Executive Insights.

March 31, 2020

3/31/2020 Afternoon Covid-19 Update – PPP (Paycheck Protection Program)

Just finished a very informative webinar on SBA PPP program from our partner Christopher Santomassimo and his team of lawyers in NJ.
 Chris is a partner for our NJ CFO Forum group.

Key takeaways:

  1  www.uschamber.com has a great checklist for PPP
  2  Base period-prior 12 months of payroll (capped at 100k rate for individuals) plus healthcare costs  (last three quarters and first quarter of 2020 for most of us assuming you want to file asap)
  3  Maximum amount of the loan is 2.5 times the above monthly average payroll and healthcare costs.

  3 Expenses incurred AND PAID for the 8 weeks after the loan origination date are forgive-able.  Those expenses are payroll, rent, utilities, healthcare costs and certain interest expense.

  4  Reduction of the forgiven amount is based on change in headcount.   Website has the formula so visit www.uschamber.com

  5  Anything not spent carries over as a loan at 4% interest.

  6 Forms for PPP application are not available yet but their advice is to use the standard 7A SBA application.   It is likely that these forms will be used-perhaps with some of the questions eliminated but those forms are available at sba.gov to get you started.

I hope this helps.  Well worth visiting the Chamber’s website.

Their slides as well as the slides from Multi Funding and from Fox Rothschild CCI Consulting are available at their websites.

Suggestion-contact your payroll provider to provide the payroll info that you will need for the application.  Likely to be last 9 months of 2019 and first 3 months of 2020.

I have been asked for feedback on “recommended” payroll providers.

Give me your comments-if you like your provider OR if you are looking for a better payroll provider.   I will scrub your comments so tell me who provider is and your assessment.  Maybe this is a topic for a future session since a bad payroll provider is not worth a few dollars you might save every month!

March 31, 2020

3/31/2020 Morning Covid-19 Update – Quick Notes

Couple of quick points.

  Sam Aul has reported that the major payroll providers are developing payroll reports for the base period and for the period to be covered by the PPP.  So check with your payroll provider since the payroll data has to be correct (for example, salaries capped at 100k for reporting purposes) and certified so might as well have them do it for you.

  IF anyone gets a hold of the “final” PPP application PDF and the EIDL application PDFs, feel free to send to me and I will share them.

  Any other suggestions for the good of the group, send to me and I will communicate them.

We have a zoom meeting planned for April 17th.   I expect that we will reschedule it since our priorities have certainly shifted.

March 30, 2020

3/30/2020 Covid-19 Update – Notes on Info Sharing

Good morning.  Ami’s updates are among the best that I am reading so I am sharing with you.  Many thanks to Ami for his great work and for sharing with our community.  There are well over 100 on this distribution list.

I have noticed some major inconsistencies of some of the emails from advisors and I don’t forward those.  Be careful because it is our advice that our owners and CEOs rely on.

Your input is appreciated.   Reply to me with other sources of information and I will review it.  NO risk of a reply all blast since I organized the distribution list to prevent that.

AGAIN, if you don’t want to receive these emails, just tell me and I will remove you from the list.   Thanks for the many encouragement replies that you have sent in these crazy times.

March 26, 2020

3/26/2020 Covid-19 Update – SBA Financing

We sent some general info on SBA financing two days ago and the SBA website continues to crash so it’s hard to see the forms, get information and apply online.

Ami Kassar, who founded Multifunding about ten years ago and continues to help the private business community with lending solutions, has graciously offered CFO Forum participants to his webinar-NOON on Thursday  (TODAY) and NOON tomorrow (Friday).   Some info is below AND the link is at the bottom.

Many thanks to Ami. I am not surprised he is in front of the curve on this info!   Visit www.multifunding.com to learn more and to register.

Maybe I can get Ami to attend one of our meetings and share his knowledge and best practices with us once we are allowed to have a meeting!

PS   I know several of us have already started the application process-if you have, please share any advice or tips back to me and I will share them.

Meanwhile, I am trying to get space on the www.thecfosolution.org site to catalog the information that we have been sharing with you.  I know email blasts are clunky but it is the quickest way right now.

Business owners and entrepreneurs are increasingly concerned about the impact of the Coronavirus on their businesses cash flow over the next 6-12 months. The hope is that the government backed or issued loans will offer the relief that small-mid-sized businesses need to survive.

We will review the SBA Emergency Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and bolstered regular SBA program criteria the government are offering, with focus on key elements that have come out of the CARES Act.

Takeaways

In this one-hour interactive session you will learn:
· SBA emergency loan status – after CARES Act approval
· Existing SBA program initiatives – after CARES Act approval
· Importance of filing 2019 returns
· Do you have liquidity you can leverage?
· Calculating Operating Expenses (6 mos. burn rate)
· Online loans to watch out for and stay away from

Ami Kassar, www.multifunding.com
January 29, 2020

The Heads Up Adviser Podcast

January 29, 2020

These tips can help you hire and train new workers

By: Gary Bender, contributing writer January 8, 2020

Hiring managers know that every new hire requires training, but Human Resource Departments are not aware of programs that exist to help and will provide financial reimbursements and/ or tax credits. I realized this when I attended a job fair two months ago, and with another job fair on January 14, I am offering these best practices to be aware of.Read More

April 7, 2019

Can Medicare for All solve out-of-control health costs for businesses?

Last week, I read an article in which a local business owner lamented that maybe we would be better off with “Medicare for All” based on his conclusion that “businesses are picking up the tab for a fractured system for insurance provided by for- profit insurance corporations.”

I share his frustration and I agree with his facts; however, I believe there are actions we can take before we wait for the “Medicare for All” solution.

A recent poll showed 80 percent of business owners believe there is nothing they can do to lower health care costs. I was in that category three years ago. I want to share some facts and thoughts as to why I now have less frustration, 25 percent lower health care costs, a better plan and an action plan to continue to control our future health care costs.

The Affordable Care Act resulted in higher deductible/higher premium plans that employees can’t afford, and neither can employers. In fact, if you asked most employees what they thought of their health care plan they would say it stinks. Out of pure frustration and to do my own analysis, I had to learn the facts since, quite frankly, neither I nor my broker understood what was driving our health care costs.

I was conditioned by the market to believe there is nothing we can do and that health care costs will only go up. Well, I’m here to tell you that’s not the case. We managed and understood every other aspect of my business down to the dollar. Now we can manage the cost stack of one our largest spending items for the first time.

One of the key things we learned is that health insurers add on a fixed amount for their administration and profits (as set by the state insurance commissioner). As a result, insurers have no incentive to reduce costs, convincing me that premiums will continue to increase unless I found ways myself to lower the costs and to add programs that were not subject to administrative and profit markups.

I spent the next three years learning about the health care industry and finding the right firms that will partner with us. We have reduced our costs so dramatically that last year that we were able to eliminate all deductibles for our employees and their dependents – and still reduce the premiums paid by the company, without changing our plan, doctors or network. We did not increase the contribution or copays paid by employees either.
The result was a reduction of more than 25 percent in our costs and a tremendous savings for our employees. We were able to “keep our insurance” by understanding the costs and risks – finding partners who align their goals with our goals of affordable care for employees and employers. Our employees now have a great plan that they can afford
to use. It has helped our recruiting and retention. Our annual renewal meetings are now a celebration.

We realized that we use expert consultants to reduce every other expense in our business, but we didn’t in health care. To be honest we didn’t know that consultants existed. Working with an expert consultant versus a broker will dramatically change the outcome for most employers. I encourage you to start managing this expense like every other expense in your business and you will start to see results.

We have a group of local business execs who share best practices and meet monthly and we have similar success stories regardless of the number of employees. Our group, The CFO Forum, has had several meetings on health care. We continue to introduce new practices to help firms reduce the cost of health care without reducing quality. We are introducing two great optional offerings that bolt on to medium or large plans with programs that reduce costs for all parties. These are programs not generally available to brokers and not offered by the major insurance providers (because they lower costs, which affects a broker’s commissions and earnings).

Gary Bender is a co-owner of an engineering firm, founder and CEO of peer group The CFO Solution and based in the Lehigh Valley. He can be reached through www.thecfosolution.org.

View Full LVB Article

August 1, 2018

Widening Your Finance Lens | Gary Bender, CFO, SISD, Inc.

Not all finance leaders are highly skilled when it comes to knowledge sharing. In fact, very often senior finance executives struggle to make new knowledge connections as their responsibilities seem to routinely widen.  Join us when career CFO Gary Bender explains how the special challenges finance leaders face led him to help establish not one, but multiple CFO knowledge sharing organizations.

Listen to Episode 244 of CFO Thought Leader with Gary Bender Here! 

May 31, 2018

Area Exec Offers Affordability Advice at World Health Event

By Brian Pedersen, May 28, 2018 at 7:00 AM

Employers have the power to reduce health care costs and improve their employee benefit plans.

However, many are not aware of how to accomplish this task.

Experts in the health care industry discussed this topic and many more at a recent health care conference that explored the latest insights in employer direct contracting, benefits adviser leadership, corporate health-risk innovation and a range of other issues.

The 15th annual World Health Care Congress in Washington, D.C. attracted more than 950 health care executives, including one local expert who spoke on two panels during the three-day conference, which ended May 2.

Gary Bender, founder and CEO of The CFO Solution in Quakertown, was one of four chief financial officers who attended. Health care benefits providers invited him to talk about how the C-suite level executive evaluates and makes decisions on health care plans.

“They wanted the perspective of a finance exec on benefits management, and I was honored to share the experience of my firm and the impact that CFO Forum is having on other privately held companies,” Bender said, referring to his monthly program offered by Manufacturers Resource Center. “I attended most of the sessions and was amazed at the efforts to improve health care offerings.

“However, our session was the only one that dealt with the economics and affordability of these improved treatment plans, drugs and other programs.”

ALTERNATIVES

The conference gathered leaders in health care, including providers, researchers and government and agency officials, as well as pharmaceutical and service providers.

They explored a variety of topics, such as trials and programs that are underway, as well as discussions of culture, policy and economic enablers and barriers, Bender said.

Health care is one of the largest expenses for a business, but there are alternatives to always buying the same plan, he said.

Bender said he focused on ways to drive down health care costs for private companies and their employees, and shared these details at the conference.

BEST PRACTICES

The group of executives that comprise the monthly CFO Forum meetings publish their best practices in the CFO Solution, Bender said.

He said he implemented a few best practices at an engineering firm in New Jersey that he owns and eliminated all deductibles for employees and gave them a benefit plan they could afford to use.

As an example, he said, his engineering firm, which has 23 employees, reduced its employee health care deductible from $6,000 to zero and maximum out-of-pocket costs from $15,000 to $1,150 per year by implementing these best practices.

Creating best practices allows for the reduction of costs for the firm and employees and their families without a reduction in the quality of the health care services offered, he added.

CUT COSTS BY UP TO 40 PERCENT

According to Bender, companies can reduce their total costs by 25 to 40 percent and cut costs for employees and their families while maintaining or even improving their health care plan.

“These are nontraditional approaches largely because the major carriers and the broker advisory industry have goals to maximize their revenue and profits, not to reduce the costs to the companies or their employees,” he said.

“We think 60 percent of private companies can benefit from doing what we did. This is where health care has to go. In the last couple of years, employers have given employees a plan they can’t afford.”

 

See original article published at LVB.com.