July 15, 2020
Published by 
Catherine Belliveau on July 15, 2020
Catherine Belliveau on July 15, 2020With the focus on the PPP and EIDL options, a tax credit afforded by the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”) has been mostly ignored by funeral home and cemetery owners. Recently, a Foresight accounting client reached out to our team when one of their funeral directors tested positive for COVID-19. In addition to the protocols and processes well publicized by the CDC and OSHA, we recommended that this firm continue to pay this employee wages under the provisions provided by the FFCRA. The following considerations led us to this conclusion: Is the business considered a Covered Employer as defined by FFCRA – Yes Covered Employers: The paid sick leave and expanded family and medical leave provisions of the FFCRA apply to certain public employers, and private employers with fewer than 500 employees. Small businesses with fewer than 50 employees […]
July 7, 2020
Published by 
Nicole Vullo on July 7, 2020
Nicole Vullo on July 7, 2020The Small Business Administration on Monday released a redacted data on Paycheck Protection Program that categorizes key recipients and the specific jobs that are covered by the $659 billion program. The data is very specific on the program, which has been federal government’s main relief effort for small businesses. Although detailed, the new data is still not transparent enough. It does not recognize loan amounts; the data is categorized in sections spanning $150,000 to $350,000; $350,000 to $1 million; $1 million to $2 million; $2 million to $5 million; and $5 million to $10 million. The new data also includes loan recipient names, addresses, industry codes, business types and loan amount ranges for loans above $150,000. This data equals almost 14% of PPP loans, according to the SBA. For loans below the $150,000 total, the SBA shared totals by zip code, industry and […]
June 26, 2020
Published by Nicole Vullo on June 26, 2020
Nicole Vullo on June 26, 2020Pandemic drives funeral industry to speed up adoption of technology By Danny King, Houston Chronicle Contributor June 22, 2020 COVID-19 has forced Houston’s prominent funeral services industry to look to the future to better honor those who’ve passed. With coronavirus-related state mandates limiting gatherings to 10 people until late last month, funeral home operators continue to be obligated to reduce the number of an event’s attendees to 50 percent of capacity for indoor spaces. As a result, such businesses have rapidly turned to online tools such as Facebook Live and Zoom to allow more people to attend funerals virtually while more are regularly adopting the practice of selling their products online instead of in person. “Broadly, the industry has been 10 to 15 years behind the times from a technological perspective,” said Chris Cruger, chief operating officer of Phoenix-based funeral […]
June 16, 2020
Published by 
Foresight on June 16, 2020
Foresight on June 16, 2020“Funeral homes adjust to virtual demand” was the top story in the Daily Independent on June 15th, highlighting key findings in Foresight’s groundbreaking study created to understand consumer attitudes, perceptions and behaviors about the funeral and cemetery industry prior to, during, and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Chris Caraveo, a reporter for the Daily Independent, recently interviewed Chris Cruger, Chief Operating Officer of the Foresight Companies, to review the key findings of our Funeral and Cemetery Consumer Behavior Study. Daily Independent refers to the new fact that 75% of consumers want pricing online — a practice virtually unheard of in the funeral home industry prior to the Covid-19 pandemic — and many consumers will not do business with providers who do not deliver transparency. “The resulting business implications the study points to are colossal — especially for a sector largely unchanged […]
June 11, 2020
Published by 
Curtis Rostad on June 11, 2020
Curtis Rostad on June 11, 2020The 2020 Funeral and Cemetery Consumer Behavior Study that the Foresight Companies recently completed made it very clear that consumers want price information online. In fact, over half of them said that they would not do business with a funeral home that did not clearly show their pricing on their website. That is a huge statistic–the potential of half of your consumers choosing a competitor simply because you are not being transparent with your pricing. This should not surprise anyone We are all used to shopping online. Can you imagine Amazon without prices and having to call to get a price on an item before you bought it? Of course not. You would not tolerate that and increasingly, consumers are saying they will not tolerate that with funeral service either. There are two common pushbacks from funeral homes when we […]