There’s an entire genre of corny jokes of the form “What do you get when you cross an X with a Y?”  Like:

Q. What do you get when you cross a refrigerator with a stereo?
A. Cool music.

Q. What do you get when you cross a centipede with a parrot?
A. A walkie-talkie.

Or my favorite:

Q. What do you get when you cross an enterprise with a consumer?
A. A small business.

OK, that last one isn’t funny, not even a little bit. But it does explain why I want to build a business that serves small businesses.

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Image courtesy of stock images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

If you’re not a CPA, and you have to deal with accounting rules, you’re likely to feel like you’ve moved into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas, i.e., that you’ve crossed over into The Twilight Zone. For example, at some companies, if you buy a $5000 computer, that’s a capital expense, amortized over several years — whereas if you buy a $4999 computer, that’s an operating expense, recognized immediately. So, the more expensive computer can fit within your budget better than the cheaper computer. Or, if a customer signs a one-year software license, with two optional years of maintenance, you can recognize the revenue for the software license immediately; if, on the other hand, the customer commits to the maintenance up-front, you may have to spread the revenue over three years. So, this year’s numbers look better if you can convince the customer not to commit your product. (A rather special sort of salesmanship!)

In the casual parlance of our day, accounting can seem pretty “random”.  But, what if accounting was actually random?

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If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that I’m hoping to be the founder of a start-up. And start-ups, by definition, are designed to grow very quickly; otherwise, they’re small business, not start-ups. On the other hand, consulting businesses, by their very nature, tend not to grow very quickly. It takes a lot of time to develop client relationships, bring on respected consultants, and develop a recognized brand. So, why did I recently form Doon Consulting Group?

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