As the pandemic shutdowns struck in March 2020, many businesses found themselves flat-footed with nothing to do but shut their doors. Businesses that had already embraced selling to customers — both in-store and online — could still count on revenue from their online stores. But most models called for revenue to flow through their doors as well as their portals.
The history of pie charts is more fascinating than you might think. A secret agent who plotted the collapse of the French economy with counterfeit money and the founder of modern nursing are but two of the intriguing historical characters who used pie charts to explain and advocate. The first known pie chart was published in 1801 by Scottish engineer, political economist, and secret agent Willi...
A key step on a product’s long march from inventor’s brainchild to customer’s favorite gadget is manufacturing. Technically, manufacturing is the process of assembling raw materials into products on a large scale using machinery. But manufacturing is no brief stop on the journey and it must be planned for and nurtured just like any other phase in a product’s birth. An optimized manufacturing pr...
...In the world of accounts payable (AP), one of the most challenging jobs is managing the onslaught of supplier invoices that arrive each month. This includes verifying that the invoices are real — small businesses experience billing fraud twice as often as their larger counterparts, according to an Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) report — and then paying the ones that are....
Imagine if a warehouse wasn’t a place to store inventory but just another stop along the distribution path to a customer. This is the idea behind an inventory management strategy known as rolling inventory. Using this strategy, the delivery truck augments the warehouse space. Instead of going through the time and expense of offloading and storing an entire truck’s worth of goods, the rolling inven...
A financial controller’s list of priorities reflects the wide-ranging and complex responsibilities associated with the role – from overseeing day-to-day accounting and finance tasks to managing staff and technology. Depending on the organization, a controller may have to create new policies and processes from scratch, as well as ensuring that existing processes run as efficiently as possible.
As the head of the organization’s accounting team, the financial controller plays an increasingly strategic role in ensuring the company runs smoothly. There are many opportunities for controllers to improve the efficiency of day-to-day financial operations and enhance the business overall. New technologies help companies streamline or eliminate manual tasks and create more accurate financial...
If you want insights into how a company’s business is performing, operating income is a key metric to understand. Operating income measures the profitability of a company’s core business operations after deducting all operating expenses. It shows how efficiently the company can generate cash from its business operations. By excluding the effect of taxes, interest and one-time events such as acquis...
An example of the former comes from the publishing industry. A publisher creates books which they sell to bookstores and bookstore chains at a steep discount in exchange for a bulk purchase. Historically, the discount offered to bookstores is 40%, allowing the book store room to make a profit by selling it to consumers at a higher price.
