Tracking Stocks

Just like in business, when trading stocks, you need to track your performance in order to know if your strategy is working.  I had a request to develop a spreadsheet to track stocks. I developed this spreadsheet with the fact that the person had multiple brokerage accounts. Here is a screen shot of the column and there headers. I’ll explain what each column is and what it is for. 

The first column is the date the stock was brought. The second column is the stock name or symbol. Followed by the name of the account. In this example, the person has three brokerage accounts. One is their “main” account, one is a self managed IRA account and the last account is an accounting that they have with “Robinhood” (Brokerage App) Filters were added so that they can click the filter and filter by only the account that they need to look at. For example filter for only the taxable accounts.

The “Buy” column is where you enter price that the stock was brought at. The “Share” column is where you enter the number of shares brought. The next column is a calculation of cost. It’s simply the Buy price times the number of shares plus the commission (if any). The buy date can be filtered by year and by month so that you can see what stocks you brought by what time frame.

The next set of column are the Sell Date, Sell Price per share, #Shares and Proceeds. The Proceeds column is the only calculation with the rest of them simple data entry. And just like the buy date the sell date can be filtered by time frame as well. The calculation of the proceeds is just like the Cost. It is the number shares times the sell price plus any commission.

The next column is for any dividends that you received, This will factor into the Profit calculation that we will do at the end.  The adjust column for any miscellaneous adjustments that you may have.

The Profit $ column is a calculation of Proceeds – Cost + Dividends + adjustments. This column gives you the dollar amount of the profit or loss for that particular stock. The last column is the profit or loss % for that stock. It is the Cost divided by the profit or loss $ amount.

If you would like a copy of this spreadsheet feel free to send me an email. robert.pipas@eagleeyebookkeepingservicesllc.com

www.eagleeyebookkeepingservicesllc.com

 

 

Debt /Equity Ratio

Using your financial statements to measure your business is one way to make sure that you and your business is moving in the right direction. In order to accomplish this you need a few things.

 

• Financial Statements (both accurate and timely)
• Consistency – In order to track the direction of the business, consistency is key. Knowing your ratios only once in a while will not show a true and accurate picture of your business and can lead to bad business decisions.
• Picking the right KPI’s (Key performance Indicators) or ratios. Some ratios are a better fit for some businesses more so than others.

The Debt to Equity Ratio is a good ratio to track the businesses financial leverage. It shows as a percent how well the business is at managing it’s debt to make a profit.

The higher the ratio the more reliant the business is on debt to turn a profit.

Example: Company A – Total Liabilities $80,000, Total Equity $120,000

$80,000 / $120,000 = .6666 or 66.66%

Company B – Total Liabilities $150,000, Total Equity $80,000

$150,000 / $80,000 =  1.875 or 187.5%

Company B is higher in debt and more reliant on external loans to make a profit. However, only showing this at one point in time does not show which direction the company is going in. Company A could have a lower ratio right now but shown over time could be increasing and Company B shown over time could be decreasing. Calculating this ratio over time shows the true nature of the ratio and shows if it is improving or not.

For more information do not hesitate to ask.

robert.pipas@eagleeyebookkeepingservicesllc.com

www.eagleeyebookkeepingservicesllc.com

 

 

 

7 Best Business Practices

Seven best business practices for small businesses. Are you following them? Click here to Download Free Book and request your copy today!

• Contents
• Business & Personal – 1
• Budget – 2
• Financial Statements Reviewed – 3
• Systems & Procedures – 4
• Tracking Expenses – 5
• Security System – Duel Control 6
• Payroll –
  
• Contact Information – 8
• Eagle Eye Bookkeeping Services, LLC. – 8

For more information visit www.eagleeyebookkeepingservicesllc.com

Personal Financial Plan

Your business needs a budget, yes, but do you have one for you? Having a personal financial plan is just as important as having a business financial plan. This is for a few reasons. One is if you, as the business owner, is having financial troubles it will show through in your business. It will add stress to the workplace environment. It will cloud business decisions and lead to making bad business decisions.

Steps to help create a budget for you personally:

1. Take a look at each area of your spending. Use your current spending patterns as an initial budget. I say this within reason. If your spending $3k a month on recreational activities you may want to take a look up front and see if you should cut back.
2. Know your debt and come up with a plan to reduce and eliminate.  Try starting with your smallest debt and get that one paid off first.  Sometimes a victory is just the motivation you need to get pumped to get rid of excess debt!
3. Build and maintain an emergency fund.  Having at least 3 months living expenses in a savings account reduces anxiety should a major expense come your way.
4. Open or start contributing to an IRA. Whether or not it’s a Roth IRA or a traditional IRA.
5. If you have a child start contributing to a Section 529 plan to help prepare for future educational costs.
6. Have a set of funds that you can invest. Make sure you keep track of the ROI on this. If you have a low ROI or a negative ROI readjust.

Take the time to look at not only your businesses financial plan but your personal one too.

And, as always if you have any questions do not hesitate to ask. www.eagleeyebookkeepingservicesllc.com

Forecasting for Growth

To be effective with a strategic business plan and project forward for growth starts with strategic thinking. In order to project forward business owners need to analyze several areas of their business and think of how each area could affect one another.

A miss judgement in any one area could result in the all too common “growing pains” expanding businesses find themselves in. The following areas are great starting points when planning and preparing for growth. Human Resources, Marketing, Accounting, Operations, IT and Customer Service.

Human Resources – Want to roll out a new product or take on more clients? How many additional staff do you need to do that? How will you train them? How much will you pay them?

Marketing – What venues or channels do you plan on using to get your marketing material out there? Calculating a ROI on marketing can be difficult but is necessary none the less.

Accounting – Putting a quantitative figure on all business activities will help you keep in line. Meaning that it will help you from over spending and help you know if you are being successful in your efforts or not.

Operations – If you are rolling out a new product do you have the machinery to make it or do you have the sourcing connections to import it? This area also connects with the other areas because you may have to hire and train direct labor and use accounting to figure out profits margins.

IT – Do you need different technology to pull off what you are trying to accomplish? Often times technology is not compatible with different or other pieces of technology.

Customer Service – Asking yourself if what you are doing will improve customer service or hurt it is sometimes over looked. But if you expand, get busy, and start experiencing growing pains then customer service is often one of the first areas that get affected.

So before you try to take on the world and expand. Ask yourself are you ready? And come up with a strategic game plan to get you there.

Questions?  Do not hesitate to ask.

www.eagleeyebookkeepingservicesllc.com

 

 

 

3 Best Business Tips

 

I was searching around today for the best business tips. I came across many articles that included some great ideas. Some were practical, some were actionable and some were just OK. But of all the ones that I scanned through here were my 3 favorites.

 

1. Always find new ways to keep costs low – This will help in two ways. The first is that it will increase your cash flow and strengthen your company. The second is that by focusing on expenses and vendor relations you may be able to establish a relationship with that vendor and negotiate better terms.
2. Test and measure everything – By knowing what is working and what’s not you can stop wasting time on the activities that are not increasing profit and double down the activities that are. Leading you and your business to a more efficient and profitable business.
3. Budget and monitor your business – Creating a budget for your business gives you focus on what you want to bring in and what you want to spend. And using that budget to monitor your business on a monthly basis helps you keep on the right path to increased profitability.

Staying on top of your business is on ongoing activity. Using financial statements as a tool to help monitor past, current and future activities will help you stay on track.

For more information – www.eagleeyebookkeepingservicesllc.com 

 

Is R&R good for R&D?

I took this photo one morning as I was strolling around the grounds of a resort in Key West sipping on my morning coffee. Taking this photo gave me the idea for this blog post.

The question that I thought of as the sun was rising above the ocean was “is rest and relaxation important for research and development?”

Taking a vacation and doing things of solitude can help you get clarity on areas you are working on. For me the clarity moment came when I was along, with no distractions in the silence of the morning hours before the world gets busy. Business owners always have a few ideas rolling around in their head that have to do with where and how they want to take their business. This “quiet time” is the perfect time to put things in perspective and layout a plan of action.

The moral of the story is that it is beneficial to slow down, put things in perspective, analyze options, and lay out a course of action. Of course, the latter part is for when you get done with vacation.

And as always if you have any questions do not hesitate to ask. www.eagleeyebookkeepingservicesllc.com

 

Chart of Accounts – Setup and More

A chart of accounts is a set of accounts used to make up the your businesses financial statements. Having a proper setup of chart of accounts is instrumental to having financial statements that you can use as a tool to manage your business.

One of the most common setups in the corporate world is what is called a Multi-Step Format. The Multi-Step Format for an income statement looks like the setup below. You start by organizing your sales by sales categories and sub categories. Then you have your Cost of Goods (COGS) or Cost of Sales (COS). These are the expenses directly associated with the production of your sales categories. Subtract the two and that gives you your Gross Income.

Next you have your SG&A expenses or your operating expenses. These are all the expenses that your business incurs that are necessary to running the business as opposed to COGS that are direct costs associated with creating a product or service. Operating expenses can be broken out by department. Even if you do not have separate departments in your business you can still break out the costs of those “departments” As in the illustration below, under expenses, I have the Operating expenses as a category, Payroll as a category, Marketing as category, and Other Income / Expenses as a category.

Subtract your Gross Profit or Gross Income from your Operating expenses and you get your Net Income (Pre-Tax) below that you can calculate your tax liability to get your net income after tax. And below that you can have a calculation of your EBITDA. This stands for Earnings Before Interest Tax Depreciation and Amortization. EBITDA is a number that analyst’s use to gauge the performance of a company. It takes net income and ignores non-cash items (Depreciation & Amortization)  and items that are not produced by the business (Interest & Tax).

If you have any questions or would like help setting up a chart of accounts for your business feel free to schedule a free consultation here http://bit.ly/2frNusl or email me at robert.pipas@eagleeyebookkeepingservicesllc.com

Maximizing Cash Flow

There is a saying in business that “Cash is King”. Part of running a successful business is having good cash management skills. Understanding and managing the cash flow of your business is a vital skill that not only medium and large businesses practice but small businesses practice alike.

It is OK for cash flow to be negative from time to time. However, if it is negative over time it will eat up your cash reserves. And just like in personal finances when cash reverses are low over an extended period of time it puts added stress on the business.

When analyzing cash flow there are a few areas you want to focus on. The first is accounts receivable. The second is accounts payable.

Accounts Receivable (A/R)

Staying on top of accounts receivable and collecting what is due will help increase cash flow. Start with running an A/R aging report and drill down on the detail of what is over 90 days past due and even 60-90 days past due. Sending out collection letters or even making a phone call to collect what is owed will help reduce A/R and increase cash flow.

Accounts Payable (A/P)

Now I know what you’re thinking. ‘Accounts Payable?, isn’t that just going to reduce my cash flow?’ Yes and No. Properly managing accounts payable will two fold when it comes to cash flow. The first reason, analyzing A/P tells you exactly how much you’re paying and what you are paying for. This can lead to questioning certain expenses. Questioning if you can get a better deal for the same item or service or even if you need the expense at all. Reducing expenses will increase cash flow. The second reason is that having proper A/P management will lead to better vendor relationships. Having better vendor relationships can lead to better payment terms. i.e. if you are paying due upon receipt and you have a good relationship you can ask for net 15, or if you are on net 15 terms you can ask for net 30 etc…

Bottom Line 

The bottom line is understanding your numbers and using your numbers to run and guide your business is a best practice to ensure that your business can continue as a going concern. If you find yourself struggling with cash flow or just the cash flow management process feel free to schedule a free consultation at http://bit.ly/2frNusl or shoot me an email at robert.pipas@eagleeyebookkeepingservicesllc.com