Imagine being a restaurant owner, near bankrupt and owing thousands of dollars to the IRS. Your books are a mess, you don’t know what to do next, and your livelihood is on the brink of collapse. Read below to see how Robert Rimberg helped turn this business around.
Two years ago this past July, Robert Rimberg was sent in to see if he could help a struggling restaurant owner try to keep her business. The first meeting took place in a very expensive attorney’s office in midtown. The attorney was discussing Chapter 11 and present were Rimberg, the prospective client, her comptroller and the business CPA, who was known as an “expert” in the industry.
The CPA presented the most current financial statements which were from March 2006. The prospective client owed big bucks to the IRS, NYS Sales Tax and the Labor Dept as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars to vendors. The attorneys and the CPA were recommending bankruptcy, even though Chapter 11 is very expensive. Two hours into the meeting the prospective client pronounced loudly, “Rob, you’ve been sitting there for two hours and you haven’t said a word, what do you think?”
Rimberg asked all the parties in the room why they were looking at March 2006 numbers in July 2006 and trying to make a determination as to the future of the business. The CPA had a perplexing look. “Well, it takes a long time to prepare financials. We have been requesting information and not receiving it in a timely manner”. The Comptroller then stated “You have no idea what that office is like. My three assistants and I work day and night and are always behind. There are not enough hours in a day.” Clearly they were overwhelmed and not handling things very well.
It seemed that they had a good core business that had been neglected and what they didn’t have was a plan of attack. Robert Rimberg and Associates LLC was hired and implemented the following action plan:
- We fired the comptroller- High strung individual that was there for many years
- We contacted the government agencies and negotiated payment plans
- We worked with the assistants in how to close a month quickly
- We were able to present internal financials by the end of the following month
- We set up a system whereby the Company paid all of their bills COD. This allowed us to match current expenses with current revenues.
- We set up a budget with weekly cash flow projections, this included targeted dates when we would get out of the “trick bag”
And the beauty of this, we did it all remotely at an amazingly low cost to the client. Although there were a few setbacks, this client has a positive cash flow today and is well on their way to being financially sound.
