Tax Extension Deadline is in 75 Days!

A lot of small business owners have bookkeeping solely out of compliance for filing their taxes. What is fascinating though is that we all have the best of intentions to want to have more time and money, and to be successful.  The answer to all of this is not always working harder and longer.

The simple truth is to be looking at your financials regularly.  Alright, so maybe you are thinking…”Todd, I am not a numbers person.”  That’s fine I can accept that for now (grin).  Here are a few suggestions on ‘what’ to be keeping track of and why.

It’s standard to want to look at your ‘Income statement’ (aka, Profit and Loss), and your ‘balance sheet’. When you are looking at the income statement, look at your various sources of revenue (if you have it broken out). See if you can have the ‘income statement’ also showing last month comparison.  This will show % of change and if you are up or down.  This is huge if you really want to know how your advertising or marketing efforts are panning out.  I personally, like to have my marketing efforts broken out so I can see how profitable that is effort is and should I continue with it or not.

Have you ever thought about selling your business?  Do you roughly know what it is worth? One thing you can do is review the ‘Shareholders’ equity’. Sometimes called capital or net worth. It’s the money that would be left if a company sold all of its assets and paid off all of its liabilities. This leftover money belongs to the shareholders, or the owners, of the company.

In my next update I will share with you other reports you want to review and have a strategy for improving results that you are tracking; like sales by product or service report, and the sales by customer report.  Both of these reports weigh heavy when you are working on your marketing strategy.  More on this next time.

Sell something this week!