Our Services

Our Services:

 

Other services offered by Jeffrey N. Pelesh, CPA:

 

Accounting

Helping You to Maintain a Clear View of the Financial Health and Performance of Your Business

 

 Having an accurate and reliable accounting system in place is a prerequisite for the health and continued growth of your business.  Among other benefits, sound accounting practices allow you to

  • Keep a close watch on the financial condition and operating results of your business
  • Monitor assets, inventories, and sales
  • Prepare budgets that reflect the economic realities of the enterprise
  • Develop sound pricing, billing, and credit policies based on an analysis of customer payments, discounts, chargebacks, and adjustments
  • Comply with loan covenants
  • Comply with tax laws, labor laws, and industry regulations
  • Maximize use of all available tax deductions, exemptions, and credits

We can assist your business in all of the following areas:

  • Selecting and installing accounting systems
  • Preparing financial statements
  • Preparing management reports
  • Creating budgets
  • Developing financial projections
  • Converting from a cash to an accrual basis of accounting
  • Lease agreement compliance

 

Auditing/Attestation

Delivering Assurance Services to Mitigate Risk and Generate Confidence

 

 Audits are an extremely stressful and time-consuming but ultimately unavoidable part of doing business.  Small- to medium-sized businesses and non-profit organizations are routinely required to provide audited financial statements in order to:

  • Obtain a loan from a commercial bank
  • Do business with publicly-traded companies
  • Secure construction contracts
  • Secure contracts with government agencies
  • Enter into a merger, acquisition, or joint venture arrangement
  • Obtain grants from charitable foundations
  • Comply with industry or environmental regulations
  • Provide admissible financial evidence in a legal dispute

Our approach to auditing reflects the best practices of the field, and is tailored to meet the business operations, risk profile, and compliance needs of each client.  Our audit services include:

  • Financial statement audits, reviews, and compilations
  • Agreed-upon attestation procedures
  • Assessments of internal controls
  • Compliance audits
  • Forensic auditing

We seek to add value to our audit work by offering meaningful recommendations on how our clients can improve their business operations, financial reporting practices, and risk management strategies.

 

Bookkeeping

Timely and Accurate Financial Recordkeeping Solutions to Help You Manage Your Business

 Business owners and self-employed professionals often find themselves juggling to meet the competing but equally important priorities of maintaining existing client relationships, while also bringing new products or services to market, and keeping close track of finances.  We offer the following services to help you with the day-to-day financial management of your business:

  • Recording financial transactions
  • Accounts payable/accounts receivable
  • Payroll
  • Monthly closings
  • Credit card management
  • Business bank reconciliations
  • Sales and use tax reporting
  • Selecting and installing financial recordkeeping systems
  • Auditing
  • Designing and implementing effective internal controls for bookkeeping systems

 

Business Consulting/Management Advisory Services

Helping You to Grow Your Business

 Accounting is at the heart of running a company, since business owners rely on financial statements to determine the financial condition and operating performance of their companies, as well as to plan for future growth, allocate resources, raise capital, and comply with regulations.

In addition to his accounting background, our principal, Jeffrey N. Pelesh, CPA, has previously served as the CFO or Director of a property development company, a manufacturer of electrical equipment, and a NASDAQ-listed pharmaceutical company.  Jeff and his associates offer decades of combined experience, and can assist you with:

  • Analyzing the profitability of existing markets, products, or service lines
  • Evaluating business expansion plans
  • Evaluating your company’s business structure to determine whether it remains a good fit for your company’s business strategy, operating structure, financing needs, and approach to risk (among other options, Pennsylvania businesses can incorporate as a partnership, LLC, S-corporation, or C-corporation)
  • Formalizing the financial and operating structure of family businesses, which often start small and grow organically
  • Preparing financial statements
  • Creating financial and cash flow projections
  • Evaluating loan agreements, vendor contracts, and customer agreements
  • Preparing financial information for requests for proposals
  • Tax planning and reporting
  • Developing and implementing turnaround plans for troubled businesses
  • Creating an exit or succession plan for your business

 

Business Startup Assistance  

Turning a Great Idea into a Going Concern

 

 Coming up with an innovative idea for a company or product and spotting a promising market are only the first steps in bringing a business to life.  Critical next steps include creating a detailed business plan, developing a brand, performing in-depth market research to validate your business idea, and obtaining financing for your company.

Regardless of their previous experience in launching companies, or the depth of their financial knowledge, many entrepreneurs seek independent business and financial advice throughout the startup process.  Our principal, Jeffrey N. Pelesh, CPA, has experience serving as the CFO or Director of several different startup or spin-off companies, including a property development company, a manufacturer of electrical equipment, and a NASDAQ-listed pharmaceutical farm.  Jeff and his associates can assist you with all of the following:

  • Creating or evaluating business startup plans
  • Performing cost-benefit analyses for specific markets, products, or service lines
  • Selecting a business structure (among other options, Pennsylvania businesses can incorporate as a partnership, LLC, S-corporation, or C-corporation)
  • Deciding on a basis of accounting (cash, accrual, or tax)
  • Creating start-up and initial operating budgets
  • Creating financial and cash flow projections
  • Deciding on whether to purchase or lease assets
  • Evaluating financing options
  • Analyzing loan agreements and vendor contracts
  • Selecting and installing accounting systems
  • Preparing financial information for requests for proposals
  • Pricing products and services
  • Determining compensation for owners, employees, and contractors
  • Tax accounting or business-start-up and organizational costs

 

Estate Planning & Administration

Maintaining Businesses and Preserving Value Across Generations

 

 Without advance planning, the death of the owner or management partner can – and often does – spell the end of even the most successful family business or partnership, as the heirs or surviving partners find themselves struggling to agree on a succession plan, or compelled to sell off business assets in order to pay capital gains taxes or transfer taxes.  We can help in the following areas:

  • Planning for the continuation or orderly dissolution of family businesses, partnerships, and professional corporations
  • Tax planning
  • Preparing the final returns of deceased business owners
  • Preparing estate, trust, and gift tax returns
  • Analyzing wills, trust agreements, and partnership agreements
  • Discovering and creating inventories of assets and liabilities
  • Valuations of business assets and liabilities
  • Compiling or reconstructing financial records for family businesses
  • Analyzing corporate life insurance policies
  • Identifying unclaimed property in state custody (such property is often overlooked by estates)

 

Financial Planning

Comprehensive Financial and Tax Planning Solutions Intended to Help You to Create Value, Grow Your Business, and Achieve Your Retirement Goals

 

 Regardless of whether you are running a start-up company bringing new products and services to market, or a long-established family business with a large and loyal customer base, having a financial plan is essential to understanding the factors that contribute to or undermine the profitability of your firm, to realistically assessing your appetite and capacity for risk, and to making the best possible use of available opportunities and resources to consolidate and grow your business.  Additionally, it is essential not to overlook the substantial and varied contributions that your business can make to your personal finances and retirement goals.  Whether you are seeking to launch an enterprise or planning for the further expansion of your business, we can help you to achieve all of the following:

 

Inventory Accounting

Helping Your Retail or Wholesale Business to Manage Its Most Important Asset:  Inventory

 

 For many manufacturers and retailers, inventory management is the largest single driver of profitability.  Other key factors – such as supply and demand – being equal, the methods used by your company to account for inventory cost and such risks as obsolescence, spoilage, and theft can dramatically affect the reliability of the financial measures that you use to evaluate your company’s performance, as well as the credibility of your company’s financial statements in the eyes of lenders, customers, suppliers, shareholders, and the tax authorities.  We offer the following services to help you to optimize the management of your inventory, and to comply with loan covenants and the relevant tax laws:

  • Accurately calculating such costs as shipping, raw materials, direct labor, and overhead to properly value the inventory that you purchase or produce
  • Choosing between a periodic or perpetual inventory management system
  • Adopting a consistent method for tracking inventory costs, with the “first in, first out” (FIFO), “last in, first out” (LIFO), and “weighted average” methods being three of the most common approaches to tracking inventory
  • Creating realistic loss reserves for such risks as obsolescence, damage, and theft
  • Comparing inventory costs to current market prices
  • Developing tax planning and reporting  strategies for inventory

 

Payroll

Payroll Accounting and Tax Solutions for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

 

 There are few areas that present a greater day-to-day financial and regulatory burden for most small businesses than payroll.  We can assist you in all of the following areas:

  • Filing payroll tax returns
  • Payroll processing support
  • Preparing management reports
  • Calculating the correct withholdings for employee income, Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment taxes, as well as garnishments and workers’ compensation
  • Calculating the correct withholdings for voluntary contributions to health insurance, life insurance, retirement savings, and other employee benefit plans
  • Keeping you informed of changes in the applicable tax and labor laws
  • Auditing payroll
  • Establishing effective internal controls for payroll
Tax Reporting, Planning & Compliance

Helping You and Your Business to Navigate the Tax System and to Maximize Your Tax Savings

 

 Given the complex and ever-changing nature of the tax system, understanding the tax ramifications of business and investment decisions and complying with federal, state, and local tax laws is often a challenge for even the most seasoned business owners and executives.  We combine decades of insight and experience in the areas of tax planning, reporting, and compliance with a close understanding of current developments in the tax system in offering the following tax-related services:

  • Preparation and filing of income and business tax returns for corporations, partnerships, non-profits, trusts, business owners, and executives
  • Tax planning services for businesses and business owners
  • Payroll and sales tax reporting
  • Representing taxpayers before the federal, state, and local tax authorities
  • Valuation services
  • Developing tax strategies for inventory
  • Creating depreciation schedules for assets
  • Helping client businesses to choose the appropriate legal structure in light of their tax needs.  (Among other options, Pennsylvania businesses can incorporate as a partnership, LLC, S-corporation, or C-corporation.)
  • Assisting with state tax nexus issues

 

Valuations

Helping You to Discover and Leverage the Value of Your Business

 

 There is a wide range of reasons, both fortunate and otherwise, why businesses or business owners may seek to determine the value of individual assets and liabilities, or of an entire company.  These reasons may relate to:

  • Preparing a business for sale
  • Establishing the value of long-term assets, for which a ready market may not exist, as collateral in a loan transaction
  • Providing investors and creditors with information on the future cash flows, earnings potential, and competitive position of a business
  • Determining the value of a partnership interest
  • Calculating depreciation for tax or financial reporting purposes
  • Determining the liquidation value of a business in bankruptcy
  • Quantifying the magnitude of losses in insurance claims
  • Estate administration
  • The division of property in divorce proceedings

The task of determining the economic value of an asset or of a whole enterprise is often complicated by the multiplicity of available valuation methods, as well as by the lack of ready markets for many types of assets or privately-held investments.

In providing valuation services for our clients, we strive to base our assessments wholly on criteria that all parties to a transaction will accept as objective, transparent, and fair.

 

Life & Long-Term Disability Insurance

Life and Disability Solutions for Business Owners and Key Employees

 

 Without adequate contingency and succession plans in place, the death or long-term disability of a business owner or managing partner can seriously jeopardize, and possibly spell the end for a previously successful partnership or enterprise.  Even assuming that the surviving partners or heirs are interested, motivated, and prepared to take over the operation of the business, they may find themselves compelled, in the absence of life insurance, to sell assets of the business in order to buy out other heirs or partners who lack an interest in continuing the enterprise.  In addition, creditors may press for the renegotiation or repayment of loans where the deceased owner was a party, putting further strain on the resources and liquidity of the business.

Jeffrey N. Pelesh, CPA, the owner and principal of our firm, is a licensed life insurance agent in Delaware and Pennsylvania, and is also certified as an AICPA Personal Financial Specialist.  Jeff can assist you in creating a robust succession plan for your business or partnership, and is also available to answer any questions you may have about obtaining life insurance and long-term disability insurance for shareholders, partners, or key employees of your firm.

 

Investment Advisory Services

Personalized Financial Planning Services to Help Business Owners Achieve Their Personal Financial and Retirement Goals

 

 

 The range of options available to business owners seeking to create competitive savings, investment, or retirement plans for themselves and their employees can seem bewilderingly broad.  Some of the more common investment instruments include mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and annuities, while tax-deferred savings options include traditional, Roth, SIMPLE and SEP IRA plans, as well as 401(k) plans for small businesses or sole proprietors.

Jeffrey N. Pelesh, CPA, the owner and principal of our firm, can help you to create an investment or retirement plan for your business that is grounded on a thorough understanding of all of the following:

  • Your personal financial and retirement goals and tolerance for risk
  • The financial goals, retirement needs, and risk tolerance of your employees
  • The types of investment and retirement plans that are considered competitive for employee recruitment and retention purposes in your industry.

Jeff is a financial advisor with Principal Securities, Inc.  He holds the Series 7 and 63 licenses, and is also certified as an AICPA Personal Financial Specialist.