Outsourced Accounting services and Partnerships

We have talked recently about outsourced CFO help as well as some of the reasons for outsourcing a small firm’s complete accounting function.  By complete accounting function, we mean not only doing the books for a small business, but helping that business with budgeting, reconciliations, financing options as well as other strategic recommendations.  A large company has a full accounting department to perform these functions but a small business cannot afford a full accounting department.  Outsourcing the full accounting function can provide for all of those skills on an “as needed” basis or as some refer to it, “by the drink”.  ReliAscent also has a group of partners that can be utilized in order to provide an even wider range of services to our clients.  One of these partners is Federal National Commercial Credit (FNC2), a provider of working capital solutions to government contractors & other small businesses.  I thought it might be good to talk about the importance of these partnerships, especially when it applies to a real-life situation.  Recently, ReliAscent performed a number of services for a client of FNC2.  FNC2 needed to verify their client had an adequate accounting system to support the amount of financing that the client was requesting.  ReliAscent was able to go in and:

1.       Conduct an introduction meeting where ReliAscent discussed in depth with the client’s controller the accounting flow, procedures and processes as a basis for determining their internal control procedures. 

2.       Reviewed available documentation, reports, financial statements (current and historical) and trial balance for a detailed understanding of their financial position and financial trends as a basis, in part, to assess risk.   

3.       Performed detailed audit procedures on cash balances and cash transactions to verify timely, accurate and consistently recording of transactions for proper and timely posting to accounts receivable customers/contracts.

4.       Reviewed significant sample of contracts for compliance and invoicing consistent with each contract (and Federal Acquisition Regulations, if applicable) terms and conditions.

5.       Performed audit procedures and analysis of accounts receivable, accounts payable general ledger to determine accuracy, procedural consistency and trending from a risk standpoint.

6.       Evaluated Client’s recording of sales for products and services to ensure proper cost matching with revenues recorded.  Briefly analyzed profit margins to establish profitability risk.

As a result of the audit performed by ReliAscent the client was able to secure the funding necessary from FNC2 and position their business for growth.  Just as important, this very busy and ambitious business owner received insight from Reliascent into the aspects of his business’ financial control and reporting systems that are strong and reliable and those parts that could use some professional attention and modification. This is significant in several regards:

1.       ReliAscent was uniquely qualified to help this client based on ReliAscent’s extensive knowledge of GAAP requirements, Government Contracting Regulations and general job cost accounting best practices.

2.       This demonstrates how the partnering relationship brings additional resources (that might not normally be available) to the table for both ReliAscent clients as well as the same for our partner’s clients

3.        ReliAscent can provide similar services for other organizations that might require strict accounting rules such as funding organizations like Venture Capital organizations or Angel Investors

4.       Exposed the client to the range of expertise from ReliAscent in helping fill in their accounting department for the future