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However, not everyone is prepared for the responsibilities of running one’s enterprise. Running a startup means you will have to make a lot of tradeoffs to stretch a fluctuating budget for continuous growth. A startup accountant has the expertise to know where you can and can’t make these sacrifices. With the right financial team on your side, you can navigate the constraints of the startup stage to scale into the business of your dreams. Whereas an accountant comes in to go through your books to help you file taxes and prepare for audits and funding rounds, a bookkeeper does the day-to-day tasks of keeping your books up-to-date. In the same way your accountant provides your controller with useful financial information, your bookkeeper sets up your accountant for success.
But, we go the next step and have our experienced team do several levels of reviews to help catch anything that the automated systems might miss. With a young company, every penny counts, and the “cap table” is sacred. Outsourcing CFO, accounting, and HR functions make good sense for startups that want the advantages of mature financial structures while keeping the monthly burn rate in check. Bookkeepers can only perform work if you provide them with transactions. Outsourced bookkeepers don’t bloat your salary payouts due to relative inactivity. You only pay these bookkeepers when you use their services, and that can be scaled to suit your needs.
Why Is Accounting Important for Startups?
As a startup, you have to focus on your product and customers, and Kruze takes care of everything else (which is a massive sigh of relief). Our team makes sure you are ready to fly through your next VC’s accounting, HR and tax due diligence. And when you use us as your bookkeeper, we set up and keep up-to-date a due diligence https://www.vizaca.com/bookkeeping-for-startups-financial-planning-to-push-your-business/ folder so you can get that next round of fundraising. Our accountants serve startups all over the US, with offices in Austin, San Francisco, Silicon Valley (San Jose), Los Angeles (Santa Monica) and New York City. This became very important in the early days of COVID because a lot of companies were trying to cut burn.
Brian has worked at SD Mayer since 2014 as the firm’s Controller, also working in the Outsourced Accounting department as an outsourced Controller, as well as supervising the team. Overall, Brian has worked in Finance for nearly 20 years, including as the Finance Manager at another company. We are based in the Bay Area — the location of many tech and other startups.
CFO
Julie has been with the firm since 2013 and has been in public accounting for 26 years, licensed for 23 years. She specializes in nonprofits, and is multi-talented, working in our outsourced accounting, tax and audit departments. She is one of a handful of people that works out of our Menlo Park office full-time. On a professional basis, Steve’s accounting, consulting, and wealth management career gives him the ability to work with his clients on accounting, tax, M&A, business advisory and strategic planning.
How to do bookkeeping for startup?
- Cash basis accounting.
- Accrual basis accounting.
- Enter all transactions into your bookkeeping software or Excel spreadsheet.
- Categorize your transactions.
- File or digitize receipts.
- Reconcile your bank accounts.
- Prepare and send invoices (if applicable)
- Pay vendors and other bills.
For this reason, some startups choose to adopt enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. Although we’d like to believe that our businesses are creditworthy on their own, banks will require a personal guarantee for startups. Building up business credit to the point where creditors no longer seek to put officers personally on the hook for credit card debt takes years of strategic borrowing and timely repayments. Your accountant can help you manage your finances to reach that goal. Unlike small businesses, startups are built with rapid growth in mind. Because of this, much of their operational structures are designed to scale the organization and its revenues quickly.
Planning
Another issue you may run into as a startup, particularly if you operate with a remote team, is complying with tax laws across multiple jurisdictions. The more places you find employees, vendors, and clients, the more likely you are to run into disparate state and local tax laws. The R&D tax credit has applications in almost every industry, and there are many activities you may already be doing that qualify. Although many online calculators exist to estimate your potential credits, nothing will compare to a trained accountant going through your books and determining the highest tax credit possible. The Credit for Increasing Research Activities, more commonly known as the R&D tax credit, allows you to carry forward the value of the credit into your future, profitable years.
