Do you treat your business bookkeeping tasks like you do your doctor? You only go when you are sick and absolutely have to? Or start catching up on bookkeeping so that you can file your taxes (that you probably have an extension on)?

Do you also hate the idea of spending time on doing activities that you don’t think will result in you getting more customers? Why bother doing the books when you don’t know if you’ll make payroll? Will reconciling your accounts suddenly bring you new customers to pay the bills? Then why bother?

At some point, you are going to get sick though. Your tax bill will be way higher than you expected. Or a few customers start paying late and you suddenly don’t have the cash flow to pay the everyday bills. Or you overextend yourself by buying into a lot of things you probably didn’t need.

Or that big customer that was going to set you up took up way more time and is now more than half of your business. If they aren’t happy, your business doesn’t exist. Forget having time to find new customers, you’re too busy keeping that whale of one happy!

Or maybe, you are starting to get older. You don’t want to be working forever. Retirement doesn’t seem so far off, but you are still juggling one thing to pay the other. Perhaps you have an accountant, but they don’t do much more than tell you how much to pay in taxes each year (because that’s all you ask them to do.) You may do what you have to do in your bookkeeping as far as sending invoices, paying bills, reconciling accounts. But are you (or someone you hire) doing it effectively?

Are you asking yourself any of these questions?

• Am I categorizing expenses correctly to minimize your tax bill?
• What is my break even point?
• What is my budget?
• How much can I afford to pay employees and subcontractors?
• Can I afford that new technology or office space?
• How much reserve capital should I have in the bank to keep cash flow steady?
• Am I as profitable as I could be?
• Who are my best customers?
• Where did they come from?
• What am I doing for them?
• How long do they stay with me?
• How many new customers are needed to get to pay the bills and reach my personal goals?
• Where is my next growth opportunity?

A lot of clients come to us because they want to grow their business. More often than not, most don’t know the numbers that tell them how healthy their business is. They are just trying to fill a leaky bank account with more checks, and so they become the proverbial hamster on the wheel. Running to get more clients only to see the money go out as fast as, or faster, than they can put it in. So naturally they come to the conclusion- let’s just keep adding more in! Eventually it will even out.