Acuity Advisors

Feeling lucky? How to find a pot of gold in your financials

Every business experiences occasional cash shortages. When this happens, owners often assume they should go out and sell more. But this strategy can sometimes compound money troubles over the short run. Why? The answer lies in a concept known as the “cash gap.” Understanding this concept can help your business generate extra cash to meet working capital needs. Here’s how.

Focus on the balance sheet

The cash gap is a function of the timing difference between 1) when companies order materials and pay suppliers, and 2) when they receive payment from their customers. This difference can lead to cash shortages if the company doesn’t have extra savings, doesn’t qualify for additional bank financing or doesn’t want to draw on a line of credit. It’s also important to keep in mind that cash gaps funded by bank financing incur interest costs.

Boosting sales generally isn’t the solution, because, when cash is tight, selling more will often widen the cash gap. That’s because the company will need to front the incremental cost of sales while new orders are fulfilled, invoices are sent and customers remit payment. This concept explains why start-ups and high growth companies tend to experience cash shortages.

Finding hidden treasures

If the company finances its cash gap, shaving a day or two off the gap could save thousands of dollars in interest expense over the course of a year. Minimizing the cash gap requires you to focus on its underlying variables:

Inventory. There are numerous ways to minimize your investment in inventory. For instance, you might search the warehouse for slow-moving items and then either return stale items for credit, trade them with another supplier or competitor, or sell the items for scrap.

You can also revise your company’s purchasing policies. For example, some materials and parts suppliers may agree to discounted bill-and-ship or consignment arrangements in exchange for exclusive or long-term contracts.

Receivables. The faster a company can get money in the door, the smaller its cash gap will be. Your business can encourage faster payments from customers by sending out past-due reminder letters and following up with phone calls. Also evaluate invoicing procedures to minimize the days in receivables. Poor communication among billing, sales and production staff can cause invoicing delays.

Payables. Think of trade payables as a form of interest-free financing. But, beware, there are limits to how far a company can extend its payables. Slow-paying businesses may forgo early-bird discounts or receive less favorable treatment from suppliers, such as slower delivery, higher rates or cash-on-delivery terms. Delayed payments can also harm a company’s credit rating, as well as its reputation among its pool of eligible suppliers.

Put it to work for you

The cash gap can be a helpful management tool, because it pinpoints hidden treasures in your balance sheet. Put simply, companies with shorter cash gaps tend to experience fewer cash shortages and rely less on bank financing. Contact us for help measuring your cash gap and using it to manage working capital more efficiently.

Stay up to date! Subscribe to our future blog posts!

Don’t forget: 2017 tax filing deadline for pass-through entities is March 15

When it comes to income tax returns, April 15 (actually April 17 this year, because of a weekend and a Washington, D.C., holiday) isn’t the only deadline taxpayers need to think about. The federal income tax filing deadline for calendar-year partnerships, S corporations and limited liability companies (LLCs) treated as partnerships or S corporations for tax purposes is March 15. While this has been the S corporation deadline for a long time, it’s only the second year the partnership deadline has been in March rather than in April.

Why the deadline change?

One of the primary reasons for moving up the partnership filing deadline was to make it easier for owners to file their personal returns by the April filing deadline. After all, partnership (and S corporation) income passes through to the owners. The earlier date allows owners to use the information contained in the pass-through entity forms to file their personal returns.

What about fiscal-year entities?

For partnerships with fiscal year ends, tax returns are now due the 15th day of the third month after the close of the tax year. The same deadline applies to fiscal-year S corporations. Under prior law, returns for fiscal-year partnerships were due the 15th day of the fourth month after the close of the fiscal tax year.

What about extensions?

If you haven’t filed your calendar-year partnership or S corporation return yet, you may be thinking about an extension. Under the current law, the maximum extension for calendar-year partnerships is six months (until September 17, 2018, for 2017 returns). This is up from five months under prior law. So the extension deadline is the same — only the length of the extension has changed. The extension deadline for calendar-year S corporations also is September 17, 2018, for 2017 returns.

Whether you’ll be filing a partnership or an S corporation return, you must file for the extension by March 15 if it’s a calendar-year entity.

When does an extension make sense?

Filing for an extension can be tax-smart if you’re missing critical documents or you face unexpected life events that prevent you from devoting sufficient time to your return right now.

But keep in mind that, to avoid potential interest and penalties, you still must (with a few exceptions) pay any tax due by the unextended deadline. There may not be any tax liability from the partnership or S corporation return. If, however, filing for an extension for the entity return causes you to also have to file an extension for your personal return, you need to keep this in mind related to the individual tax return April 17 deadline.

Have more questions about the filing deadlines that apply to you or avoiding interest and penalties? Contact us.

Stay up to date! Subscribe to our future blog posts!

How to classify shareholder advances

Owners of closely held businesses sometimes need to advance their companies money to bridge a temporary downturn or provide extra cash flow for an expansion, a major expense or other purposes. Should you categorize those advances as bona fide debt, additional paid-in capital or something in between? Under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), the answer depends on the facts and circumstances of the transaction.

Debt vs. equity

The proper classification of shareholder advances is especially important when a company has more than one shareholder or unsecured bank loans. It’s also relevant for tax purposes, because advances that are classified as debt typically require imputed interest charges. However, the tax rules may not always sync with GAAP.

To further complicate matters, shareholders sometimes forgive loans or convert them to equity. Reporting these types of transactions can become complex when the fair value of the equity differs from the carrying value of the debt.

Relevant factors

When deciding how to classify shareholder advances, it’s important to consider the economic substance of the transaction over its form. Some factors to consider when classifying these transactions include:

Intent to repay. Open-ended understandings between related parties about repayment imply that an advance is a form of equity. For example, an advance may be classified as a capital contribution if it was extended to save the business from imminent failure and no attempts at repayment have ever been made.

Loan terms. An advance is more likely to be treated as bona fide debt if the parties have signed a written promissory note that bears reasonable interest, has a fixed maturity date and a history of periodic loan repayments, and includes some form of collateral. If an advance is subordinate to bank debt and other creditors, it’s more likely to qualify as equity, however.

Ability to repay. This includes the company’s historic and future debt service capacity, as well as its credit standing and ability to secure other forms of financing. The stronger these factors are, the more appropriate it may be to classify the shareholder advance as debt.

Third-party reporting. Consistently treating an advance as debt (or equity) on tax returns can provide additional insight into its proper classification.

With shareholder advances, disclosures are key. Under GAAP, you’re required to describe any related-party transactions, including the magnitude and specific line items in the financial statements that are affected. Numerous related-party transactions may necessitate the use of a tabular format to make the footnotes to the financial statements reader friendly.

Need help?

Shareholder advances present financial reporting challenges that can’t be fixed with a one-size-fits-all solution. We can help you address the challenges based on the nature of your transactions and adequately disclose these transactions in your financial statement footnotes.

Stay up to date! Subscribe to our future blog posts!

Sec. 179 expensing provides small businesses tax savings on 2017 returns — and more savings in the future

If you purchased qualifying property by December 31, 2017, you may be able to take advantage of Section 179 expensing on your 2017 tax return. You’ll also want to keep this tax break in mind in your property purchase planning, because the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), signed into law this past December, significantly enhances it beginning in 2018.

2017 Sec. 179 benefits

Sec. 179 expensing allows eligible taxpayers to deduct the entire cost of qualifying new or used depreciable property and most software in Year 1, subject to various limitations. For tax years that began in 2017, the maximum Sec. 179 deduction is $510,000. The maximum deduction is phased out dollar for dollar to the extent the cost of eligible property placed in service during the tax year exceeds the phaseout threshold of $2.03 million.

Qualified real property improvement costs are also eligible for Sec. 179 expensing. This real estate break applies to:

Certain improvements to interiors of leased nonresidential buildings,
Certain restaurant buildings or improvements to such buildings, and
Certain improvements to the interiors of retail buildings.

Deductions claimed for qualified real property costs count against the overall maximum for Sec. 179 expensing.

Permanent enhancements

The TCJA permanently enhances Sec. 179 expensing. Under the new law, for qualifying property placed in service in tax years beginning in 2018, the maximum Sec. 179 deduction is increased to $1 million, and the phaseout threshold is increased to $2.5 million. For later tax years, these amounts will be indexed for inflation. For purposes of determining eligibility for these higher limits, property is treated as acquired on the date on which a written binding contract for the acquisition is signed.

The new law also expands the definition of eligible property to include certain depreciable tangible personal property used predominantly to furnish lodging. The definition of qualified real property eligible for Sec. 179 expensing is also expanded to include the following improvements to nonresidential real property: roofs, HVAC equipment, fire protection and alarm systems, and security systems.

Save now and save later

Many rules apply, so please contact us to learn if you qualify for this break on your 2017 return. We’d also be happy to discuss your future purchasing plans so you can reap the maximum benefits from enhanced Sec. 179 expensing and other tax law changes under the TCJA.

Stay up to date! Subscribe to our future blog posts!

What is job cost reporting?

Custom jobs require ongoing supervision to achieve the best financial results. Whether you’re a general contractor constructing a strip mall, a manufacturer building made-to-order parts or an architect drawing up blueprints, once a project is underway it’s easy to focus on getting the job done, rather than on the resources that are being consumed.

That’s why job cost reporting — the process of coding and allocating project expenses to track financial efficiency and profitability — is a mission-critical activity. Here are a few best practices to keep in mind.

Smart estimates

Proper job cost reporting begins with solid cost estimates. Start each job by arranging the estimates in the same cost categories that will be used to accumulate the actual job cost information. This will enable you to effectively manage contract activities. And you’ll be better able to compare the actual job costs to estimated costs.

The proper format often depends on how many job-costing levels were used in the estimate. For instance, larger jobs may require phase, activity or even unit costing. For smaller jobs, totals for, say, materials, labor and subcontracts are sufficient. If you perform service-type work, your cost information needs may include just job totals by labor, materials and other direct costs.

Information needs

What kinds of cost information do you need during and after the job? These requirements depend on the time span of that job and the nature of the work.

Jobs that will be completed over several months lend themselves to more-detailed reporting. The size and scope of the particular job, as well as the software and people available to process and monitor job cost information, also affect the amount of detail you can include.

Progress reports

Cost reporting during the job is critical to controlling costs. Monitoring actual progress to date compared with planned progress to date determines where the job is at a particular time.

Keep in mind that you can’t take corrective action until you know something is deviating from the plan. That’s why executing continuous job cost reporting from the estimate to completion is so important. But jobs completed within a few days or weeks may not benefit from detailed cost reporting because time constraints make it difficult to identify problems early enough to take effective corrective action.

Also remember, as experienced as you might be, gut feelings regarding how costs are running compared with how they were estimated are usually insufficient. You must obtain facts about the cost activities from jobs-in-process reports. Even if your “intuition” turns out to be correct, it may come too late for you to head off a major problem.

Worth the effort

Proper job cost reporting takes persistence and, ideally, a good software system. The truth is that better numbers will lead to better results in the form of less costly, more profitable projects. Need help designing an effective job cost system? Our accounting professionals can help you select software and implement a costing system that’s right for you.

Stay up to date! Subscribe to our future blog posts!