As you become more successful, you may find it harder to keep on top of your finances and your financial forecast. Even though you may be working with a business accountant who is keeping track of everything, the plan and the check-in have to be done by you. It may seem overwhelming to do it all, but if you set up certain protocols now, you will not have any problems keeping track of everything. Here are ways you can keep on top of finances in your small business.
Set a Goal For the Year
Have it concrete in your mind what you want your financial goal to be for the present year. When you have that number that you are trying to reach, you become unstoppable. Everything you and your team do from that moment forward is to achieve that number. No one can do the work, however, if they don’t know what that number is. Write it down, shout it out, put it on a huge white board and hang it up in your office, do whatever you need to know where you are heading.
Update Your Licenses
Make sure you are up to date on all of your permits and licenses so that business is not halted in the event that something was not renewed. Especially important is your LEI number. You can go on the LEI register and renew your number fast. If that falls behind, you won’t be able to move money around if you are a financial business or brokerage firm. Permits allow you to continue to work in your space, and insurance policies keep you safe. Update everything so you can keep making money.
Set Monthly Goals
Monthly goals are also very important. They are mini goals for your yearly goal. Each month’s goal will get you closer and closer to your overall yearly desire. So, starting this month, set up what you want to achieve for the month. When you do this, your team will be able to focus on something in the present, and at the end of the month, they can take stock of what they have helped to create and helped to achieve. Smaller goals are easy to manage and will make sure you hit your financial milestones.
Know Your Profits and Losses
Sit down and organize what is not working and what is working. When you have a clear picture of where you are lacking in the financial department, you can start to focus on making that better. You can’t fix a leaky boat if you don’t know where the leak is. An organized P&L means you know where every dollar and cent is going. You can show these statistics to your team and they will quickly know where they need to focus their attention. You can make this one of your monthly goals, and over time, you will hopefully start seeing your profits grow while your losses become non-existent.
Use Software to Track All of Your Numbers
There are so many great accounting programs out there for you to use to keep track of all the numbers. These programs have very easy-to-use interfaces that show you a full dashboard of how your money is tracking. These same tools also have tabs for payroll, so you can make sure everyone is getting paid and that everything is within budget. You can share these programs with your accountant, or you can create one for yourself so that you have all the access you need to your finances. The more you know the more you can coordinate with your finance team to keep the revenue growing.
Review Your Finances Quarterly
Four times a year, sit down with your finance team and go over the numbers. Although you are going to have monthly goals and a yearly goal, sitting down quarterly to discuss how everything is going is a great idea. These meetings will allow you to learn if your plans are working and if you are actually hitting the numbers you need to hit. As you are goal focused, you may miss a thing or two so a review is the best way to see where you are and how you can get to where you want to go as fast and easy as possible.
These meetings give you a chance to step back from the entire operation and get a handle on what is really going on with your business. This is also an opportunity to potentially switch tactics.
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