Alisa A. Mitchell CPA PAAs an entrepreneur, you likely place a high value on freedom. When the word “budget” is mentioned, you might cringe and feel like it hampers your freedom. But it’s really the opposite. Here’s why.
According to a 2019 article in Small Business Trends, “Startup Statistics – The Numbers You Need to Know,” 82 percent of businesses that fail do so because of cash flow problems. Even if your business is no longer a startup, the failure rates for businesses started in 2014 were as follows:
- 20 percent failed to make it to their second year,
- 30 percent failed to make it to their third year,
- 38 percent failed to make it to their fourth year, and
- 44 percent failed to make it to their fifth year.
Many of the reasons for business failure can be prevented with good budgeting and planning. Here are some benefits of making a budget and managing to it.
- A budget helps to control spending by seeing what’s available beyond your cash balance at the time.
- Impulse spending can be curbed by avoiding spending on anything that is not budgeted for.
- If a loan is needed to finance the business, you have a better idea of how much you need and how to best schedule the loan payments.
- Your chances of business success increase with a budget.
- You can see future revenue shortfalls so that you can take proactive steps to boost sales.
- You can better manage growth.
- You have a better idea of your profit level so you can make pricing changes, tax predictions, appropriate compensation, and other strategic changes.
- You can plan for large expenditures such as asset purchases and time them better for cash flow, loan acquisition, and other considerations.
Getting started with a budget is easy. If you’ve been in business for more than one year, you can start with last year’s actual figures and then adjust for the growth and changes you want. The numbers can be input into your accounting system so that you can get reports that measure actual progress versus the budget numbers. You can then make good business decisions based on your variances.
When you take a little bit of time to create a budget, you really can enjoy the freedom of knowing you’re on track to make your numbers. If we’re not already working with you on your budget, feel free to reach out to find out more.
More and more small businesses are finding virtual meetings useful. Virtual meetings have many advantages:
- No travel time is needed for participants, so you’ll save on gas and auto maintenance.
- They create an ability to visually connect with remote employees, customers, vendors, partners, job candidates, and other stakeholders.
- They are better than a phone call because of the visual element.
Before you climb into the car or book a flight, think about whether a virtual meeting could save you time and deliver the same result. It’s a very big change in habit to get used to, but when you do, you’ll find it saves you time and money.
To hold a virtual meeting, you’ll need a software app that works in your browser. There are many choices available, and one popular one is called Zoom. You can find them at https://zoom.us/.
It’s easier than you might think to hold a virtual meeting. The learning curve is more psychological than any skill or equipment needed. You’ll need a computer, and you can use your phone or your computer for audio. If you use your computer for audio, you’ll need a microphone and speakers.
For best results, you should also have a webcam built in to your computer, or you can purchase one separately and connect it. Everyone is camera-shy, or webcam-shy, but don’t let that stop you! You can always host a meeting without video.
Zoom has a free account that you can use to try out virtual meetings. Once you’ve set up your account, you can schedule a meeting or host a meeting on the fly. Setup choices include whether you’ll use computer or phone audio, whether you want the video to be on or off, and whether you want to record the session, which can be very handy. You can also mute and unmute participants, so that it can be used for classes as well as meetings.
Here are a few tips to make sure your virtual meetings go off without a hitch:
- Treat a virtual meeting with the same importance as a face-to-face one: be on time, have an agenda, and make sure everyone is heard.
- Audio quality is probably more important than visual quality. If you are new to the software, do a test run before you start inviting clients to meetings so you can get through any learning curve. Consider using a microphone headset for higher quality sound. Apple EarPods work great if you have an iPhone.
- For good video results, face a window or light source so that your face is not in shadow. The brighter the better; everyone looks better with more lighting because the light erases wrinkles! If possible, the webcam lens should be at eye level or above. You can use books under your computer to raise it if you need to.
Try virtual meetings in your business, and invite us to your next meeting.
Each month, your accounting system yields actionable information for you to run your business better. Here are some key reports that all business owners should review every month.
Balance Sheet
A quick review of the balance sheet can tell you the balances of your current assets and current liabilities. Current assets should always be larger than current liabilities; if it’s not, you may have liquidity issues.
You can also take a look at these accounts: cash, accounts receivable, and accounts payable. They should look reasonable to you based on your business history.
Accounts Receivable Aging
Your gaining report can alert you to who has not paid their invoice, so that you can take action to collect that money. Any balances over 30 days should trigger a collection process since the older the receivable gets, the less likely it is to collect.
Accounts Payable Aging
Hopefully, this report is clean and you are able to pay all of your bills on time. If you have an unusually large amount in this account, you’ll want to make sure you have the future cash to pay the bills.
Income Statement
The first number most entrepreneurs look at on the income statement is profit. It’s a good idea to review every account balance on this report to see if it is what you expected. Some questions to ask yourself include:
- Did I generate the amount of revenue that I expected? If not, should I ramp up marketing for the next few months?
- Do all of my expenses look reasonable? Are there any numbers that look too high?
- Are my payroll expenses in line with what I was expecting?
- Which accounts caused me to generate more or less profit?
- What I can I do next month to improve performance and increase profit?
Sales Reports
There are many excellent sales reports to dive deeper into your revenue so you can see what sold and what didn’t. Sales by Item and Sales by Customer are two good options for you to get more detail about your revenue balances. By analyzing your revenue, you can see what promotions worked and how you might take action to increase sales.
These five reports are very basic, but they are also very key to your business. To profit from these reports, it’s up to you to take action in your business to improve your success.
The account on your income statement called Cost of Goods Sold can be confusing to non-accountants. In this article, we’ll attempt to de-mystify it and explain how it works.
Cost of Goods Sold is an account in your Chart of Accounts that is a very special type of expense. It is the amount of direct costs of items that were sold by the company. It is related to inventory, and it helps to see the flow of transactions to understand the big picture.
When you purchase an inventory item for sale, it’s considered an asset (not an expense yet) in your company. When you sell an inventory item, the asset is reduced and the Cost of Goods Sold account is increased, moving the item from an asset to an expense. It’s no longer an asset once it’s sold, and the cost of the item sold reduces your profit and is expensed into the Cost of Goods Sold account.
Some accountants will abbreviate the Cost of Goods Sold account to COGS, and you might hear them call it that.
In the case of wholesale and retail businesses, the cost of goods sold is the amount that was paid for the inventory items to be sold. In the case of a manufacturer, the costs can include the cost of raw materials, labor to produce the item, and sometimes additional allocations of other related costs. Construction businesses may have a Cost of Construction account or Contract Costs instead of COGS. Service businesses will typically not have a balance in the Cost of Goods Sold account. If they do have direct costs, the costs are often coded to a Supplies account under expenses.
At any point in time, the cost of items you purchase are in two different accounts:
- The unsold items are reflected in the asset account, Inventory, on your Balance Sheet report.
- The sold items are reflected in the Cost of Goods Sold account, on your Income Statement report.
It’s important that the Cost of Goods Sold balance is accurate, because there are many good things you can learn from it when you compare it with inventory. You can learn how fast your inventory is selling, and you can determine your gross profit margin.
If your inventory purchases have not been coded correctly, you can take inventory and arrive at the correct cost of unsold items. If your physical inventory does not match your books, your accountant can make a correcting entry between Cost of Goods Sold and the Inventory account so that both of them are accurate.
If you have further questions about the Cost of Goods Sold account, feel free to reach out any time.
Can you believe that half of 2019 is gone already? That means it’s a great time to take stock of how your business has done for the first half of 2019 so that you can meet your financial goals for the entire year.
On Track for Sales
Are you on track to make your 2019 revenue number? The first step is to check your 2019 budget numbers for total revenue. (Don’t have a budget? – Check with us; we’d be delighted to discuss that service with you.)
Next, get your Income Statement for June 2019 Year-to-Date and check the revenue figure. Are you on track with your budget, or are you halfway there revenue-wise, accounting for seasonality? If so, pat yourself on the back! If not, what promotions will you put in place to boost your growth for the rest of 2019?
On Track for Profit
Looking at the same Income Statement, check your net income figure. Are you on track with what you planned? If so, great! If not, the reason is simple: it will be either lower sales than expected or higher expenses than expected.
If your expenses are too high, you’ll need to drill down into each of your expense accounts, including cost of goods sold, to see which ones are higher than expected. Were there some unanticipated costs? Does your pricing need adjusting? Do you need more volume to cover your costs? This is where we can help you with an analysis of where your opportunities are to increase profit.
On Track for Cash
One more place to look is your cash balance. It can be uncomfortable when you are running short of cash for your business. If your balance is lower than you’d like it to be, it could be because of some of the factors mentioned above. It could also be because you just purchased an asset like a truck. If you need help with improving your cash flow, that’s another thing we can help you with.
Mid-Year Review
This mid-year review can help you head off any small problems before they grow into big ones throughout the rest of the year. And it can keep you on track so you can meet your 2019 business goals.