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360 Degree Accountingtm
FAQ
1. What do you mean by
360 Degree Accountingtm?
2.
What knowledge and services have you assembled to create 360 Degree
Accounting?
3. Can you give
me a quick overview of your accounting services?
4. What
do you mean by "traditional services"?
5. What are
the Internet-based products?
6. How can I get
more information?
If
you have any other questions, please contact
us.
1. What do you mean
by 360 Degree Accountingtm?
360 Degree Accountingtm
is our name for services that go beyond the traditional offerings
of an accounting firm.
Accounting services have traditionally
focused on what we call the "rear-view mirror" approach. Using
this approach, your accountant periodically provides you with a
report (financial reports, tax returns, etc.) that tells you how
you did during a recent past period. The report may contain
interesting and important information, but, while looking in a rear-view
mirror can provide hints about where you are going, it is far from
the entire story. The rear-view mirror view does not help
avoid the pitfalls or take advantage of the opportunities that are
in the path ahead. At WJH we have focused on developing the
skills and finding and integrating the tools that allow you to see
your entire financial landscape forward and backward.
The rear-view mirror method
of accounting is essentially a "compliance" viewpoint. It
is based on the idea that you travel down your financial path making
decisions as needed and, then, once a quarter or once a year, you
bring the results to your accountant and ask them to make sure you
are in compliance with various rules and regulations. Often
you accept the idea that you accountant is an expert but you do
not ask the expert for advice when you are looking ahead and making
decisions. You primarily ask for expert advice when you are
looking in the rear-view mirror and notice you need to minimize
the damage from past decisions. Unfortunately, there is often
little that can be done to compensate for the previous mistakes.
Over the years, we have seen
many examples of clients who made bad decisions based on well-meaning,
but incorrect, advice from friends, family members, business associates,
and other advisors. Of course, we have seen equally unfortunate
decisions made based on the recommendations of someone selling a
product or financial service. We realize that in order to
help you make the best decision and to benefit the most from your
hard work, we need to help you take a broader view of your financial
data. We need to offer the services and the tools that can
help you receive more understandable and more timely information
that can result in better decisions. We have assembled the
services and the knowledge needed to provide a complete picture
for you. We refer to this view as 360 Degree Accounting
(tm).
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2. What knowledge and
services have you assembled to create 360 Degree Accounting?
There are five essential components
to 360 Degree Accounting.
-
The staff expertise and experience our clients have come to
rely on - We start with a very knowledgeable and experienced
staff. Our CPAs have over 100 years of cumulative experience.
We insure the continued expertise of our staff with ongoing professional
training and certification programs. Each year our
staff attends over 250 hours of professional continuing education
courses plus many additional in-house and online sessions covering
everything from new tax laws to the latest technology based tools.
For more information about the individuals who make up the WJH
team, see the Staff pages.
-
An enhanced set of services - the WJH Services Suite -
The collection of services we offer is based on three considerations.
-
Does the service contribute to a complete 360 degree view that
can enhance your business and personal financial life?
-
Does our implementation of the service comprehend that each
client is different, has different issues, and needs different
(custom) solutions?
-
Do we have or can we quickly develop the expertise to be an
excellent provider of the services?
The resulting WJH Services Suite is the collection of services
from which you choose what best fits your needs.
See the WJH Services Suite
page for more information.
-
Software-As-A-Service based tools - We continually research
new tools and select the best of these to use in-house and to
offer to our clients. We have been leaders in adopting the
latest computer tools including web-based "Software-a-a-Service"
offerings. Using Internet-based subscription services
provided by leading vendors allows us to provide professional
quality tools at a very reasonable cost. These tools also
bring significant advantages since they provide anytime/anywhere
access, large corporation class security, automatic off-site backups,
and more.
For additional information see the SAAS FAQ page.
-
The WJH Network of Professional Partners - We partner with
other outstanding professionals to make sure you can come to us
for guidance and advice even when it is outside the direct area
of expertise of our in-house staff. Our partners include
stock brokers, fee-based money managers, lawyers, bankers, and
other professional experts.
-
An enhanced WJH Network of service providers - We have
created the WJH Network of known, reliable service and product
providers as an additional source of help for you. We can
recommend the best service providers in areas such as computer
products, real estate, law, business operations, management, and
others.
See the WJH Network page for
more information.
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3. Can you give me
a quick overview of your accounting services?
Yes. Our accounting services
consist of the bookkeeping and reporting services that allow you
to see exactly how your business is doing financially. These
services provide three major benefits.
1.
The operational financial data that is collected, corrected, and
reported provides the basis for compliance work. Examples
include federal and state tax returns, payroll reports, and sales
tax reports.
2.
Perhaps the most important (and most often overlooked) benefit is
that financial reports that are timely, correct, and presented in
an easy to understand format provide the tool you need not only
to judge the health of your entity but also to determine what moves
to make to grow the company, bring it back to profitability,
sell it, etc. Using the reports properly can be a key
to your success, and we focus on this need.
3.
The financial reports can also be used for communicating with your
staff and outside partners (such as investors or lenders) regarding
the health of the company. Similarly, these reports are important
during the buying or selling of a business.
Our accounting services can
be divided into two categories - traditional services and those
based on our Internet-based tools which we refer to as WJH Accounting
On-Line.
Each set of services can be
custom designed to meet your specific needs, and each set promises
the same high level of accuracy and timely response.
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4. What do you mean
by "traditional services"?
Many small businesses still
use paper or desktop computer based accounting systems. We
have many years of experience with these systems. We refer
to them as "traditional" since they have been around for many years.
Whether your accounting is done on a 13 column pad, in Excel, or
with QuickBooks or other desktop computer solutions, we can help
you get the most from your numbers.
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5. What are the Internet-based
products?
We refer to the Internet-based
tools as WJH Accounting Online (WJH-AO). This is a collection
of tools and services that are designed to truly make your accounting
life easier.
The idea behind WJH-AO is to
collect the best Internet based accounting products available and
to integrate them into our other products and services. The
products that make up WJH-AO are -
-
Internet based and hosted
in enterprise class computing facilities
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Focused on the needs of small
to medium size companies
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Cost effective and modular
-
Based on a "Software-As-A-Service"
( SAAS) infrastructure
A key component of the WJH-AO
strategy is the Intacct family of online accounting solutions.
These are professional-strength accounting modules which are available
to you anytime and anywhere. (All you need is a web browser.)
For more information see the WJH Online
Accounting FAQ page.
The "Software-As-A-Service"
infrastructure is a critical part of the WJH-AO strategy.
SAAS refers to products that are available via the Internet, are
hosted on remote, secure, highly reliable machines, and are maintained
and updated with no effort on the users' part. SAAS solutions
are less expensive to use and maintain than desktop computer based
solutions because there is no need for expensive servers or the
support services required to keep the servers running. For
more information about SAAS, please see the
Software-As-A-Service FAQ page.
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6. How can I get more
information?
Give us a call and come in to
visit and discuss your needs and our services. Our contact
information is here.
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