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Mortuaries and Point of Sale Software from QuickBooks

2 October 2005

Q- I am currently working in a mortuary and I want to start my own business. I have worked in several areas of the business, but not all of them. I can use my father's inheritance to start this business. What should I do first to get started?

The first thing to do is to make sure that you have experience in all areas of your business, especially sales and finance. With finance, understanding financial statements is mandatory. The more experience you get by working for someone else, the better. It is so much more economical for you to make mistakes while working for someone else.

The normal skills you need for running your own business are: marketing, management, accounting, finance, and purchasing. Of course, with a mortuary an understanding of the embalming process is a must. The more knowledge you have of each of these, the higher the probability of your success.

While you are getting the requisite experience, put some numbers together to insure that you are going to earn a reasonable rate of return on your investment. You are going to be investing a large amount of money in this new venture, so you will need to insure the viability of the venture. You can easily do this on a spreadsheet or you can hire an accountant to run the numbers to validate that you stand a reasonable chance to earn a return for bearing the risk.

You will be taking your father's inheritance and investing this in your business and you must insure that you are earning a return commensurate with the risk that you will be bearing. You always have the option of just investing the inheritance and earning a nice return. Most startup businesses should shoot for at least a 30% annual return on any investment made. If you are not going to earn at least a 30% return, you need to pass on this investment, no matter what your ego is telling you.

The more time you spend on planning your venture the better.

Q- I am going to start a new retail venture and was wondering if it would be wise for me to invest in a point of sale (POS) computer program.

Yes, it is worthwhile because you do not have to have a cash register. QuickBooks, my recommendation for accounting software, has several different versions of Point of Sale which are an add-ons for QuickBooks. This software runs from about $800 to $1500, depending on the program selected.

This software allows you to interface the point of sale software with your accounting software and that saves so much work and effort. Also, this software lets you track inventory, customers, and sales.