Allen Bostrom – Universal Accounting

I have always had a passion for business. I enjoy working with company owners and managers in improving their businesses, but I am often astonished at how little they know about their own companies.

In consulting with business owners, my initial analysis is always the same. I look critically at the three major functions of business—Marketing, Production, and Accounting:

• Marketing is the function of business that brings customers to your door and culminates in some sort of sale.
• Production is the function of business that deals with customers from the time of the first sale through the entire life of the relationship.
• Accounting is the function of business that gathers data and information from all the different aspects of the business.

My first observation is that most businesses do very well in one of the functions, partially well in another, and not well at all in the third. Accounting is most often the one function that falls to the bottom of the list. This means that without proper guidance, many unprofitable decisions could be made.  An accountant becomes more than an accountant when he/she can help his/her clients to bring these three functions together to increase profitability.

Stay tuned to my blog, as I will be addressing this issue in more detail in future posts.  You might also want to purchase a copy of my book In The Black, available here.