Partners in Your Business and Life Financial Growth Plan

While owning a business can be fun as well as challenging, it is never the life goal of the business owner. Whatever the goals, secure retirement, comfortable or lavish lifestyle, or other goal(s) requiring money, the business is the tool to reach those other goals.

Many successful entrepreneurs begin with a business plan. It sets out the purpose of the business, how it will generate income, marketing plans, and production or service delivery details. Where some fall short is in not only financial planning for the business operations, but in also substantially tying in the personal financial goals of the family.

With the business the primary tool in reaching the life financial goals of the owner and family, it seems better if the life financial plan should be in some way tied into the business planning. If you take a long-term approach, the rewards down the road can be so significant that some professional involvement now should be involved in the planning.

If you seek out a full service financial, accounting, and tax advisory service, they can become partners with you in reaching your business and life financial goals. The business and the personal goals are tied together, and the right professional help can help you to further the progress of both. This is an integrated suite of services so that each can feed off the others with a common goal of business success and financial growth. Services in this partnership that will help in reaching goals include:

Bookkeeping – Taking your input from your business operations and overhead functions, the bookkeeping function helps you to understand categorization of expenses so that you can submit them properly. This assures accuracy and tax law compliance. They also produce financial data for reports as necessary to use in business decisions.
Tax Preparation – The tax preparation function is tasked with keeping up with current tax law and reporting requirements for IRS compliance. It also instructs bookkeeping in record-keeping and report generation for the legal minimization of taxes. It is not just cranking out tax forms. Feedback from tax preparation helps business owners to make decisions in almost every facet of the business.
Tax Planning – This is a critical function for business growth. Current data feeds the planning process to grow profits and minimize taxation in future years. It also digs into the life financial planning, as things like retirement and health plans have tax benefits but also create financial well-being for owners and their families.
Compliance and Audit Protection/Response – Working with the other functions, this one makes sure that your reporting and operations are in compliance with tax law to help you to legally minimize taxes while avoiding mistakes that cause audits. However, no matter how well it works, now and then the IRS can have questions. This function responds on your behalf and in your best interests.
Entity Formation – The business entity type for tax purposes is often only considered at startup when the business is small and possibly only involving the owner. It is important to consider the different choices for business entity at startup, but also for possible change as the business grows.

It is never too early to look into partnering with a financial and accounting firm to advance your progress toward your life financial goals.