Esat Acar

PRISM Insight 205: CFOs should produce quarterly valuations for private equity, R/E, and debt firms, because they are ultimately responsible for a fund's financial statements. Manager CFOs should have valuation competence, in the same way that the CPAs at the audit firms independently review and vet fair valuation during the year end GAAP/IFRS audits. #valuation #CFO #duediligence #investments #GAAP

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Thinking of selling your business? EBITDA multiples are a common valuation tool, but understanding them can be tricky. Our friends, including Samuel Smoot at Benchmark International break it down in their blog: https://lnkd.in/eYJP3Zzi Learn how factors like industry, size, and profitability affect your multiple! #ExitPlanning #BusinessValuation

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While M&A experience is relatively common experience for Fortune 500 CFOs, more than half have had executive-level experience in a PE-owned portfolio business. What other backgrounds and traits shape today’s CFOs? A new Altrata report examines the experience, backgrounds, and priorities of Fortune 500 CFOs - https://bit.ly/3xZVYRK

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Does your firm have a written tech strategy? What about written IT policies? They’re key steps in leveraging technology for success. For the rest, see Accounting Today’s “State of Technology in Accounting” report here.

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A common misconception among startups and scaling companies is the belief that accounting and finance should be handled exclusively through either an internal team, a fractional service, or just pieced together by a CPA firm at year-end. This view overlooks how such singular approaches can create gaps in a company's financial management. Internal teams, while knowledgeable, can be costly and pose risks of staff turnover. Fractional services may offer strategic high-level advice without engaging in daily operations. CPA firms, focusing only on year-end filings, provide a seal of approval but not ongoing support. However, each approach has its merits. Internal teams provide deep familiarity with company processes and facilitate on-site communication. Fractional components like Aquifer CFO can manage both daily financial tasks and strategic decision-making continuously & CPA firms ensure compliance and enhance investor confidence with their authoritative stamp at fiscal year-end. Point being it doesn't need to be mutually exclusive, Integrating the best aspects of internal teams, fractional services, and CPA firms can transform accounting and finance departments. This hybrid approach ensures detailed daily management, strategic guidance, and rigorous compliance, enabling these departments to thrive.

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The challenges of 2024 are forcing investors to rethink how they manage their portfolio companies. Unlike full-time CFOs, fractional CFOs enable PE-backed companies to access strategic financial support as and when needed. #PrivateEquity https://loom.ly/MoPGbj8

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Is your firm considering increasing fees this year? Ignition's 2024 Tax and compliance pricing benchmark reveals 81% of firms plan to increase prices for basic individual tax returns this year. Download the report to see what pricing adjustments accounting firms are planning to make in 2024: https://lnkd.in/gugNJcrc

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Confused by Prepaid Expenses & Lease Accounting? Our new guide simplifies it ALL! ✅ Understand prepaid expenses & their impact on your balance sheet ✅ Learn the difference between prepaid & accrued rent under ASC 842 ✅ Discover when prepaid expenses hit your income statement Get the full breakdown here [https://bit.ly/3UeuYps] #leaseaccounting #prepaidexpenses #ASC842

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Reflecting back on our recent Sequence <> a16z Finance Leadership dinner, here are some of the notable (some might say, controversial) points that we've been reflecting on since: 1. Budgets don’t matter at early stage. CFOs should be ROI focused, not cost focused. As CFO, if you get asked for 10k, your job is to figure out how you can give them 50k if the unit economics / ROI works. 2. Your most valuable customers are often not your most profitable, example of one company's largest customer running at only a 20% contribution margin due to heavy discounting that sales & CS were offering to keep them onboard. Be very careful about what you optimise for with pricing and commitments to maintain large logos.. 3. RevOps needs to bridge the gap between sales and finance, it's crucial that any CRO has a strong RevOps leader behind them. The expression that sales at scale is 99% RevOps is completely true. 4. CFOs should have engineers within their teams, where they can set roadmaps and priorities. One enterprise CFO has around 10 engineers that are not part of the engineering org, but effectively report to him. This ensures that the team can build/implement the financial and revenue tooling that the business needs. Thanks again to all of our attendees: Adrian Kaplan, Jim Cook, Mark Khavkin, Ram Bartov, Charly Kevers, Lily Yang, Varun Gupta, Noah Barr, Mary M. Liu, Milan Parikh, Keith M., Doug Ireland, Grace Liu, Matt Tarantino, Bernard Huger, Gaurav Agrawal, Jaya Jaware, Julie Bi, Justin Tung ☁, Abhinav Swarup, Michelle Valentine, Sasha Orloff, Sharon Olexy, Joe Morrissey, Ivan Makarov, Seema Amble, Connor Nowinski, Casey Woo

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6 Comments

The digital tax debate is far from over, and policymakers should follow sound principles in developing, refining, and (in some cases) removing digital tax policies.

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How to (actually) calculate CAC In everything from growth projections to company valuations, it’s common to use CAC and CPA interchangeably — but it’s wrong, and it can cost you. In this post, we break down growth’s most important jargon to demystify the true cost of acquisition, and dig into the most common mistakes leading growth teams off track 💯 This is a big topic that’s best addressed with live examples and interactive frameworks. To that end, we're included a number of examples of real companies, plus interactive spreadsheets that you can access throughout the guide 💪😎 👉 Examples of real companies: https://lnkd.in/eRxBRbJd 👉 Google Docs guide: https://lnkd.in/eNDP9hku «‎ 👍 » — if you found this post helpful

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Ready to transform your business's accounting and bookkeeping operations? Learn more today at reconciled.com

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