Accounting is, most simply, a theoretical and compliance-based way to communicate the financial health of a business or organization to all interested parties. It involves recording financial transactions, along with storing, retrieving, summarizing, and presenting the results in a variety of reports and analyses. It is a way of assessing the assets, liabilities, cash flow and the future finances for all current and future investors.
Bookkeeping involves the recording, storing, and retrieving of a company or individual’s financial transactions on a daily basis. When done properly, it allows companies to track all information on its books that are necessary to make key decisions on finances, operations, and investments. Bookkeepers work with company transactions, while accountants use this information gathered by bookkeepers to analyze the current and future financial status of a company.
A chief financial officer (CFO) is a senior executive who is in charge of managing the financial actions of a company, including tracking cash flow, financial planning, and analyzing their company’s financial strengths and weaknesses. The CFO then takes this information and proposes corrective actions that will benefit their company financially. He or she uses strategic management and forward thinking to lead the charge in business growth and development.
A controller is the individual held accountable for all accounting operations of the company, including production of periodic financial reports and operating budgets, maintenance of accounting records, and creating and enforcing a comprehensive set of controls and budgets designed to mitigate risk, enhance the accuracy of the company’s financial results, and ensure that reported results comply with accepted financial reporting standards. Controllers are operational managers that focus on process improvement and creation, so that the other positions are able to do their jobs accurately and effectively.
Businesses typically spend 2 to 5 percent of revenue to properly train and staff accounting departments that are comprised of these roles. By outsourcing your accounting and other financial operations to a company like Fourlane, you’re effectively lowering your total costs by cutting out the costs of employee benefits, training, and accounting software and hardware, and hiring an external team of experts with a wide range of experience in the area. These experts work around the clock for your business, ensuring you are using the latest accounting technology, your books are always up to date, payroll is done, the database is maintained, and your business is not subject to penalties or fraudulent activity. With today’s cloud-based accounting applications giving you instant access to accurate accounting records and reporting and several trained sets of eyes on your finances at all time, you have total insight into the financial health of your business or organization, allowing you to make more confident and informed decisions.
At Fourlane, we allow you to focus on your business’s most important priorities by taking care of your core accounting functions, making your finance and accounting process streamlined, providing you with regular updates and thorough reports that can be easily understood, keeping track of costs and budget, and offering your business customized, expert solutions that meet your company’s specific needs. With everything taken care of for you by a collaborating, reliable team of experts, you can shift your focus and direct your energy to serving your clients more efficiently and growing your business.
