Advice before the decision, not after
Most of the expensive mistakes we see in small businesses were not accounting mistakes. They were decisions made without the numbers: a second location opened on the strength of a good quarter, a truck financed at a rate that ate the margin, a partner brought in on a handshake, a business sold for a price nobody had checked against the tax bill. Our advisory work exists to put a financial mind in the room before those decisions are made. Albert F. Latorre has provided business advisory and CFO-level consulting to small business owners since founding the firm in 1997, and it remains the part of the practice he is most involved in.
This is not a package. It is a relationship built around the questions your business is actually facing: Should the LLC become an S-corporation? Can we afford to hire? Why is there profit on paper and no cash in the bank? What should we charge? How do we bring my son into the business? What is it worth, and what would I actually keep after taxes if I sold? For owners who keep their books with us, most of this happens in the quarterly review. For larger decisions, it is a scoped project with a written deliverable.
Much of our advisory work is with Hispanic business owners who built a company from nothing and are now facing decisions their first accountant never talked about. It happens in Spanish when that is the language the business is run in.
- Entity selection and restructuring. LLC, S-corp, C-corp or partnership, chosen on your numbers.
- Cash-flow forecasting. A thirteen-week view of what comes in and goes out, so payroll is never a surprise.
- Pricing and margin analysis. Which jobs, customers and products actually make money.
- Financing and lender packages. Financials prepared the way a bank or the SBA needs to see them.
- Partner, family and succession planning. Bringing someone in, or handing the business on, without a tax surprise.
- Sale and exit analysis. What it is worth, how a deal is structured and what you keep after tax.
How advisory work is delivered
Quarterly reviews
For bookkeeping clients, a standing conversation each quarter: the trend, the tax estimate and the two or three decisions on the horizon. This is where most problems are caught while they are still small.
Scoped projects
A specific question gets a specific engagement: an entity analysis, a forecast for a lender, a valuation for a sale or a buy-in. Each has a written scope, a fixed fee and a deliverable you can hand to a bank, a buyer or a partner.
Fractional CFO
For businesses that have outgrown the owner’s spreadsheet but are not ready to hire a finance executive, a monthly arrangement: management reports, cash forecasting, budgets and a standing seat at the table when decisions are made.
Why owners bring us their decisions
We already know the numbers
Advice from the people who keep the books and file the taxes starts from facts, not a questionnaire.
Tax is part of every decision
A deal that looks good before tax and bad after it is not a good deal. We show you both.
Twenty-five years of small businesses
Restaurants, trucking, construction, clinics, retail. We have probably seen your decision before.
In Spanish or English
Strategy in the language the business is run in.
Advisory questions
A fraction. A full-time finance executive is a six-figure salary plus benefits; a fractional arrangement is a fixed monthly fee scaled to how much time your business actually needs, usually a few hours a month for reporting and a standing review. We quote it after understanding the business.
Usually one of four things: customers paying slowly, inventory or equipment tying up cash, loan principal payments that do not show on the profit-and-loss, or owner draws larger than the profit. A cash-flow analysis finds which, and each has a different fix.
We prepare the financial package lenders ask for: current and prior-year financial statements, a cash-flow projection, a debt schedule and, for SBA loans, the specific forms and narratives the program requires. Clean books make this fast; messy ones make it a project.
With a conversation about what you actually want: employment, ownership, or eventual control. Each has different tax and legal consequences, from payroll for a child employee to gifting or selling shares. We map the options and coordinate with your attorney on the documents.
For most small businesses, a multiple of normalized earnings, adjusted for what a buyer would have to pay someone to do your job. We prepare that analysis for a sale, a partner buy-in or a divorce, and we show you what you would keep after tax under different deal structures.
No. Scoped projects are available on their own. Ongoing advisory works best when we already see the numbers, which is why most advisory clients end up with us for bookkeeping and tax as well.