CRASH COURSE IN
ACCOUNTING & FINANCE
@CFOANDREW

ABOUT ME
Who I am
What I did
What I do
Why I quit

SPECIALIZATION
Lowers costs
Increases efficiency
See:
 David Heinemeier –
 2000 people paying $40 a month
 Adam Smith
 “the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market.”

WHY DO I CARE?
And what does this have to do with accounting & finance?
You have given up
But come back to me!
Because:
You can get more service for less
It is easier than ever to automate these pipes

EVERYONE AN
ENTREPRENEUR
Building the backbone

MANDATORY PIECES
•Entity
•Accounts
•Books
•Budgets
•Payroll
Yes, in this order
Let’s make this simple, shall we?

ENTITY
Make one.
Rocket Lawyer
Incorporate.com
Legal Zoom
Take Away: “Start-Up Entities” or Why Delaware is dumb.

ACCOUNTS
No one will give you money if there is no where to put it.
Separate the Activity
Separate the Activity
Separate the Activity
Take Away: This is how everyone screws themselves

BOOKS
No one is too small or too or too new
QuickBooks
Xero
Freshbooks
Take Away: Just stop. And Start. It’s not cute anymore.

BUDGETS
Why the 180 on advice dude?
Income & Expenses
The journey is the task
Is it enough profit?
Yes (s)
Take Away: Find the flaws and iterate them out

PAYROLL
Show them what they want to see and they stop looking
W-2s, 1099s, and SE Tax, Oh My!
Gusto
QBO
Take Away: This is NOT something to screw with

$1,500
That’s all it costs:
To have your company accounting run on autopilot
(Oh, and about 45 minutes a week)
If you don’t believe enough in yourself to invest that, no one else will

OUTSOURCING When and How

WHEN?
Opportunity cost (it’s always economics, isn’t it?)
Professionals
Services
Automation
Remember our discussion on specialization?

PROFESSIONALS
Understanding decisions versus commodities
Lawyers
CPAs
Design
Take Away: Learn to align incentives

SERVICES
A new way to think about “overhead”
You don’t have to “in-source”
Bookkeeping, web, administration
Necessary evils
Take Away: Start thinking about your business as stacked
percentages

AUTOMATION
Wherever possible. And it is generally possible.
Automation can be small and large
Administration
Control costs. A lot.
Take Away: Learn from the Hipsters

SPECIALIZATION CREATES
PROFIT
Or “How I learned to stop
worrying and love the
cloud”