to ensure accuracy, and then provide additional insight (that a bookkeeper isn’t trained to furnish) into your business to help you make better financial decisions.
Tax accountants are typically more expensive than management accountants, and their focus is on creating an accurate tax return that will minimize your tax liabilities and risk of an audit. They are more focused on providing an accurate report to the government than on developing recommendations for you to operate your business more efficiently. Management accountants are focused on helping you operate your business.
Protea Financial is Your Outsourced Bookkeeping and Management Accounting Services
We match our solutions to the needs of the customer. Do your bookkeepers need extra help during end-of-year closeout? Is your tax accountant asking you to assemble better financials in order to reduce the time they have to spend preparing your return?
Protea Financial can support you with everything from bookkeeping services, order processing and inventory tracking to handling management accounts and tax schedules in order to support your tax accountant prepare your year-end financial statements. Protea’s goal is to provide, at costs below the market average, timely, accurate, and high-quality financial information on which a business can act.
We can work with you to provide an evaluation and find the best solution for your business.
Zane Stevens is the Director of Protea Financial. Protea provides services to take over the burdens and responsibilities of finding, managing, and training an accountant or bookkeeper for businesses and free up proprietors’ time, so they can focus on building their businesses.