Monthly Archives: October 2013

Profit Improvement – Delay of Expenditures

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Pretty much every company wants to increase its profit, and most managers devote a large portion of their time to trying to increase revenues and margins, or reduce costs. As a financial manager and consultant, I have been involved in many profit improvement initiatives. Here are some examples – they are mostly from construction, retail and land development, but the concepts can be applied to any business.

Delay of Expenditures

Time is money. Delaying expenditures until absolutely necessary reduces interest, storage and other carrying costs, reduces pressure on borrowing limits and has a positive impact on return on investment. Speeding the receipt of funds has the same impact.

Financial Review

A land developer traditionally let marketing decide when certain tracts would be made available for sale to builders. The sites they selected appeared to be random throughout the communities, and they professed no particular strategy. I proposed marketing contiguous tracts to delay the outlay on roads and other infrastructure costs. As a result, we delayed the spending of tens of millions of dollars, and there wasn’t a grumble from marketing.

Looking Around

A retailer’s distribution center was designed to service a fixed number of stores, and the time was upon us to start construction on a new, larger center. The limiting factor was the number of boxes that would fit on the conveyors that passed in front of the merchandise pickers. I observed that if we simply changed the shape of the boxes, we could serve up to 50% more stores without incurring the multi-million dollar capital expenditure.

Process Review

Homebuilders often sell their model homes to investors, and lease them back until the community is sold out. The process is rather complex, involving the buyer, various attorneys, appraisers, the construction and marketing departments, accounting and treasury, among others. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking on interest and carrying costs until the transaction is completed. I led a Six Sigma team to look into speeding the inflow of cash. We flow-charted the process, identified bottlenecks and delays, and established a standard timetable to be followed on all future transactions. We reduced the cycle time by three weeks, and calculated annual savings at $400,000.

Does your CFO get involved in planning your major expenditures?

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Thinking About Year-End? … You Should Be

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Year-end is almost upon us again. Now is the time to get your house in order – it will take a huge amount of stress off the closing process a couple of months from now.

Being truly ready for the auditors can save audit time and fees, reduce stress on your staff during the audit, and maybe make your financials available for lenders and investors a little earlier. Equally importantly, audit-readiness is a good indication that your accounting department is organized and up to date. How many other ways do you really have to determine that? Here are a few things you should consider:

Preparation of Financial Statements

Do the auditors historically require that you make embarrassing changes to the financials? What has been done to avoid that this year?

–          Does your accounting department prepare the financials, including notes?

–          Have you questioned any balances or accounts that seem surprising or unusual?

–          Did you do anything different this year? Are you sure it is accounted for correctly? Now is the time to sort that out, not during the audit.

–          Have any changes in accounting rules affected your business? Are there any changes not yet required that you could implement early?

Reconciliations

Reconciliations provide explanations for changes in Balance Sheet and P&L accounts, and your accounting department should be able to show them to you every month.

–          Do you know exactly what is in every balance sheet account?

–          Can you explain every change in the balance sheet?

–          Have expenses been calculated consistently every month?

–          Can you show how cost of goods sold affected inventory every month?

If you can say yes to all of these items, updating to year-end should be a piece of cake.

Updated Estimates

Where your monthly accruals and amortization calculations are based on volume or other estimates, have they been updated to be sure the year-end balances are correct? Again, a 2 month update at the end of the year is a lot easier than doing it for the entire year.

Variance Analysis

Has there been a thorough analysis documenting all significant P&L and Balance Sheet variances from last year? Are the explanations reasonable, and the underlying facts correct?

Documentation of Procedures

–          Are the fundamental internal control procedures properly documented?

–          The auditors typically make recommendations for improvements in procedures and controls if they find any deficiencies. Were last year’s recommendations fully implemented?

–          Have changes in staffing or procedures resulted in changes to the control environment? Now is the time to correct them.

Not sure if you’re going to be ready for year-end? Do you know who to call?