{"id":7604,"date":"2021-06-21T00:30:33","date_gmt":"2021-06-21T04:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/?p=7604"},"modified":"2026-01-15T12:12:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T17:12:50","slug":"startup-success-an-entrepreneurs-answers-to-your-startup-finance-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/startup-success-an-entrepreneurs-answers-to-your-startup-finance-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Startup Success: An Entrepreneur\u2019s Answers to Your Startup Finance Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMoney Matters<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tStartup Success: An Entrepreneur\u2019s Answers to Your Startup Finance Questions\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\tOwen Sweeney<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Sage recently hosted a session at Vancouver Startup Week 2021 called <\/em>\u2018Setting up for financial success<\/em>\u2019 in which Alex MacCaull, founder of HMS Financial<\/a> answered the most frequently asked questions startups have. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alex<\/em>\u2019s entrepreneur journey, started with his departure from his full-time job as a financial services advisor in Ontario. He worked a number of contract jobs in Canada and overseas. In 2010, his first business, a marketing company, was ultimately short lived, but he took the learnings from this experience to rebound with a new project<\/em>, HMS Financial, in 2011. The business is celebrating its 10th<\/sup> anniversary this year and is continuing to grow.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In your opinion, how can you turn an idea into a successful business in 2021?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first step is to identify the existing opportunities in the market. Find something that nobody wants to do and make a business out of providing the solution or service that fills the demand. To expand on the opportunity even further, you can make a business out of teaching what you do to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What advice would you give to would-be entrepreneurs who are worried about startup costs?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

From a financial perspective, just make sure to be realistic about how much things are going to cost.  Try to come up with a projection for how much it\u2019s going to cost to start the business, how much it could reasonably make, and how much it will cost to run. If you\u2019re going to be doing any borrowing, being able to show the details in a business plan should help to gain approvals.  Having done the planning ahead of time, you\u2019ll be in a good position to keep the business financially on track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can businesses do their own bookkeeping?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

They absolutely can. In the early days I started doing the books for HMS Financial myself, with the help of my assistant.  we did all of the bookkeeping ourselves in-house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When do new businesses typically start to think about hiring a bookkeeper or accountant?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When we started to grow about three years in, we hired a third staff member. Instead of training them on the bookkeeping, we made a conscious decision not to do this in-house anymore and to reach out to a dedicated professional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the bookkeeping in your business is a monthly duty, it\u2019s possible that you or your staff will have to spend time relearning the process each month. This can make it feel like a chore, and that can lead to procrastination.  In my experience, daily skills are easier for a new staff member to pick up than weekly, monthly, or annual ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a former financial advisor, what is the top money mistake you have seen startup businesses make?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I would say that some new business owners don\u2019t always have the financial discipline for their business finances that they might have in their personal life, especially in the early stages. There\u2019s a temptation to spend in order to grow before you are really ready. You need to be lean and cost efficient in order to drive the business forward. Later on, as your business gets more successful, you can afford to be a bit more free-handed. For my own business it took about six years to get to that stage, but everyone\u2019s situation is different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should a startup business incorporate and when should they do it?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before I answer that, don\u2019t forget in Canada you can start doing business in your own name, or by getting a business number before incorporation. If it\u2019s your first business, you might want to go about it that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can always incorporate later if things really take off. If you\u2019re more experienced or your business involves substantial borrowing right from the start, incorporating could be worth it for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re lucky that fees to incorporate in Canada are low and the paperwork is quite straightforward compared to other countries. I\u2019ve been trying to start a new project in Brazil for over three years and the costs are astronomical!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much should startup owners pay themselves?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For my own situation, I looked at what an entry-level employee would be paid in my industry as a starting point. You\u2019ll need to swallow your pride and pay yourself that much until you are confident you can afford to pay yourself more. Before HMS I was paid an annual salary as a Financial Services Advisor. So, I set my salary at that – and it stayed there for six years. Sometimes it was hard to be sure I should keep going when I saw that my peers were making more. But eventually I was able to bring the figure up, and now I make a good living as the primary decision maker at my place of employment. Not everybody cares about that, but for me it\u2019s beyond price.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can a business keep control of their expenses?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s all about planning. In your first year you can use your business plan as a guide for operational costs and your budget for expenses. In the subsequent years you should repeat this planning process annually. Every year, HMS produces a business plan which includes the previous year\u2019s financials, and a forecast of expenses for the next year by budget category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all started with an estimate before we started operating, that grew into an annual forecast that is now an integral part of our planning. I actually still have the original budget, it\u2019s fun to go back and look at it sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re a startup owner getting ready to do your business books for the first time Download Your Free Quick Start Guide to Bookkeeping<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is part 2 in the series Startup Success<\/em>. You can read part 1 here:  The Most Popular Expenses, Taxes and Bookkeeping Questions Answered<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Quick Start Guide for Bookkeeping<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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With our Quick Start Guide, we\u2019ll help you get your books up and running in just five easy steps!<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet your free guide<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t714 readers have downloaded this guide\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\"accountant\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sage recently hosted a session at Vancouver Startup Week 2021 called \u2018Setting up for financial success\u2019 in which Alex MacCaull, founder of HMS Financial answered the most frequently asked questions startups have. Alex\u2019s entrepreneur journey, started with his departure from his full-time job as a financial services advisor in Ontario. He worked a number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":737,"featured_media":5509,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sage_video":false,"post_featured_image_hide":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[165],"business_type":[3],"lilypad":[],"context":[],"industry":[],"persona":[],"imagine_tag":[61],"coauthors":[310],"class_list":["post-7604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-money-matters","tag-bookkeeping","business_type-small-business"],"sage_meta":{"region":"en-ca","author_name":"Owen Sweeney","featured_image":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2018\/06\/ClientMeeting_2-e1501251455636-scaled.jpg","imagine_tags":{"61":"Payroll software"}},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Sage Advice Canada English","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/737"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/5509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"business_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/business_type?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"lilypad","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/lilypad?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"context","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/context?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"persona","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/persona?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"imagine_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/imagine_tag?post=7604"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ca\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}