Lean Business Solutions Case Study

Management in any organization needs to continually assess and improve their processes to remain competitive and maximize their business performance, no one understands this better than Martyn with Lean Business Solutions. Martyn is a Management Consultant and Sensei Coach, his business focuses on improving efficiencies and boost the productivity of companies and organizations operating in a national and international arena.

The Challenges:

Martyn and his team spend a considerable amount of time traveling across the United States and Internationally for business. Implementing process improvement often requires extended travel periods to remote production facilities, thus it is very important for Lean Business Solutions to have an accounting system that is mobile. When Martyn first started Lean Business Solutions he used a desktop accounting platform to organize his business financial records, due to his extensive travel schedule he soon grew frustrated by the inability to access his business accounts on the go. Another challenging area was the need for Lean Business Solutions to track expenses while traveling without carrying receipts, invoices, and bills to various locations. Unfortunately, the prior desktop accounting software for Lean Business Solutions did not provide an easy way to capture expenses while Martyn and his team were traveling.

The Solutions:

When Lean Business Solutions engaged with Polaris Tax and Accounting we immediately added the organization to Xero which is a cloud accounting software perfect for clients like Martyn that need access to information while traveling. Xero has a very elegant and easy to use interface that allows clients like Martyn to see at a glance how his business is performing. In fact, the Xero dashboard provides key information at a glance including banking information, outstanding and overdue invoices, upcoming bills, and expense reimbursement that require approval.

Martyn found great efficiencies in his own business using the Xero Touch app in fact, as soon as he incurs a business expense while traveling, he immediately enters this as a receipt in Xero, takes a picture of the receipts and destroys the paper version. The images he captures are attached to each transaction when they post in the bank account creating the perfect paperless supporting documentation process in the event of a tax audit.

Since our firm updates Lean Business Solutions accounting records on a daily basis Martyn and our firm can productively collaborate and review how the business is performing using current and updated information. This process is extremely important from a tax planning standpoint because real-time accounting allows us to develop ideas and plans to minimize Martyn’s tax liability before the end of the year. With real-time accounting and proactive tax planning, we continuously see how Lean Business Solutions is progressing while proactively generating tax projections so that Martyn knows what his tax liability will look like before April 15th.