Setting budgets, saving money, and regularly contributing a tiny portion of income to your retirement account can not just help you meet your financial emergencies but also allows you to secure a safe and healthy post-retirement life. It is true that saving money on a regular-basis is a tough job for most millennials as they lack money-management and budgeting awareness. Creating an ideal budget for the month is not an alien job, all that you need to do is to stick to the devised budget the way you have planned or intended it to be.

Money-related issues can cause you a great deal of stress, especially when you have to support your entire family with many mouths to feed. To stay on top of your budget, you first need to have a well thought out brainstorming session for sorting things out like your monthly income, monthly expenses, anticipated saving benchmark and other similar things. Budgeting doesn’t have to be that hard. It all depends on the motivation level of a person; whether or not they truly want to save money for hard times. Setting your monthly saving targets can help you save a significant portion of your money which could further be invested somewhere useful or help in financial emergencies and difficulties.

Look At the Bigger Picture

For ideal budgeting, you need to learn the art of the game first for staying on top of your cash flow. Millennials who are already exposed to various ways of spending money now need to plan sensibly and make a budget wisely or else, they will never be able to save money at all. It doesn’t matter what tool or technique you consider to use for ideal budgeting, as long as you know the significance of making a budget—you are never in the ruins.

Let’s suppose you are using a budget spreadsheet. You will have a better understanding of your finances and where your money is going each month. Also, you will feel more in control of your finances which will ultimately get you one step closer to meeting your financial goals. According to studies, most millennials face financial traumas early in their professional careers because they fail to manage their finances properly. A lack of money-management skills begins with lack of planning and motivation to save money for meeting financial problems. Those who regularly contribute to their retirement, 401k, or IRA account can enjoy their post-working life more than anyone else because they will have the financial security and safety to make the most out of it.

Create a Budget

Creating a budget plan for the month allows you to live comfortably within your means. You need to precisely know your current financial status and how much you can afford to spend in a month. For that, you need to set both short and long-term goals for creating the right plan for ideal saving and budgeting. This indicates that planning and budget forecasting is critically important for creating a successful budgeting plan. According to research, those who have the habit of saving can have a healthy, more stable, and secure future.

Stick With Your Budget Strategy

Once you have a clear picture of the ins and outs of your cash flow, you need to refine your budget strategy. Tightening and cutting your extra expenses will help you save more which means that sticking with your budgeting strategy and plan is ideal in every sense. First things first, always pay your debt. After that, you need to set your priorities. There are certain unavoidable expenses like utility and household bills which cannot be avoided and that cannot be controlled. However, you can cut back on grocery and shopping bills by limiting your spending habits.

Get Help from a Budgeting Expert

If you are not good at numbers or setting up a proper budget, you can hire the professional services of budgeting experts or planners. From bookkeeping and inspection to planning, they will have the creative vision to provide you a workable monthly budgeting plan.


About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual accounting, providing services to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud-hosted desktop where their entire team and tax accountant may access the QuickBooks file and critical financial documents in an efficient and secure environment. Complete Controller’s team of  US based accounting professionals are certified QuickBooks^TMProAdvisor’s providing bookkeeping and controller services including training, full or partial-service bookkeeping, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, vendor and receivables management, process and controls advisement, and customized reporting. Offering flat rate pricing, Complete Controller is the most cost effective expert accounting solution for business, family office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.

The key performance indicators of a company include quantitative measures that use an instrument for measuring the performance of the company. This performance indicator is used to identify the contribution of operational activities for attaining objectives and vision. Specifically, the key financial performance evaluates financial elements of a company for making a comparison with other competitors in the industry.

Key performance indicators are essential for attaining success in an architectural business. There are many firms operating in the architecture sector. In this aspect, the focus of most of the medium firms emphasizes on reducing the cost of the business. Through evaluation of financial performance indicators, businesses compare their standings with other similar businesses. The business maintains all financial records through practices of bookkeeping to record the financial aspect. Analysis of key financial performance indicators by the architect helps to identify the quality of operations and its overall impact on business performance. Financial performance indicators are divided into a different form based on the nature of the business. The main financial KPI’s for an architectural engineering firm are presented below.

1. Utilization Rate

The important element of an architect’s business is to identify utilization rate. This includes the proportion of time that is spent on development of different projects with an actual number of hours worked. This reflects the relation of direct labor and total hours worked. This financial performance includes the time that is provided by the client for completion of a specific project within a specified time. This does not measure overall productivity, which is difficult for architectural firms. Moreover, utilization rate neither specifies the level of profitability through maintaining an optimal rate the enhance the profit potential. The financial key performance indicator of utilization rate measures overall efficiency and effectiveness with efficient utilization of primary utilization in the business. The ideal range of utilization ratio is for the company to attain 60-65 % for the professional and technical staff of an architecture firm.

2. Overhead Rate

Overhead Rate is the ratio of indirect expenses to the direct labor costs of a company. This is an important financial performance indicator for identifying profit and loss based on development of appropriate rates. This is made by comparison of the company’s actual and projected financial performance that includes non-projected costs. This is a complicated aspect in comparison to other financial indicators. It is not possible to measure the actual rate for overhead in an architectural firm to identify expected returns. In this aspect, lower overhead rates result in higher profit margins. Generally, architecture firms tend to maintain a rate between 150-175% of direct labor. This rate can be maintained through controlling overhead rate. An increase in this rate requires the business to take appropriate action.

3. Break Even Rate

The break even rate is varied across different employees with certain costs. This rate represents the actual cost that is incurred by each employee of the company. It is measured in architecture firms on the basis of actual overhead rate and employee salary per hour. This rate is measured on the basis of actual work that is done by the employee with utilization of different resources. This makes a comparison of actual labor costs per hour, an employee’s salary, and their working hours.

4. Net Multiplier

Net multiplier is the comparison of net operating revenue with direct labor costs. If the architecture firm considers the direct labor as capital investment, this means that the net multiplier is presenting the return on investment. This rate identifies the amount of a company’s earnings from spending on direct labor. If the result of the net multiplier is greater than the break even rate, the company is earning profits or vice versa.

5. Profit to Earnings Ratio

Profit maximization is the aim of every business. This ratio measures the amount that is left after all spending. This ratio measures the effectiveness of architecture for completing different projects. The higher ratio reflecting greater profits of the business at the end of completing the project. This ratio measures the net earnings with operating revenue that identify the efficiency of the firm for performing different activities.



About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual accounting, providing services to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud-hosted desktop where their entire team and tax accountant may access the QuickBooks file and critical financial documents in an efficient and secure environment. Complete Controller’s team of  US based accounting professionals are certified QuickBooks^TMProAdvisor’s providing bookkeeping and controller services including training, full or partial-service bookkeeping, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, vendor and receivables management, process and controls advisement, and customized reporting. Offering flat rate pricing, Complete Controller is the most cost effective expert accounting solution for business, family office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.

Overhead Multiplier

Overhead costs are costs that cannot be attributed directly (without artificial distribution) to a specific object (product, division, sales channel, region, customer, etc.). Thus, there is no absolute overhead. The classification of multipliers for direct and overhead is always relative to the selected object. For example, if several products are produced in the shop,  costs for things such as lighting the workshop, repairing equipment, cleaning the room, etc. are invoices to an object such as “Products”. However, these same multipliers are direct to an object such as “Units” (these costs directly relate to the workshop without any diversity procedure). Therefore, there is not any one classification of the courses of multipliers for direct and invoices. Such classifications can be numerous because they are relative to the selected object.

The object can be a product, division, sales channel, client, branch, store, region in which the company operates, etc.

The overhead multiplier is the indirect multipliers of the enterprise that arise in addition to the main costs of the enterprise for the production and sale of products, works, and services. Overhead multiplier includes:

• Rent for office, warehouse products
• Costs incurred in connection with idle time and the appearance of defective products
• Deductions for social insurance and various compulsory payments
• Costs associated with the operation and maintenance of fixed assets
• Costs for advertising and consulting services
• Maintenance of the office and payment of utilities
• Main production service
• Costs for communication services (telephone, internet, etc.) 

Payment Costs

Payment costs are the costs that are not directly related to the production of a particular product or type of work and are attributable to the entire output. These include the costs of maintenance, operations, upkeep of building, structures, and equipment; deductions for social insurance and other mandatory payments; the content, salaries of administrative, and management personnel; costs associated with losses from downtime, etc. In the trade to the overhead multiplier, it is usual to refer costs associated with the storage, packaging, transportation, and marketing of products. In this process, bookkeeping is used extensively.

The logic of the classification of multipliers for direct and overhead (with respect to a particular object) seems to be understandable. The purpose of this classification is to calculate the economic efficiency of the analyzed objects. 
If you allocate direct costs, for example, you can calculate how much each company, unit (if sales are occupied by more than one department), sales channel, customer, branch or store (if it is a retail network) gives the company. 

Obviously, the profit of any object on direct costs is easy to calculate. However, then the question of how to determine, so to speak, the overall efficiency of the object. This automatically leads to another question – how to properly allocate overhead multipliers for objects. It seems that there is no right answer to this question. Yes, there are techniques for spacing indirect costs, but, before using them, you need to understand why it should be done at all. Each management report should help make decisions. The implementation of which will increase the efficiency of the company and ultimately improve its financial and economic state. If the spacing of indirect costs allows a decision to be made, the implementation will reduce the company’s expenses (without causing any harm) and increase its efficiency. Then, in the spacing of indirect costs, it makes sense.

Like any other function, the spacing of indirect multipliers for any object in each particular company should have a very clear practical meaning. Before you deal with the choice of diversity techniques and the development of a specific scheme for each specific case, you need to decide what to do in general.

If a company manages to come up with the correct method for spacing indirect costs, a certain management report containing information on the financial and economic efficiency of the relevant accounting objects will be obtained.


About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual accounting, providing services to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud-hosted desktop where their entire team and tax accountant may access the QuickBooks file and critical financial documents in an efficient and secure environment. Complete Controller’s team of  US based accounting professionals are certified QuickBooks^TMProAdvisor’s providing bookkeeping and controller services including training, full or partial-service bookkeeping, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, vendor and receivables management, process and controls advisement, and customized reporting. Offering flat rate pricing, Complete Controller is the most cost effective expert accounting solution for business, family office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.

For restaurants, food costs are an essential component similar to bookkeeping records that will help you in making financial decisions for your restaurant. Restaurant owners usually do not calculate this metric for individual menu items because, for many, it is a time and energy consuming process. In order to calculate base food costs and keep track of wastage, you need an inventory management system that has been optimized for restaurants.

A restaurant owner must have a clear idea of which recipe components are profitable and which are not.  They also must determine whether the combined effect of each component results in a profit, ensuring that their business is on the right track.

Talking numbers, on average, high end restaurants have a food cost percentage of 35%. Meanwhile, quick service restaurants usually maintain an average food cost percentage of 25%. In order to find your percentage, you need to look at your weekly inventory  following the steps below.

Step 1: Make a List of the Food Supplies you have at the Beginning of the Week

Your inventory software may support the feature of being used on tablets, allowing you to check the inventory at the beginning of the week.

Step 2: Valuate the Inventory for Each Item

Calculate or note the price of each individual item. Suppose a carton of milk: sum up the price you paid for all cartons of milk, do this for all items. Finally summing them up to mark the total value of your inventory. You’ll need these values in your calculations later on.

Step 3: Keep Track of Purchases made During the Week

If you made any purchases after that, you should take note of them.

Step 4: Valuate the Inventory Again at the Beginning of the Next Week

Follow the same valuation process you followed in step 2.

Step 5: Sum up the Sales you made Per Shift

Your restaurant POS system will be able to help you get this value automatically.

Step 6: Calculate the Weekly Food Costs using the Following Formula

Food Cost Ratio = (Opening Inventory + Purchases – Closing Inventory) ÷ Food Sales

Then

Food Cost Percentage = Food Cost Ratio x 100

TIP: If your food cost comes out too low or high, you need to make sure whether you’ve valued the inventory correctly, put the right values into the formula, and sum up each sale and purchase invoice.

The Ideal Food Cost Percentage for Your Restaurant

Calculating your food costs once doesn’t mean your work is done. You will need something to compare your food costs with and therefore you will need to calculate the ideal food cost percentage for your restaurant.

The ideal food cost percentage is also called the recipe food cost. It doesn’t take into account any wastage or theft. You can calculate it using the following formula

Recipe Food Cost = Sum of Costs of Ingredients x Weekly Sales

Then

Ideal Food Cost Percentage = Recipe Food Costs ÷ Total Sales

The Importance of Food Cost

Restaurant owners usually don’t pay much attention to the ideal and actual food cost percentage values. This is probably because these figures don’t have a direct effect on their bank account. One thing that restaurant owners should, however, realize is that optimizing the actual value, in order to make it closer to the ideal value, can help your business maximize profits and succeed.

Successful food businesses understand the importance of food costs and make it a part of their decisions related to wastage and theft. Big food chains have to take care of actual and ideal food costs as tiny differences can become massive on a bigger scale. Suppose a multi-national food chain sells 50 million meals a day. An offset of a small value, suppose 5 cents, can lead to losses of about $2.5 million in a single day.


About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual accounting, providing services to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud-hosted desktop where their entire team and tax accountant may access the QuickBooks file and critical financial documents in an efficient and secure environment. Complete Controller’s team of  US based accounting professionals are certified QuickBooks^TMProAdvisor’s providing bookkeeping and controller services including training, full or partial-service bookkeeping, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, vendor and receivables management, process and controls advisement, and customized reporting. Offering flat rate pricing, Complete Controller is the most cost effective expert accounting solution for business, family office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.

A trademark typically protects brand names and logos used on goods and services. It is very important that a business owner choose and register a trademark which can be registered federally and protected legally. Though it is not obligatory to register a trademark federally, it has various benefits. The benefits include notification to the public of the registrant’s entitlement of possession of the mark, lawful assumption of possession countrywide, and special right to use the mark on or in linking to the goods/services listed in the registration.

Though not compulsory, most aspirants use private trademark attorneys for legal guidance concerning the use of their trademark, applying for an application, and the probability of accomplishment in the registration procedure since not all submissions continue to registration. A private trademark attorney may help you avoid many potential pitfalls.

Now the question arises on when the right time may be for a new business to get a trademark of its own. When a new business is started, everything is not accomplished at once. It takes time to introduce the products or services to the market. It takes time to accumulate customers. It takes time to do marketing at a scale where potential customers are attracted to a level that they become permanent customers. Especially for small businesses, when everything has to make its space or place in the market, it’s hard for business owners to determine the right time to obtain a trademark of their company that can be used on their products and services for their identity.

In the United States of America, a company acquires the common law right to a label as soon as it is used in trade. That means that as soon as the product or service begins to be sold, the business owner can get entitlement common law proprietorship of that trademark without official registration of it with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Though, these common law rights are restricted to the specific graphics where the mark is used and will be of limited help in court if you ought to bring to trial another business using a similar or same name or mark.

It is best for any new business to register their trademark rights for the company as soon as possible. In most cases, it is likely a business will file to register a trademark application as soon as its LLC or corporation is filed.

Comprehensive Trademark Search

When business owners want to register and apply for a trademark, they, along with the guidance of attorneys, must make sure the name or symbol is not already in use by any other company/business. When it is for an LLC or a corporation, make sure the name is not already in use by any other corporation in the same state. Perform a comprehensive search to ensure that a similar name is not in use in every other state as well because you can be asked to stop using the name immediately.

“Intent-to-Use” Trademark Applications

While it is best to register a trademark as soon as possible, there is another side too. Having a trademark means your service is ready to be introduced to the market. Now, what if your product or service is not ready for the market yet? 

In this case, the USPTO allows you to go for filing an application called an “intent-to-use” trademark application. When the USPTO allows your intent-to-use application, you must start using the trademark within 6 months. But, if your products or services are not ready yet, you can request an extension. The USPTO will see if there is a good cause for your extension of the intent-to-use application request. USPTO can allow you an extension for four months. You can file applications for 4 times to extend your 4 months every time. The advantage of this application is that your date of filing application will be considered the date of the first use of your trademark. 

Conclusion

A trademark is the logo or name that must be obtained by every business as soon as possible. It is a must for any business to register a trademark at the earliest time possible. It shows that a business is ready for the market. If your business is not ready yet, then you can use the intent-to-use trademark application.

About Complete Controller® – America’s Bookkeeping Experts Complete Controller is the Nation’s Leader in virtual accounting, providing services to businesses and households alike. Utilizing Complete Controller’s technology, clients gain access to a cloud-hosted desktop where their entire team and tax accountant may access the QuickBooks file and critical financial documents in an efficient and secure environment. Complete Controller’s team of  US based accounting professionals are certified QuickBooks^TMProAdvisor’s providing bookkeeping and controller services including training, full or partial-service bookkeeping, cash-flow management, budgeting and forecasting, vendor and receivables management, process and controls advisement, and customized reporting. Offering flat rate pricing, Complete Controller is the most cost effective expert accounting solution for business, family office, trusts, and households of any size or complexity.