Finance & Accounting for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
Our Purpose is to Champion and Guide Founders, Operators, Entrepreneurs, and Owners on Their Mission to Drive Growth, Progress, and Innovation
We do this by building finance and accounting into a foundational core within our clients’ businesses. This core provides stability, it improves decision making, and it provides for immense agility.
Our Services
Accounting
Our accounting services are aimed at collecting and reporting financial data. This requires that we design, build, and actively manage the systems, underlying structure, and ongoing accounting processes to produce accurate, timely, and useful financial information for your business.
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Bill/Expense Entry
Bank Feed Management
Reconciliations
Fixed Asset Register Management
A/R Reporting
A/P Reporting
Prepaid/Deferred Revenue Accounting
Payroll Accounting
Sales Tax Accounting
Accounting & Finance Systems Selection
Accounting & Finance Systems Implementation
Accounting & Finance Systems Integration
Accounting Process Design & Implementation
Chart of Accounts Reorganizations
GAAP Guidance
Cash to Accrual Conversion
Accounting Data Quality Review
Financial Planning & ANalysis
We build and manage financial forecasts using improved financial data to guide and direct decisions. We use a financial forecast model as an analytical framework to analyze trends, forecast impacts, and map the steps between now and a desired future state.
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Financial Forecasting & Modeling
Annual Planning
Budgeting & Variance Reporting
Capital Project Analysis
Scenario Analysis
Trend Identification & Analysis
Investor Reporting
Consulting & Advisory
Our consulting and advisory work is about driving improvements in our clients’ businesses. We use our accounting and finance services as the foundation and then we layer in a persistent and consistent cadence of planning, analysis, and review of initiatives to support execution.
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Capital Structure Advisory
Revenue/Product Mix Improvement
Compensation Planning
Incentive Compensation Design
Start-Up Capital Raise Guidance
Net Working Capital Management
Start-Up Runway and Burn Management
Revenue Health
Bookings/Backlog/Pipeline Improvement
Margin Enhancement
Growth Consulting & Advisory
Business Risk Assessment
Long-term ownership planning/strategy
Vendor negotiation
Who We Are
We are professionals that support strategy using financial data. We design, build, and actively manage the operational finance and accounting of small businesses to form the bedrock of decision making and support our clients on their journey and mission.
Who We Are Not
We are not investment bankers, lawyers, CPAs, or recruiters. We do not sell businesses or raise capital. We do not advise on legal structures or agreements. We do not prepare tax returns or perform compilations, reviews, or audits.
Our Process
Engaging with Ballast means engaging with a process. Our services are not a menu of options, they are a variety of the services performed in the execution of our process. This process can be broken into three phases - accounting, finance, and consulting and advisory.
PHASE 1
Accounting
Good data drives good decision making. We define good data as data that is accurate, timely, and lends itself to analysis. The key to good data is implementation and management of the systems, the underlying structures, and the ongoing processes that capture financial information. We focus first on overhauling and implementing these systems, this structure, and the necessary processes to produce good data. This stage is the spadework necessary to prepare for the higher value-add Finance and Consulting phases.
PHASE 2
Finance
Our Finance phase is about taking the data generated by the Accounting phase, synthesizing it, analyzing, and forecasting. We use this phase to analyze past performance, project future performance, and understand the impact of changes on the business. Our finance work identifies opportunities for improvements, functions as an early indicator for negative trends, and it gives our clients confidence in their decision making.
PHASE 3
Consulting & Advisory
We combine the data we generate via our Accounting work with the analysis and insights we gain via our Finance work to identify, prioritize, and execute on improvements to our clients’ businesses. We work closely with our clients to drive the business forward, including renegotiating, resizing, and reorganizing the business. Providing value to our clients requires driving revenue, reducing costs, reducing investment, or reducing risk.
What Our Clients Say
"Top Line is a high growth professional services firm with multiple reporting lines, a highly variable cost structure, and a wide variety of products and pricing models. In less than 90 days, Ballast has been able to give us the financial visibility into our business we need to make informed investment decisions and sustain a high rate of growth. After trying a variety of approaches to build our finance function over the past few years, I finally feel like we have a solution to manage the strategic and tactical FP&A complexity required to grow our business at a price point our P&L can support."
Tom Corbitt
Founder & Managing Partner, Top Line Growth
“Ballast is an all-around standout partner in managing the financial side of Blue Ocean Brain. Collaborative and detailed, their financial acumen provides us with new insights and guidance as we manage through a rapid growth phase. By far, our most outstanding experience working with outside consultants. We truly see their team as an extension of our own.”
Claire Herring
Blue Ocean Brain
“Ballast brings a keen eye to managing the financial side of our business, with a unique ability to see the big picture while identifying key tactics that will have a big impact on our business. Their approach provided immediate value and results but they have never rested on their laurels, as they continued to work hard years after we first brought them onto our team. Ballast spends the time getting to know everyone at our company, they help us manage the people part of the changes we made to improve our financial processes. They come with my strongest recommendation.”
Jamie Christensen
Former President & Co-Founder, Outdoor Access
“With Ballast, KidMed has a true partner in business. The value we have received has surpassed the cost many times over. The Ballast team does what they do best which allows us to concentrate on what we do best--taking care of the medical needs of sick and injured kids.”
Dr. Jeff Bennett
Managing Partner, KidMed
“I have been exceedingly pleased with the finance and accounting services I have received from Ballast Consulting. The people with whom I have worked are smart, knowledgeable, and very responsive. In just two months, they have taken our finance and accounting to a new level. I give Ballast Consulting my highest recommendation.”
Doug White
Gather Workspaces