Our firm offers a wide range of services to our individual and business clients. Because our firm is relatively small, our clients benefit by getting personalized, quality service. Below we have listed the services that we offer to our clients along with a brief description.
As the list below is by no means all-inclusive, please feel free to inquire about a service if you do not see it listed. If it is not a service we provide, we would be more than happy to refer you to a qualified professional.
Services
Consulting Services
Accounting, especially strategic accounting, is not just for tax time. It's about following a longer-term approach to help your company achieve its goals that go beyond minimizing this year's tax bill. Through MMKR's Consultative Services, clients and our team of expert accountants collaborate to identify and understand a company's current situation and needs; identify a variety of options and the implications of each; determine the appropriate longer-term plans; and then execute those plans to both minimize taxes in the current year while laying the foundation for future tax health and business growth.
Our one-on-one work with clients lets us serve as an extension of your accounting department-we strive to understand your business and its needs, and then guide you through setting up your accounting systems and training your staff on their use; establishing appropriate reporting standards; and in evaluating the various operational aspects of your business to determine the tax implications and the optimum use of your resources.
MMKR's Consultative Services also include the following, among others designed to provide you with the expert guidance you need to succeed.
Services Provided
- Business Valuation When you or your business is presented with an opportunity, such as an acquisition or other larger-scale event, MMKR can help you in your decisionmaking process, by evaluating the financial implications, both positive and negative, the opportunity presents; projecting cash flow; and analyzing debt service.
- Employee Benefits We understand the impacts a company's benefits program has on its bottom line, and how the selection of an appropriate plan is crucial. MMKR can advise you on a variety of benefits- related issues, including buy-sell agreements, Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs), bonus and commission structures, and retirement plans.
- Human Resources MMKR can help you source, screen, evaluate and hire candidates to fill your key financial-related positions, and then can help train the employee in your accounting systems upon hire.
- Litigation Support and Expert Witness MMKR offers its expertise to support your litigation-related efforts, such as those involved with insurance cases, or to substantiate claims, calculate the time value of money or interest earned over a period of time, or analyze accounting practices.
- IRS Representation In the instances of an IRS audit, MMKR can act on your behalf to gather all documentation and other information necessary, and then present the information to the IRS.
Contact MMKR today for more information about the expert Consultative Services we make available to you.
Governmental
The financial management of local governmental units has never been a more challenging or critical task than it is today. The growing complexity of governmental reporting and compliance issues, a heightened demand for public accountability, and the constant budgetary pressure to do more with less, have significantly increased the demands on local government business officials. To effectively address these issues, it's important to have a professional relationship with an accounting firm that offers expert services dedicated to this complex field.
For more than 50 years, MMKR has specialized in serving the governmental sector. This experience provides us with a thorough understanding of this unique environment, and assures that our clients receive expert solutions that consider the latest developments in governmental accounting and legislation. Our partners and staff have the specialized knowledge and experience necessary to deliver high quality services in a timely and cost-effective manner.
In addition to traditional audit and accounting services, MMKR offers a wide range of customized services specifically tailored to meet the needs of our governmental clients.
Services Provided
- Traditional audit and accounting services
- Revenue projections
- Financial recovery plan development
- Budget development and review
- Fraud investigation
- Special education billing
- Truth-in-taxation presentations
- Implementation of governmental accounting pronouncements
- Construction project analysis
- Contract negotiation support
- Cash flow projections
- Fund and accounts restructuring
- Grant compliance and reporting
- Bank and investment accounts restructuring
- Utility rate studies
- Student activity account reviews
- Internal control evaluations
- Special legislation consulting and support
- Operational reviews and work flow analysis
- Key financial position candidate evaluation
- Tax increment compliance and reporting
- Accounting systems selection and implementation
- Debt service funding plans
These are only a few of the services we offer, which have proven invaluable to numerous Minnesota municipalities and school districts. MMKR's governmental services have also benefited charter schools, police and fire relief associations, governmental joint ventures, commissions, municipal utilities, liquor operations, and golf courses.
Commercial and Small Business
No matter the nature of your business, whether you have products to sell or services to offer, MMKR understands the unique accounting-related needs shared by business owners, and offers a variety of services, ranging from tax advice and planning, to acting as your external accounting department. These services are provided by first understanding your business’ unique needs and challenges, and then by applying services appropriate to them.
Our team of commercial and business accountants, and everyone at MMKR, believes that direct, personal relationships are critical to providing businesses with the level of service they need—and deserve. That’s why we begin by first understanding a client’s business, accounting systems, tax situation, and long-term goals and plans. Based on our findings, we’ll recommend areas of potential modification to increase the overall accuracy of information, to have immediate access to information for evaluation purposes, and to develop a long-term tax strategy that both minimizes current taxes and best positions the company for future tax seasons. In addition, we can provide our business clients with the following mixture of services:
Services Provided
- Traditional audits and the compilation and review of financial statements—essential tools when working with banks and other lending institutions
- Tax consulting and planning for both new and established businesses to minimize the tax burden potentially passed to owners, depending on the type of business organization, and to monitor the company to ensure the tax strategy remains suitable
- Internal operational review to help ensure the company’s cash flow occurs as it should, and to keep tabs on expenses and receivables
- Chief Financial Officer services includes bookkeeping, frequently meeting to evaluate financial performance, acting as an extension of your company, identifying ways to increase profitability, recommending accounting standards, and mentoring employees in how to implement and maintain them
- Financial institution consultation includes working with banks and other financial institutions on your behalf to help them understand your business and provide them with the information they need to make decisions when you want to secure financing, expand, raise capital and other activities
- Employee benefit and retirement plan consultation involves evaluating and putting you in contact with our network of experts—all skilled employee benefit professionals. We’ll then help you evaluate solutions based on the impact on your business
- Succession planning is essential for both family-owned and traditional businesses. MMKR can help you put the plans in place to transfer a business to the next generation, or to position it for employee buy-outs, mergers or acquisitions
Not-For-Profit
It is a challenge for non-profit organizations to make sure they are in compliance with the myriad of reporting and legal requirements, classifications, accounting and fundraising guidelines they face. Non-profit organizations are becoming increasingly scrutinized under the public’s microscope, making it essential that they are careful and accurate about their expenses and their appropriate classification. If they are not in compliance, in the ever-changing environment, they face potentially devastating risks, such as strict taxation penalties, modification in their governmental funding, or potential revocation of their tax-exempt status.
MMKR’s partners and staff have developed crucial knowledge in the non-profit industry with their significant non-profit and government clientele. With our personalized approach, our goal is to apply this knowledge to coordinate your organization and its unique business model to the application of the appropriate accounting, reporting, and compliance requirements.
We also provide our non-profit clients with the following mix of services, among many others:
- Financial reporting: Based on your needs or the requirements of funding sources, MMKR can provide audit, review, compilation or single audit services for your annual non-profit organization financial statements.
- Regulatory agency reporting: Depending on your purpose and funding sources, MMKR will inform you of and prepare the required non-profit organizations annual compliance statements with government authorities to maintain non-profit status
- Accounting practices guidance: MMKR will work with your organization to develop your accounting practices to meet the accounting standards required by your industry
- Staffing assistance: The expertise required for non-profit organizational accounting varies greatly from traditional business accounting. MMKR understands the difference, and can help your organization put a qualified staff in place by recruiting, training, monitoring and assisting you and your employees throughout the process.
- Consulting and special projects: MMKR’s personnel are trained to recognize the needs of non-profit organizations, including asset monitoring and reporting; payroll and sales tax issues; federal grants and funding concerns; retirement plan issues: joint cost analysis and many others.
MMKR’s team of experts in non-profit organizational accounting have provided these services and many others to a variety of non-profit organizations, including churches, nursing homes, foundations, subsidized housing projects, and homes and schools for the mentally or physically impaired.
Individual
Your time is valuable, so it simply makes sense to rely on experts to provide you with the professional advice you need to make sound decisions. That?s where MMKR steps in. We provide a wide variety of accounting-related services to individuals, and integrate these services with those of your other advisors, including attorneys, insurance providers, money managers, bankers, brokers and others?saving you the time and hassle of doing so. It?s this dedication to first understanding and then meeting your complete financial needs that holds true in all our activities, and allows MMKR to provide you with thorough, well-planned services.
This understanding also allows us to be proactive with our solutions, putting our clients in a position to make the best long-term decision, not merely one that makes sense only at tax time. This process is assisted by our ease in availability, which encourages our clients to keep us regularly informed on matters that impact their financial situation, such as those associated with business transactions, so we can respond with the best, most suitable long-term solution. MMKR?s individual solutions can incorporate the following mixture of services, among many others ? all tailored to your unique situation:
Services Provided
- Tax and financial planning, including tax return preparation and review that defers or eliminates as much tax as possible by utilizing available alternatives
- Estate planning, including the establishment of family trusts and ways to minimize the tax implications when assets are passed to subsequent generations
- IRS representation in the instances of audits and tax examination cases
- Personal financial statement development, useful when clients are in the process of securing financing for a real estate or business venture, and also in the development of wills
- Business valuation, on both an individual and business level
- Marriage dissolution, including assistance in separating assets, transferring property, and understanding the tax implications and affects of each decision on investment and retirement accounts
- Succession planning for small business owners, including consultation on buy-outs and passing or selling the business to family members or other parties
- Individual and planning integration by developing the overall accounting standards and tax-related plans at the business level that consider the needs of and affects on the individual level
Each MMKR partner offers many years of experience in providing individuals with these services, so you can be confident in our abilities to understand your complete financial picture, offer innovative alternatives, and then implement the most appropriate, long-term option. These abilities have brought our clients and us success in our individual services practice, and have helped us develop trusted, long-term relationships with our clients.