Last updated: Oct. 5, 2016
Starting a new business comes with a unique batch of hurdles: from raising customer awareness to getting your products or services ready to ironing out whatever kinks are revealed in the first few days or weeks of operation. Startups also have to deal with significant financial costs since you don’t start seeing profits until opening day at the earliest.
The good news is that provincial and federal governments want to encourage growth by fostering new businesses and can accommodate some of a startup or small business’s needs when taxes or financial assistance are called for.
The bad news is that these processes can sometimes be tricky to navigate, which is why financial and tax consulting is so vital for any small business owner.
How Tax Consultants Benefit Small Businesses
No Multitasking
When dealing with small business operations, owners are often called to multitask and embrace a number of different duties, from managing finances to overseeing staff to helping out customers. This type of breadth is good, but it can be easy to miss certain financial details that someone with more depth in the matter would spot.
Tax consultants can give your business a thorough, focused look and see ways to file your statements or harness tax deductions or rebates you might not have known about or considered.
Crunching the Numbers
Will your current rate of profits be enough to sustain your number of employees?
Is now a good time to hire more help?
How can costs be reduced and efficiency increased with minimal impact on customers?
These are all common types of questions any business owner contends with. Drawing up plans and projections based on current trends is one thing, but being able to also take into account what possible long-term consequences might be is another.
Behind every business decision is a great deal of math and financial factors that can influence or be influenced by the outcome.
Financial tax consultants will be able to look at your business on both the broad scope and more micro level and help you chart the course for the future. This can be especially useful when trying to navigate seasonal shifts or large changes in customer activity.
Budgeting
The majority of small businesses and startups (up to 80% by some counts) fail in their first 5 years. This is in part due to a lack of a realistic budget. Why this happens varies from business to business—sometimes it’s simple neglect or other times owners are overly optimistic or pessimistic—but the end result is the same.
Small businesses can use financial tax advisors to help them plan out realistic budgets that will help them stay afloat and pursue growth.
Securing Funds
There are numerous types of financing available for startups and small businesses that can be harnessed in order to help you establish and grow. The qualifying conditions for each source of funding will differ and not all are immediately obvious.
Consulting firms for small businesses are intimately familiar with the different options available, and their expertise can be tapped to help you find and obtain these extra bits of funding.
Get Tailored Financial and Tax Consulting from FBC
FBC provides tax accounting and bookkeeping services to over 20,000 farms and small businesses from Nova Scotia to British Columbia. We offer complete financial planning to address the specific needs of farm and small business owners at any stage of their business.
Between our tax planning, tax preparation, business consulting, audit protection, and more, our financial and tax services and expertise will help you grow your business for years to come.
For more information on how we can help farms and small businesses with their bookkeeping, contact us today.