The conversation between bookkeeping and tax. What your numbers mean, what to do next, and whether you can afford it. Included in the monthly fee, from $350.
Accounting Advisory Services in Cedar Rapids, done the Brightside way Accounting advisory services is the catch-all seat for everything in between: systems choices, process design, hard conversations with the…
Read the guideA cleaning company owner in Robins asked us last March whether she should take on a fourth crew. She had the work lined up. What she did not have was any idea whether the last crew she added had actually made her money.
We opened the file and split revenue and cost by crew. Crew three was doing $9,400 a month in billings and costing $8,900 once wages, burden and supplies were counted. It was running at a four percent margin while the other two ran at nineteen. She had been carrying it for seven months without knowing.
She did not need more crews. She needed to fix the pricing on crew three, which she did, and then added the fourth in July. That conversation is what accounting advisory is.
Advisory is the part where somebody looks at your numbers with you and tells you what they mean.
Most small businesses in the Cedar Rapids area have somebody doing the books and somebody doing the taxes. Almost nobody has the person in between. That gap is where the expensive decisions get made on instinct.
Our accounting services in Cedar Rapids include advisory as part of the monthly work, not as a separate product with a separate invoice. If we are already keeping your books through monthly bookkeeping, the file is current and the conversation costs nothing extra.
These are real questions owners have asked us in the last year. Every one has a number behind it.
None of these are tax questions. Your CPA is the wrong person to ask, and most of them will say so. They are also not bookkeeping questions. They sit on top of the bookkeeping, which is why the books have to be current before the conversation is worth having.
4% versus 19%Crew three was running at a four percent margin for seven months. The other two crews ran at nineteen. Same owner, same trucks, same town. Nobody knew until somebody split the numbers by crew.
There is nothing mysterious about the process. It is a call with the file open.
Nothing useful gets said about numbers that are three months old. Your books close by the 10th, so the conversation happens while the month is still fresh enough to act on.
Usually by phone. We walk through what moved and why, and you ask whatever you have been sitting on. Some months there is nothing to discuss and the call is five minutes.
Most calls end with a single action. Chase two invoices. Raise the price on one service line. Hold back a set amount for February. Not a report to file. Something to do.
The same handful of things, every month, because that is how you spot a trend rather than a bad week.
Most of our clients run work that comes in waves, and that changes what advice is useful.
Landscaping and lawn care money floods in from April through October, then goes quiet. Snow work runs the other way. Cleaning contracts are steadier but grow and shrink with one or two big accounts. If the advice ignores that shape, it is bad advice.
For a Cedar Rapids landscaping company, the useful conversation in September is not about growth. It is about how much of the summer money has to survive until April, and whether the equipment payment is realistic in January. We do that math in September, not in January when it is already a problem.
If your work is bid rather than billed hourly, job costing feeds the whole thing. See bookkeeping for contractors for how we set that up.
Most calls end with one thing to do. Chase two invoices. Raise the price on one service line. Hold back a set amount for February. Not a report to file. Something to act on.
You have been running on instinct and it has stopped feeling safe. You are making decisions with real money attached, hiring, pricing, equipment, and you want the numbers in the room. You already have somebody doing your taxes and you are not looking to replace them.
Your books are two years behind, because there is nothing to advise on yet. Start with a bookkeeping cleanup and the advisory conversation becomes possible about a month later. It also does not fit if you want investment advice or tax strategy, which are different professions with different licences.
Advisory from somebody who does not keep your books means paying them to learn your business first. We are in the file every month, so the context is already there.
There is no clock. If you want to talk through something in week two, call. Owners stop asking questions when every question has a price, and that is when advice stops working.
If the answer is that you cannot afford the hire, that is the answer. We have talked more people out of purchases than into them.
Advisory happens by phone and screen share, so the geography matters less than the local knowledge.
Clients run across Cedar Rapids, from Czech Village and Kenwood Park to Cedar Hills and the Southwest Area, plus Marion, Hiawatha, Robins, Lisbon, Mt Vernon, Ely, Swisher, Springville, Bertram and Covington. The service area page lists them all.
Knowing the market matters more than being down the road. What a crew costs here, what the going rate is for a residential mow route in Marion, how long Linn County work takes to pay. That context is what makes the advice specific rather than generic.
It is part of the monthly fee rather than a separate line.
Flat monthly bookkeeping starts at $350, set by your transaction volume, how many accounts you carry and whether you run payroll. The monthly review call is included at every level. There is no advisory package to upgrade to.
One-off project work, such as a pricing review or a forecast for a bank, is quoted flat before it starts. Everything is published on the pricing page.
The advice is included, not billed by the question. Owners stop asking when every question has a price, and that is exactly when advice stops being worth anything.
It starts with a free Books Health Check. Fifteen minutes, screen shared, your file open. We tell you what shape the records are in and whether advisory is even possible yet, because on a file that is badly behind the honest answer is not yet.
Call (319) 382-9017 or use the contact page. You get a real reply within one business day.
If you came looking for something more specific, start here.
No. A CPA looks backward and files. Advisory looks forward and helps you decide. Most CPAs are happy for somebody to be doing this, because it means fewer surprises in April.
Practically, yes. Advice on books somebody else keeps means paying us to learn the file first, and we would rather not charge you for that.
Then the call is short or we skip it. Some months there is nothing to decide, and manufacturing a conversation wastes your time.
We can tell you what it earns once owner add-backs are honest, which is the number any valuation is built from. A formal valuation is a different job.
Often. The most common one is hiring too early, usually by a season.
No. We do bookkeeping, job costing, payroll support and the reporting around them. Sales tax filings are not something we take on.
The free Books Health Check takes fifteen minutes and answers what the articles can't: where your books stand.
Get my free Books Health CheckFlat-fee bookkeeping for small businesses in these cities and everywhere between.
