Start-ups and scale-ups face many challenges. Apart from running the business, financial management is crucial to ensure business continuity. Budgeting, accounting, cash management, financial reporting: all this requires financial experience and is time consuming. Time that’s needed to run your business. In this article we’ll discuss the challenges for start-ups and scale-ups, and the possible solutions.
Preparing reports and presentations for the board, investors and other shareholders can be very time consuming, and can take away the focus from day-to-day company management.
A full-time CFO may not be justified, but without a dedicated CFO, start-ups and scale-ups may lack the spokesperson capable of communicating business achievements in language and ways board members and investors understand.
CFO as a service may be the right solution for start-ups and scale-ups. Netsy’s CFOs have the experience to report to boards of venture capital backed start-ups and scale-ups, and can provide this service on demand.
Securing investment money is all about trust. Maintaining this relationship of trust with investors is important for the success of the start-up or scale-up.
A reliable budgeting and forecasting process is essential to creating the right expectations and building confidence in the business plans. Preparing bottom-up plans by taking into account the different cost drivers to determine expenditure growth in relation to growth drivers and revenue growth will ensure that budgets are reliable. They also form a good basis for informed decisions by management and board executives.
Netsy’s CFO’s have extensive experience with start-ups and scale-ups, and can provide support to implement a reliable budgeting and forecasting process.
Credit collections start with an efficient, accurate and timely invoicing process, followed by managing outstanding invoices and ensuring customers are paying within agreed-upon terms. Any delay in the order-to-cash-process can cause pressure on cash flow.
Netsy’s financial teams can run the credit collections process, and take away this burden from management.
Poor cash management is one of the reasons for failures of start-ups and scale-ups. They often have poor visibility into the timing of future revenues and expenses, and may lack the experience to model the relevant variables and implement reliable cash planning.
Netsy’s CFO’s have the financial knowledge and start-up experience to model cash planning and can help to implement a reliable cash management strategy, which is crucial for the success of start-ups and scale-ups.
Developing and maintaining a good relationship with banks is a priority for start-ups and scale-ups. Informing banks, keeping them in the loop and treating them as part of the team will ensure the right collaboration needed to fund and support the business growth.
Netsy provides start-ups and scale-ups the financial reports and summaries needed to communicate with the bank. Your Netsy CFO can take care of this communication, and having an experienced Netsy CFO on your team will give the bank the confidence that your company has the financial backbone needed for successful growth.
Maintaining your books in an accurate and timely manner is essential to manage the financial position of the company. Performing a monthly close is critical and essential to maintain your books in accordance with GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).
This entails registering all financial transactions, recording revenues generated, handling aspects as deferred revenue, reconciling bank accounts and preparing income statements and balance sheets. This allows a monthly review of income and expense accounts and an analysis of actuals vs. budget. The more automated and repeatable this process is, the more time there is for analysis and preparation of management and board meetings.
Netsy’s financial team is organized to streamline the monthly close process, and produce accurate and timely financial statements. These are essential for your management to review and analyze performance, make decisions and report to the board.
Netsy uses NetSuite, the global #1 Cloud ERP solution, for transaction processing, accounting and financial reporting. Netsy can offer the NetSuite platform to start-ups and scale-ups, with strongly adjusted price settings to assure affordability, and pre-configured settings to enable rapid and low-cost implementation.
When a start-up or scale-up uses Netsuite for its operations, then Netsy’s team and financial systems are seamlessly integrated with the company’s operations resulting in a very efficient streamlined experience.
Netsy can support management of start-ups and scale-ups with transaction processing, accounting and financial advisory services, so management can focus on running and growing the business. Want to know more about what we can do? Get in touch with us, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.