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Small Business Doctor

Delivering honest value through deep expertise to small business owners like you.

Decorated Coast Guard Financial Advisor. Economics PhD. Finance MBA. Harvard & Johns Hopkins Grad.

Bookkeeping  

Small Business Doctor is an Intuit Quickbooks ProAdvisor certified firm with reasonable rates. Every bookkeeper is a certified bookkeeper. We can handle payroll if requested and can clean up your books if needed.

Learn more about Small Business Doctor's bookkeeping and accounting

Advisory  

Every small business has a limiting factor. It could be leads, cash flow, capacity, almost anything. The Small Business Doctor diagnoses and develops a treatment plan for your bottleneck.

From business plan analysis to routine small business checkups to strategy sessions, the Small Business Doctor provides the full-suite of strategic fractional CFO services.

Learn  

Learn all about accounting, finance, business strategy, economics, and financial math from the basics to the advanced. I've taught and tutored these subjects for years, helping everyone from teens to postdocs, CPAs and MDs.

I want us all to grow. It's never too late to learn something new.

EBITDA

EBITDA is (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) a metric used by financial professionals to estimate a company’s profitability by stripping out non-cash expenses. EBITDA makes it easier for finance professionals to compare different companies across different industries. It helps convert an apples to oranges comparison to an apples to apples comparison.

EBITDA gets to the core of a small business’s operating profitability quickly. It does this by removing all considerations of past investments, capital structure and tax jurisdictions. Depreciation and amortization are accounting charges for past investments. Interest expenses and taxes depend on a company’s capital structure and location. By removing these, a company’s operations are revealed.

EBITDA is calculated from the income statement. On the income statement under the “Indirect operating costs” heading, draw an imaginary line just above depreciation and amortization. EBITDA for a company is the revenue minus all the direct operating costs and all those indirect operating costs like administration until you get to depreciation.

EBITDA is not a GAAP-recognized metric, and EBITDA is different from operating cash flow, which is a GAAP-recognized metric.

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Old Fashioned Service

I Tailor My Services To Align With Your Needs

Over the years, I have happily and confidentially advised a wide range of clients from a plumber near Pittsburgh to a robotics startup to a multi-state pediatrics practice. I am always your primary point of contact and hold myself accountable for your success.

The initial consultation is always free. My billing goal is to always provide clients with a high return on investment when working with me irrespective of their budget.

I am not a salesman. I will only take on a client when I can provide genuine value for them. Reach out if you need expert advice, assistance or have a question.

Dr. Matt Carter

Hi there! I'm Matt. I'm a Christian, husband and father of four. I'm a graduate of Calvin, Harvard, Cardiff and Johns Hopkins Universities. I have a PhD in Economics, an MBA in Finance and an MS in Data Analytics. I'm a numbers guy who can communicate well!

I began this service to work directly with the small and mid-sized business owners who grow our great country's economy. Since 1999, I've worked with owners across industries from high tech IT and robotics to small farmers and artists. I've also helped and advised nonprofits from churches to civic organizations.

I also served as a Finance Staff Officer and eventually as the National Division Chief for Measurement Research within the US Coast Guard. The research and methods I created there continue to guide strategic decisions to this day.

I enjoy being active outdoors, especially in wild lands. Hiking, biking and fly fishing are some of my favorite pastimes.

I also love dogs! I'm an AKC obedience evaluator, and I train service and therapy dogs.

Learn About Strategy, Finance and Accounting

Operating Expenses Disguised as Inventory

Companies need to keep some amount of inventory. When I go to a home repair supplier, I expect them to have the copper pipe I need in stock. When I go to my local bakery, I expect them to have the macarons I crave in stock. When I go to my local grocer, I expect […]

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Big companies are incentivized to increase product specialization and complexity. Why?

Our culture values specialization. Having specialized skills often leads to outsized material benefits. It also often results in praise and social status. Consider the social recognition that would be given to a medical doctor who is a primary care family medicine doctor compared to that given to an orthopedic surgeon. They are both highly educated, […]

British Economist Ronald Coase

Transaction Costs in the American Economy from 1870 to 1970

What Are Transaction Costs? Transaction costs are often overlooked in economics and textbook finance. In real life economics, however, they play a very significant role. In corporate finance, you can see many of a company’s transaction costs located in the selling and administrative categories within the Selling, General and Administrative (SG&A) section of their Income […]

Nobel Prize Winning Economist Ronald Coase

Coase’s Theory of the Firm

During the Great Depression, British economist Ronald Coase wrote a famous essay on the nature of the firm or company. As with America at the time, many free-market economies were also enduring a severe and difficult economic depression. The Soviet Union, however, was growing to become a significant industrial economy. This led to a debate […]

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Transaction Costs and SG&A Expenses

Selling, General or Administrative Expenses One way to see how economic transaction costs are internalized within a company is in the SG&A Expense lines of a company’s income statement. All of the selling and administrative expenses are internalized transaction costs, and so is the insurance expense within the general expenses category. This is not the […]

Balance Sheet

What Is the Balance Sheet? The Balance Sheet is one of the primary financial statements used in accounting. The Balance Sheet shows a snapshot of a business’s financial position at a point in time. There are two sections: Assets and Liabilities & Equity. Not only does the Balance Sheet show individual and composite account balances, […]

Statement of Comprehensive Income

What Is the Statement of Comprehensive Income? The Statement of Comprehensive Income is a financial statement for items that are not included within Net Income from the Income Statement but nevertheless do affect the equity section of the Balance Sheet. The Statement of Comprehensive Income shows total comprehensive income. The Statement of Comprehensive Income includes […]