What does a small business advisor do? Inside a quarterly lender-lens review.

The short answer: a small business advisor reads your numbers with you on a regular schedule and tells you what they mean for the decisions in front of you. At HarperCo, the clearest example is the quarterly lender-lens review in Monthly Books Bank-Ready. Once a quarter, we re-read your books the way a lender would. Then we sit down with you and go through what a lender would question, and what to fix first.

Which plan includes the lender-lens review?

It is part of Monthly Books Bank-Ready, our standard scope, at $850 a month. That scope closes your books by the 10th and produces the Bank-Ready Report every month. The quarterly review is where we step back from single months and read three of them together.

Books Compliance, at $395 a month, does not include it. Neither does Monthly Books, at $625 a month. Monthly Books Plus, at $1,200 a month, includes it and adds a monthly advisory review. The Controller, at $2,450 a month, includes everything in Monthly Books Plus.

What do you actually look at?

The same things a credit desk reads first:

• Whether your cash flow covers your loan payments. For every dollar of payment, how many dollars the quarter left to pay it.
• Whether you can pay this year’s bills. What you will collect soon, set against what you owe soon.
• How much you have borrowed against what you own.
• Who owes you, and how late. That is AR aging: your customers’ unpaid invoices, sorted by how overdue they are. AP aging is the same list for the bills you owe.
• Money held in trust. HST you collect and deductions from your staff’s pay belong to the CRA. We check that they are current.
• Owner draws against profit. Whether what you took out matches what the business earned.
• Covenants, if your loan has them. Covenants are the promises about your numbers that a loan agreement makes you keep. We note where you sit against them.

What do you leave with?

A clear answer to one question: if a lender read your file today, what would they ask about? Then a short list of what to fix before they do, in order, in plain words. Some quarters the list is empty, and we say so.

You also leave with context for the Bank-Ready Report you already get every month. The report shows the numbers. The review is where we talk about what they mean for the decision you are weighing, whether that is a hire, an equipment purchase or a conversation with your lender.

How long does it take?

Most of the time is ours. We do the reading before we meet, so your part is one conversation a quarter, in person on the Island or online everywhere else. There is nothing extra to prepare beyond keeping the monthly paperwork flowing, which the scope already asks of you. Four reviews a year, with the same person on your file every time. The review is delivered within 10 business days of us receiving the information we need.

What is a lender-lens review not?

• Not an audit or a review engagement. “Review” here is plain English. We give no assurance on your numbers, and the Bank-Ready Report is a management report for your own use. Reviewed or audited statements, when a lender asks for them, come from your CPA.
• Not tax advice. Your income tax return stays with your CPA. We are not a public accounting firm. What we hand your accountant is a clean year-end file.
• Not investment advice. We don’t recommend investments, savings products or where to put personal money. HarperCo is a business advisory practice.
• Not a sales call. It is part of the scope you already pay for. If a separate project would help, such as a financing package, we will say so plainly, and quote a fixed price only if you ask for one.
• Not a loan decision. We don’t lend and we don’t broker. A lender makes its own call. The review makes sure you know what it will see.

So what does a small business advisor do?

Reads the numbers on a schedule, says what they mean, and helps you think through the big calls before you make them. The lender-lens review is the quarterly version of that. If you want to see the reading before you commit to anything, the free Books Checkup is a one-time version of it: 30 minutes, with one page of written findings that you keep.

From the desk

On the lending side, I read plenty of files where the owner was surprised by what the numbers said. Very few of those surprises were sudden. They had been building for a few quarters, in the aging report or the draws, and nobody had read the books between year-ends. A read every quarter is how you see them while they are still small.

Key facts

• Monthly Books Bank-Ready: $850 a month. Includes the Bank-Ready Report every month and the quarterly lender-lens review. HarperCo’s own price.
• Monthly Books Plus: $1,200 a month. Adds a monthly advisory review. HarperCo’s own price.
• Books Compliance, $395 a month, and Monthly Books, $625 a month, do not include the review. HarperCo’s own prices.
• The free Books Checkup: 30 minutes, with one page of written findings.
• Income tax returns are not part of any HarperCo scope.

Notes like this are general information, not advice on your specific situation — that’s what the kitchen table is for. — Dominic