Situation: The Owner of a Microbusiness (1-5 employees), is having success growing a technology company by himself by following a passion. The owner admits that he lacks business experience, including accounting and financial knowledge, and needs a little help. As a growing microbusiness, money is tight. 

Solution: FOSS serves as a business partner and provides advisory services with its FOSS CFO NOW service designed for the microbusiness. For an affordable monthly subscription fee, FOSS provides access to years of experience and a network that speeds up the learning curve to avoid common mistakes. FOSS ensures that basic business processes are in place to safeguard the company and provides a quarterly financial review meeting to help keep the business owner on track and well-organized.

Success: The business owner no longer feels the need to go it alone and has confidence that processes are being implemented to support current and future growth, and to safeguard the company. With FOSS overseeing the back office support of the company, the business owner can stay focused on his core competencies and passions that have made the company successful.

Situation: A rapidly growing company on Cleveland's East Side is experiencing growing pains. They are outgrowing processes and skills that worked for the first few years of their business. Like many businesses, they were hanging on for the ride with quick fixes just trying to keep up. The current bookkeeper performs data entry into QuickBooks, but lacks accounting knowledge. This is the only person in the company that performs accounting and financial duties. The business owner also lacks financial experience and is unsure of how to manage this position. No financial reporting or analysis is being conducted.

Solution: All small businesses need bookkeeping, accounting leadership, and financial management, but not all need it on a full-time basis. FOSS developed a custom managed services solution that provides part-time bookkeeping services, accounting supervision with checks and balances, cash management, and a few hours of CFO work each quarter to conduct much needed reporting, analysis, and planning. A predictable monthly service fee was established to fit the budget.

Success: The company now benefits from up-to-date bookkeeping with confidence of data integrity. FOSS corrected several accounting mistakes made by the untrained bookkeeper that caused overstated profits and poor decision-making based on misleading data. FOSS provides must-have reporting and analysis and has developed Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) tracked on an ongoing basis. Because FOSS completes the day-to-day accounting in about 15 hours per week (versus the previous 40 hours per week), the company is able to gain the additional CFO-level leadership without paying more.