Financial Bits and Bytes

KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, are an important way for any manager or business owner to keep track of how he or she is doing. Remember one key point – If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Which KPIs should you use to determine the success of your business? It would be nice and easy to tell you the six (6) most important KPIs for your business. The problem is that each business is different, and to make the decisions more difficult, each business owner has different goals. So how do you determine what KPIs are the ones that

Every business owner is buried by information. There aren’t enough hours in the day to read, digest and then decide what you should act on. So how do you decide what to deal with today that can’t wait till tomorrow? Many business owners have dashboards that tell them how their companies are doing. Some electronic systems continuously scroll information about the company. Some use reports that are created weekly or monthly for the management team. It’s nice to have that information, but all those reports and all those numbers could cause your eyes to glaze over. TMI – Too much

Of course, you know the answer! You buy raw materials, you pay your staff, rent and utilities and you sell what you make. But if you’re only looking at those few numbers, you are not able to make the changes you need to make your business more profitable. Your income statement is the summary, the outline of how your company performs. But if you’re not digging deeper, you’re missing things that will dramatically change your bottom line. It is the subsidiary reports that really tell the story. Here are 5 things that you should be looking at that will make

Often, I meet with business owners that are embarrassed that they don’t understand the basics of Finance. If you don’t understand the differences between the financial statements you’re given, how can you use that information to help grow your business? So, here’s a little refresher course on the three Financial Statements, Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Statement of Cash Flows. They each tell you different things about your business. The Balance Sheet tells you the status of your business at a point in time. The Income Statement tells you how your business did over a period of time. The Statement

The best way to prepare for an audit is to understand ahead of time that you ARE going to get audited, and therefore have your company financials in decent order to be able to do the following: Justify expenses as true business expenses. This means actual receipts, not credit card statements, with an understanding of how those items were used in the business. Identify those items that are in the grey area. I am considering that you aren’t purposely doing things that are against the law.  The Tax Code draws a line in the sand about what is a legitimate