Bennett Financials Journal
Practical ideas for protecting profit, planning tax, and building a business that works better for you.
Most vendor payment fraud succeeds at one moment: when someone updates a payee's bank details from an email. A callback rule, a first-payment hold, and dual release stop it.
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Read a balance sheet in five lines: clearing accounts, cash, receivables, short-term obligations, and equity. A hypothetical $4M firm shows what each line tells an owner in ten minutes.
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A pest control company is worth what its recurring routes will keep producing. A fractional CFO measures revenue per route hour, retention by customer cohort, and acquisition payback so the recurring base holds up when a buyer tests it.
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You can't fully separate duties with three people, but you can make sure no one person can create a payee, pay it, and hide it. Here is the role matrix and the compensating controls that close the gaps.
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A 2% S corp shareholder can't fund an HSA through the company's pre-tax cafeteria plan. Company contributions go in W-2 Box 1, and the owner takes the deduction. Here are the 2026 limits and the setup that avoids FICA.
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Landscaping profit is made crew by crew in summer and lost to fixed cost in winter. A fractional CFO measures revenue per crew hour, maps the winter cash curve month by month, and decides what to smooth, finance, or cut before December.
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Behavioral red flags are a weak alarm. Six owner-run monthly checks on bank detail, vendors, payroll, and write-offs catch small-business embezzlement while the loss is still small.
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A pass-through entity tax election moves state income tax from your capped SALT deduction to an uncapped business deduction. The 2026 cap is higher, but owners above about $606,000 of MAGI are back at $10,000.
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ATRI puts the average 2025 cost to run a truck at $2.336 a mile, with truckload margins under 1%. A fractional CFO builds your own cost per mile, prices the miles that don't pay, and keeps equipment tax breaks from being mistaken for cash.
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A personal guarantee is not sized by the loan amount. Size it by the balance you could owe in a bad year, minus what the collateral would realistically recover, then negotiate the cap, burn-down, and release terms.
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