Transitioning a Company To A New Owner – A Basic Checklist

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If you’re taking over a business from an existing owner, transitioning its ownership is the selling process’s final phase. You have closed the deal, the sale and purchase agreement is now signed, and the purchase price has been paid to the seller by the buyer. The last step is to complete the final few actions.

What Must Be Transferred To New Owners Once The Business Has Been Sold?

The previous owner must give their successor all key information that they will need to run their business. This includes:

  • Safe combinations
  • Alarm codes
  • Software, online access, and computer passwords and codes
  • Client list
  • The keys for the filing cabinets, vehicles, and buildings
  • Personal contact details
  • Manuals for the equipment
  • Distributor, vendor and supplier lists

Must The Business Entity Be Dissolved Following The Sale?

Any business structured as an LLC or corporation must be dissolved. This can be done by meeting with the partners or board members and passing a resolution to dissolve the business. The IRS must be notified via form 966, and Articles of Dissolution must be filed with the state in which the business was set up.

Taking Professional Advice

It’s important to take professional advice about how to proceed with the closure or transfer of a business. Professional consultants can advise about these steps, but take care to choose a team with extensive skill and experience in the industry. If you read Corporate Business Solutions reviews, you’ll see how important it is to choose the right business analysts who can offer you the vital advice that you need at this key stage of transferring a business.

Which Other Steps Must Be Taken To Close Or Transfer The Business?

An attorney will also be required to cease the operations of the business. Any business which was established as a sole proprietorship will automatically close after the completion of these steps:

  • All contacts for every contract assumed or assigned by the buyer must be notified
  • All creditors must be notified to explain the way in which bills will be settled
  • All business licenses or permits will be canceled along with other registrations and assumed business names
  • Cancellation notice must be given on the lease
  • Any insurance policies which aren’t being taken over by the buyer must be canceled
  • All bills must be paid off and all amounts receivable that aren’t being taken over by the buyer must be collected
  • All remaining assets must be distributed after the closure of the sale
  • The Employer ID number must be closed with the IRS
  • The business’s lines of credit must be closed
  • Final wages must be paid to employees together with payroll fees and taxes
  • All necessary tax forms must be filed

Completing The Post-Closing Process

With help from your broker, attorney and business consultant, you should have plenty of guidance to get you through the post-closing final process. Once all of these steps are complete, the deal is finalized. The employees can now be notified together with suppliers, customers, and the public. You’ll now be ready to move forward with your new venture.

 

Valuing Small Businesses to Determine Their Earning Potential

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When it comes to valuing small businesses, you need to do more than simply look at their tax records. You’ll also need to consider other factors like its location, the way it’s being managed, and its financial track record. If the management style and location are good, closely examining its financial history is a good indicator of the company’s earning potential.

When you’re keen to take over a business, you’ll need to know just how much income you can expect to gain. Looking at the company’s financial history will enable you to work out the amount the business actually makes as well as how much its owner is currently making for themselves when the business running costs are subtracted. The advice that you’ll find offered by consultants such as those at CBS-CBS.com includes the following four steps to work out the company’s earning potential.

1.Determining The SDE

The main earning metric used to value any small business is the SDE (Seller Discretionary Earnings). This is the company’s net income before any depreciation, taxes, interest expenses, amortization, and any other owner benefits. The majority of small business financial records tend to be compiled to minimize their tax burden. Therefore, those records are unlikely to fully reflect the true financial performance of the company. This means that the financials will need to be formally reconstructed or recast to determine an amount of income that more accurately reflects the company’s earnings.

2.Asking The Seller About Specifics

To obtain greater insight, it’s necessary to ask the business’s owner specific questions about the amount their business is currently making for them. This might include details about how the sales have been calculated, adjustments that have been made for tax purposes and breakdowns of operating expenses. You may worry about asking the seller for this kind of detail, but there is no reason for concern. Sellers should expect this information to be requested and, if they’re serious about wanting to sell, sharing their financial specifics should not be a problem.

3.Using Annual Gross Sales

A business’ annual gross sales may be worked out by examining its tax returns and financial statements. Usually, small business owners make between 10% and 20% of gross sales. When you determine the figure, remember that if you decide to buy the business you need to subtract the acquisition’s cost then add the costs involved in improving the business in the future.

4.Estimate SDE By Using The Business’s Selling Price

In general, if you examine the selling price of the business, you may be able to work out the SDE. So if, as an example, the asking price is $625,000, it’s safe to assume that the business owner’s SDE is around $250,000 to $312,500. If the business is losing money, don’t automatically assume that it isn’t worth buying the business. After all, you’re buying it for its future and existing earnings potential. It’s possible the business is making a loss because it is poorly managed, but its employees may be skilled, it may have a good reputation and a great location. If you buy the business then improve its management, it’s possible to boost potential earnings and create healthy profits over time.

Key Questions You Need To Ask Yourself When Planning A Business Exit Strategy

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If you’re planning your exit strategy from your small business, it can be difficult to know how to get started. While a lot of the planning is bound to be unique to your own company, there are some questions you could ask yourself that will help to get you started with developing your business exit plan and avoid some common mistakes.

Will You Want To Remain Involved With Your Business Forever?

When you start up a business, you’re probably not thinking about a time when you no longer want to be involved with it. However, even at the earliest stages of your endeavor, you need to be realistic about the future. Even when you dedicate your whole career to running one business, eventually you’ll probably be planning to retire at some point. So, you need to set up the business from its earliest days to ensure this will always be a possibility at some point. You should also revisit this question on a regular basis as your plans and life evolve to make sure that you’re moving towards the right goals for you.

What Financial Goals do You Have?

Everyone has their own financial goals that they hope to achieve. Even if you love your business idea, to be truly committed to it you will almost certainly have financial goals and needs that play into your business plans. Whatever yours are, they will have a key role to play in the outcome of your business exit strategy plan.

How Does Planning For Your Exit Work?

Working with professionals like Corporate Business Solutions Consultants is the best way to make the right decisions for you. You will have to work on executable items like deal structure and taxes, and you’ll also need an understanding of your company’s full value so you can work out all your available options.

Planning Ahead

If your business exit is looming on the horizon, it’s important to choose a strategy and stick to it. However, if you’ve got sufficient time to plan in advance you should usually set up for several options. The earlier you start planning, the more options you’ll have to pick from when you’re contemplating your company’s future.

No Single Perfect Solution

Just like all other aspects of running your own business, there’s no single perfect exit strategy that fits everyone. In the end, finding the right strategy for your business and you as an individual depends on several different factors. It may also develop or change as you move through your business’s lifecycle. The best thing to do, therefore, is to plan for your business exit strategy at as early a stage as possible. Seeking professional advice is always the best idea so you can devise a plan that meets all your unique requirements. When you think proactively about the process – how it could look, how it could be carried out, and what kind of consequences there could be – it’s more likely that you’ll achieve success when the time comes to part ways.

Acquisition Or Acquihire? Which Is Right For Your Business Exit Strategy?

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When you’re planning your business exit strategy, you’ll need to determine which approach is right for you. One of the most common options is a merger or acquisition in which your business will be bought by or will merge with another similar organization. There are a few advantages to this, but there are also a few downsides to bear in mind. One alternative is to consider becoming part of an Acquihire. This is a less common option, but it also offers a number of benefits. Here, we compare the two options so you can determine which one, if either, is right for your needs.

The Advantages Of A Merger Or Acquisition

When you opt for an acquisition or merger to exit your business, you could benefit from extra flexibility depending on who you decide to sell the company to. You may be able to have a more flexible involvement in terms of your time, or you may be able to have the freedom you need to walk away from the business.

One excellent thing about adopting this strategy is that you can negotiate how much you will sell your business for, whereas if you sell to the public, your company will be valued relative to others in your industry.

There is a major downside, though. It can be an extremely time-consuming and expensive process to sell your business in this way. In fact, evidence shows that 90% of businesses fail to get bought at all. Even if you achieve a successful sale, your company no longer exists in its original form, and there are numerous consequences linked to this action. It’s therefore always wise to have an alternative plan in place, just in case your dream of a merger or acquisition doesn’t pan out.

Becoming Part Of An Acquihire

An acquihire is different from a standard acquisition. With this exit strategy, a company will buy out your company purely to acquire its skilled or talented employees. While this means that your business legacy won’t endure in terms of its name, your employees will be provided for. You will, however, need to work on negotiating terms with the specific needs of your employees in mind.

One of the advantages of this type of exit strategy is that you’ll have the opportunity to negotiate terms so you’ll increase your profits as well as a positive future for the employees who have been loyal to you. You’ll also benefit from a neat exit from the business with no need to have any concerns about lingering obligations and responsibilities.

Again, however, there is a downside. Just like with a standard acquisition or merger, the process may be expensive, difficult and time-consuming. It may also be harder to find buyers who are interested in acquihire arrangements. Of course, you’ll also lose the business legacy that you have built up over the years.

Which Exit Strategy Is Right For You?

There are many different possible exit strategies for you to consider, and these are just two. If neither is a good choice, Corporate Business Solutions can help you to make a well-informed decision. You can get all the information you need to choose the right type of exit strategy to suit your own needs and the needs of your employees.

Top Tips For Improving Your Business Efficiency

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If you’re running a business, you’re no doubt extremely busy. It’s hard to find time to get everything done, but if you can improve the efficiency of your business, you’ll find that you can not only get more done but actually boost your revenue and take your company to a whole new level. With this in mind, here are some top tips to improve your business efficiency.

Adopt Project Management programs

Keeping every member of your team on track couldn’t be more important when you need to improve your efficiency, and that’s why adopting a project management program such as Trello is especially helpful. This will enable you to plan time more effectively and to ensure that all tasks are completed in a timely manner. You’ll be able to see at a glance whether a specific job has been completed and, if not, it can be chased up rapidly.

Carry Out Weekly Reviews

Each week, it’s well worth planning a half-hour into your schedule to review everything that went well and all the lessons that you have learned that can help you to improve in the future. With a weekly review session, you’ll be able to identify your successes, learn from them, replicate them and celebrate them, as well as analyze everything that went wrong so you can learn how similar mistakes can be avoided in the future.

Plan the Next Week

At the end of every week, it’s important to look over your diary and plan the week to come in advance. What do you require to prepare for upcoming appointments? Which jobs do you need to complete before attending them? Once the week begins, you’ll probably lack sufficient time to think about the things you may be missing or the things you haven’t yet achieved, so plan ahead so that you can be well-prepared.

Process Finances Regularly

Try to make a specific time slot every month or week to process finances and check bank accounts for outgoings and incomings. This will ensure you stay on top of your expenses and expenditures so you don’t have a lot of chasing up to do in 6 months’ time.

Arrange Marketing In Advance

Marketing is an essential task, but it can often be left behind in the rush of day-to-day business management. Create your marketing materials in advance so you can be fully prepared. If you spend a whole day working on all your upcoming newsletters, blogs, and posts, you’ll not only be more efficient but you’ll also be able to create better flow between your posts since you’ll be in the groove.

Reply To Your Emails Once Daily

It can be tempting to keep checking your emails all day long, but actually, this isn’t an efficient strategy. Taking time out to reply to every single email that comes in means that you’ll be constantly distracted. Instead, take time out once per day to respond to everything that has come in. This will keep your inbox manageable without taking up too much of your time.

Bring In Expert Advisors

It can be difficult to know how to use your time to your best advantage, however, when you bring in professional help you can be sure that you’ll have expert assistance at your fingertips to improve your efficiency. Corporate Business Solutions are on hand to offer you expert advice to help boost your company’s efficiency, improve its policies and drive its efficiency so that your business can begin to grow and thrive.

Cut Costs Not Corners

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At some point, you’re sure to need to cut costs in your business. Finding a way to maximize your profits is essential if you want your organization to be successful, and following through with your business plan is impossible if you’re weighed down with obsolete expenditures and wasteful spending.

Cutting costs is one thing, but you certainly don’t want to reduce the value you provide to clients and customers. Your business needs to stay effective, and so you need to take the right approach to cost-cutting. You need to find a way to maximize what you can get using the resources you have rather than trying to find a way to manage without the essentials. With this in mind, here are some strategies which could prove helpful.

Focus On Keeping It Simple

One problem that many businesses face is overextending themselves and putting out products that lack demand. Experts recommend that you list each product and process in place and ask whether they are contributing to the company’s primary goals. Focusing on what clients and customers want will help to improve your business’ main focus and make it more profitable.

Plan Ahead

It’s possible to get some excellent deals for your business when you plan ahead. Signing up ahead for services or purchasing in bulk can help to save money while also guarding against logistical errors which would mean paying extra for an urgent service.

Use Time-Saving Technology

The latest technology helps us to save money and time, so automation can often be well worth making an additional financial investment. For example, investing in online management systems and services can help to reduce the amount of time spent on endless paperwork.

Could Freelancers Be the Answer?

The remote and freelance economies are booming, so if you don’t actually need someone to be physically present in the office to carry out certain tasks, you may be better off finding an affordable freelance worker online. This could help you to get better value for money from your hire. It’ll also help you to reduce costs by only employing additional help when it’s actually required and for the precise number of hours necessary rather than having somebody constantly on staff.

Use Expert Advisors

One way to ensure that you are maximizing your business potential and cutting costs without cutting corners is to bring in professional business analysts and consultants who can help you to pinpoint savings opportunities while also enabling you to get maximum profit from your company. Check out Corporate Business Solutions reviews to find out more about how we can help you.

Our expert team can work with you to identify potential pressure points and determine ways to circumvent them so your business can stay profitable while shaving off unnecessary expenditures. Since every one of them has extensive experience in the world of business so you can rest assured that they’ll be well-placed to ensure the best possible outcomes for your organization, whatever its nature or size.

Can Marketing Strategies Impact On Your Exit Strategy?

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As a business owner, you’ve probably never put the terms “exit strategy” and “marketing plans” together before. Yet when you combine both of these things, the results can be especially impressive. If you implement one properly, the benefits to the other are significant. For example, marketing strategies have a key role to play in determining the value of your business once you’ve executed your exit strategy. Conversely, having an exit strategy that is well-defined can make it much easier to market and grow your business.

While both require their own unique approach, it’s possible to think about and implement both together. Marketers are able to take an appropriate approach to help the business grow if they already have their exit strategy firmly in mind. Also, strategists and exit planners are able to guide the marketing team with their exit plan in mind.

Therefore, if a business is to be truly successful, both concepts have to co-exist.

The Importance Of Marketing Strategies

Marketing strategies are the tactical blueprints which you’ll follow and which perfectly align with your business goals. The best marketing strategies are simple to implement but are also very diverse, using a wide variety of marketing platforms. Every marketing plan goal should be to put the business and brand in the most positive light so leads can be converted into new customers and profitable sales.

The Importance Of An Exit Strategy

All business owners build their business thinking that one day they may sell it onto an investor. Therefore, having an ultimate exit strategy in mind is important for the business to be successful. Focusing on gaining more new clients, increasing sales volumes and growing its bottom line is key. When investors start to look into the business, those figures translate into higher valuations and allow business owners to exit for the greatest possible price.

Planning A Marketing For Exit Strategy

Marketing for an exit strategy must be defined clearly so that the team knows what must happen at every stage. This means that clear goals must be put in place with specific numbers linked to every goal.

There are several questions that must be defined to put together an effective strategy. Who are your business’ ultimate customers? Which services and products do you sell that interest those customers? Why are they interested in those services and products? Are they ready to buy straight away?

The strategy you adopt needs to be tied closely to each lead that enters the sales funnel, and to every qualified lead that is pushed to the sales team. You could even ensure your marketing strategies are tied into your monthly sales figures and ROI. Above all, your team must know which of the goals are most vital and which are destined to have the largest impact on the final goal – executing your exit strategy.

Seeking Professional Advice

If you’re planning an exit strategy for your business, seeking professional advice is always wise. Corporate Business Solutions Consultants are available to offer you the help you seek, and as a team of experts in the field of business, you can depend on us to point you in the right direction for maximum profit.

Are You Focusing On The Wrong Numbers For Your Business?

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If you’re considering how much your business is worth, it’s possible that you’re focusing on completely the wrong numbers. It’s true that a business’ value all boils down to one equation: the multiple of the profits that the acquirer would be willing to spend to buy your company. However, most business owners make the mistake of believing that the most effective way of improving their company’s value is to increase their profits. For this reason, they work on finding ways to increase the amount that they sell and, as they’re experts within their field, it’s only natural that clients and customers are keen to engage personally with them. That means spending a lot more time meeting clients face to face, speaking on the phone and traveling to increase their sales.

When a business owner adopts this model, it’s true that their company can grow slightly, Yet, the owner’s own life becomes considerably more challenging. Clients demand a lot more service and time. The business’ employees start to burn out. Soon, it begins to feel as if there aren’t sufficient hours in a day. Health starts to suffer, relationships become strained and revenue flatlines. All of this comes from working too hard and too much.

If this feels all-too-familiar, it’s time to look at which numbers really matter for your business.

Which Numbers Matter?

When you spend too much effort and time on increasing profits, the company’s overall value can actually diminish. So, what’s the solution? Remember that we said above that the important equation is a multiple of the profits that your business’ acquirer would be willing to spend to buy your company? You need to instead focus your efforts on driving that multiple. By doing this, your company’s value can actually grow, improving your profits and redeeming your freedom.

So, what is driving your multiple? Here, we take a closer look at some of the key factors that you should be concentrating on.

Your Differentiated Market Position

Buyers only purchase what they can’t easily create for themselves. Therefore, you can expect your business to be worth more to a potential purchaser if you’ve got a monopoly over what you’re selling, or you’re one of just a handful of companies with a license to supply the specific service or product within your market.

Plenty Of Runways

Although most business owners think that having a larger market share is something they should be striving towards, in the eyes of business acquirers, this may actually reduce the company’s value since most opportunities have already been stopped up.

Recurring Revenue

Buyers will need to know how well the business will cope if you leave. If there is plenty of recurring revenue, this will assure them that even when you’ve left the company the business will continue to thrive.

Well-Kept Financials

The profitability and size of your business matters to potential investors and the quality of bookkeeping is something that will be extremely significant to anyone who wants to buy your company.

Seeking Professional Advice

If you’re seeking an effective exit strategy to leave your business, it’s important to get help from a team of professional consultants. Visit CBS-CBS.com to find out more about how our expert team can give you the help and advice you need.

Tax Planning Trends Your Business Needs to Be Aware Of

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Over the past few years, we’ve seen some major changes in the tax legislation landscape. The complexity and frequency of those changes have meant that businesses have had an increasing need to focus more resources on staying compliant. Worldwide, more than 40 governments have changed hands in a short space of time, and tax legislation has been harnessed in numerous ways by those new leaders. There seems to be no sign of a slow-down any time soon, and it’s becoming clear that tax enforcement will probably just get stronger in the months and years to come. It couldn’t be more important to be aware of the key trends which are currently at the top of global tax authorities’ agendas, so here, we’ll take a closer look at four of them.

Digital Tax

Globally, there has been an ongoing attempt to switch to more digital forms in order to report taxes. This is already having an effect on companies around the world. Not only is there a new format to consider but the level of detail which is required is also more extensive. Increased scrutiny through auditing is also becoming more widespread. This means that businesses are increasingly required to invest more money into expertise and new technology. You need to ensure that you’ve planned your annual budget accordingly to take into account this extra investment and taken the time to source suitably experienced professionals to help you with your strategic tax planning needs such as Corporate Business Solutions Consultants.

Changes in Rates and Rules

In the USA as well as in other parts of the world, tax reforms are well underway. Companies that trade across international borders are going to increasingly need to assess what impact this is going to have on their operations. GST and VAT laws are in the process of being amended around the globe to ensure overseas digital suppliers have liability for their remittance and collection, and many jurisdictions and countries are planning to expand their GST and VAT to digital services across borders.

Greater Transparency

Tax authorities around the world are now focusing on TP (transfer pricing) thanks to political and public pressure, as well as the transparency that is afforded by CbCR (country by country reporting). As transfer pricing is moving from a location-dependent model into the digital environment, businesses that deploy it must generate new strategies, especially as detected of transfer pricing risk is going to be facilitated by technology.

Tax Incentives

Although the goal is to provide businesses with a level playing field, tax incentives remain a mainstay since governments must attract overseas investors to certain sectors. In recent times, tax breaks have focused on R&D on both a corporate and personal tax level. However, there are signs which suggest this trend could be reversing since the figures internationally year on year is down.

With these four key tax planning trends in mind, it’s important to ensure that you have taken appropriate advice from experts in the field. Tax legislation can be a minefield, and you need to ensure that you’ve maximized your opportunities to benefit and mitigated your potential for risk.

2019’s Coming to An End – It’s Time for Your Business Annual Review

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Often, people plan their business goals for the year ahead, however, not everybody takes the time to review what’s happened for their business over the past year. There’s a lot to learn about business through research, attending courses and talking to leaders in your field. Yet it’s your own experiences that teach you about the challenges your business is likely to face and how you can best overcome them. An annual business review helps you to determine how well the year went for your company so you can use that knowledge to plan for the year to come.

How Do I Carry Out My Annual Business Review?

It’s isn’t as difficult as you might imagine reviewing your company’s progress during the year. There are just a few questions to answer that allow you to reflect on your challenges and progress:

Did your business make as much progress as you expected this year?

Were your business goals for this year met?

What did your business achieve?  It’s important to note all achievements, large or small. Something as impressive as having exceeded revenue targets, or something as apparently insignificant as keeping the website up to date.

How were those things achieved? You should think about all the strategies that you used. This will help you to learn what works well for you so you can use those strategies again in the future.

What did you fail to achieve? Did you set yourself goals at the beginning of the year that remain unmet? Why is that the case? When you know what has prevented you from meeting your goals you can learn how to avoid making those mistakes in the future.

What was your company’s greatest success this year? How did it achieve this success? What can you learn from this that can be applied to projects in the future?

Which were the biggest frustrations you faced? What went wrong for the business this year? How can those issues be avoided or mitigated next year? You may need some extra help with the elements of running your business and Corporate Business Solutions can assist with this.

Noting the Key Business Information for The Year

Once you’ve answered the questions above, it’s time to note the following key information for your business this year. When you have metrics that you compare year after year, you can quantify the impact that your hard work is having on your company’s overall success. Some of the metrics you should be recorded on an annual basis include:

  • How many customers did you have this year?
  • How many people visited your website?
  • How many people subscribed to your email?
  • How many new followers do you have on social media this year?
  • What was your company’s total revenue for the year?
  • What were your business’ total costs?
  • What were your profits this year?

Once you start noting this information down every year, you will be able to determine the differences between one year and the next. You’ll also be able to correlate your successes and failures with your differing business strategies. This will inform your business planning for the year to come.