31: Performing A Small Business Mid-Year Bookkeeping And Financial Checkup Whether You Are Starting
You started the year off strong, you set all your goals for how you wanted to do your bookkeeping this year and just like that, it’s June, and now is the time for you to do a mid-year bookkeeping and financial checkup to see how your small business is doing. Time flies by so quickly, and before you know it, we will be flipping the calendar to the month of December. Today, we are doing a checkup to make sure you have been able to stay on track when it comes to your small business bookkeeping. Now is the time to make sure you are doing everything you can to stay up to date, and if you find that you have slipped a little, this episode will help you get back on track quickly and make sure you are able to stay up to date going forward so that you can ensure you have a smooth transition at year end. This halfway point is also a great time to take a look at how your business is doing. Are you meeting your sales goals, is your income higher or lower than what you were projecting, and what should you do if you are seeing numbers you didn’t expect? I’ll also help you focus on which reports you should be looking at, whether you are using a computerized software system like QuickBooks or even keeping track of your business finances manually or using a Google or Excel spreadsheet. It is extremely important to keep a pulse on how your business is doing throughout the year whether you are just starting your small business, you’re a solopreneur, entrepreneur, small business owner, virtual online bookkeeper or virtual assistant, so listen in and make sure your business is on track to reach all your goals by doing a mid-year financial checkup…
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Show Notes:
Welcome Back…Isn’t it amazing how quickly this year is slipping by? If you are anything like me, it seems like the months fly by like weeks. It seems odd that we are already hitting the halfway mark for the year already, but now that we are here, there are a few things I want to touch on today that you should be doing as a small business owner to ensure you are continuing to monitor your business and stay on track to be successful.
First, I want you to take a look at how your bookkeeping is going. Have you been able to keep up with everything or are you falling behind? You want to make sure that you have all your income and expenses recorded and all your bank and credit card accounts reconciled. If you know you are behind on this and you know you don’t have time to get this caught up, you want to find someone to help you get caught up. By doing this now, you will still be able to review your financial information and make good business decisions before the end of the year. If you wait until the end of the year or even the beginning of the next year, it will be too late to do any tax planning and you may not be prepared for what you find when tax season comes around. By being proactive, you could reduce your tax bill by planning accordingly, but you need to have accurate information right now to do this. You want to make sure you have accurate and timely information throughout the year so that you can make good business decisions, and now is the time for you to realize if you are able to do this on your own or if you should look at getting some help from a bookkeeper to ensure your success going forward. If you are behind and you’ve been thinking about starting to use a computerized software system to record your bookkeeping, it’s not too late. I always tell my clients that even though you are behind getting all your information entered, when you have multiple months of data to enter in to a system like QuickBooks, it is a really good learning process since you will be repeating many of the processes you need to do in a short amount of time, which makes it easier to remember how to do it, especially since some of the processes you normally only do once a month. This helps you to learn the process quickly with the repetition and is really a good way to learn how to do your bookkeeping. Don’t ever feel like you are too far behind to catch up. Don’t get me wrong, when you are all up to date on doing your bookkeeping, it will take much less time to do each month, but there is a lot of learning you can do when you are entering in multiple months at a time. It will take a little longer, but either way, you still need to get that information entered in so that you can file your tax return at the end of the year. If you haven’t started your bookkeeping yet…NOW is the best time to get started.
When your bookkeeping is up to date, you can easily start looking at your financial reports to see how your business is doing. You will want to find out if your income is up from this same time last year or if you are a little behind. If you are using a computerized software system, you can easily run a profit and loss report for the current year to date and compare it to the previous year to date. This will give you a good understanding of how your business is doing compared to last year. You could also do a profit and loss comparison to your budget if you have one set up to see if you are staying within your budgeted numbers. If you haven’t had a chance to create your budget for the year yet, you can still create one so that you can stick to this budget throughout the remainder of the year. Either of these comparison reports, whether comparing your profit and loss report to your prior year profit and loss report or comparing your actual amounts to your budgeted amounts will help you get an idea of how your year is going. If you are doing your bookkeeping manually, you can also do a comparison to your previous year and your budget as well. It may take a little more time for you to get this information, but it will definitely be good information for you to have to see how your business is doing so far this year. Once you have this information, you may need to schedule an appointment with your tax preparer to decide if there is any action you need to do prior to the end of the year to ensure you are in the best possible position for filing your next tax return.
Most business owners look at their revenues as their only source of how their business is doing. You will also want to take a look at all of your expenses as well. Make sure that your expenses are in alignment with what you budgeted. If you feel you are overspending in one area you may want to try to adjust your spending to stay in line with your budget. Make sure you take a look at any recurring expenses and if you find any that you are not currently utilizing, decide if you want to continue to incur those expenses or if it would be better to discontinue the expenses to help increase your net income.
Next, take a look at what your goals were for the year and make sure you are hitting those goals, or at least making progress towards reaching your goals. If you are not reaching your goals, you need to find out what you need to do to either reach or maybe even surpass them by the end of the year. If your priorities have changed, maybe it is time to re-examine those goals and create goals that are more in alignment to your objectives now and figure out what has to happen each month for the remainder of the year for you to achieve these goals. These smaller goals will help you stay on track to reach your big goals for the year.
Assess the effectiveness of your current legal structure. If you are seeing a significant difference in revenues or net income, you may need to review the legal structure your business is currently in. There are times when it would be beneficial for your business to change the legal structure throughout the year to help you gain more benefits. You will definitely want to talk with your tax preparer and lawyer for additional help in this area to make sure your business is set up under the correct legal structure and by having your financial information up to date and accurate, you will be able to make sure you have the proper entity structure set up for your small business.
Overall, when you take a good look at how your business is doing for the first half of the year, you are able to plan accordingly for the remainder of the year. Having accurate and timely financial information is the first step to allowing you to make these smart business decisions. Maintaining your bookkeeping system needs to be a priority in your small business. It is very important to realize if you are unable to maintain your books at an early stage so that you can get the help you need to ensure you have the financial information you need going forward.
If you are a virtual assistant and you are interested in adding bookkeeping services to your existing business, or if you want to start your own bookkeeping business, my 4-step framework for creating a profitable bookkeeping business will be opening soon. In 3 months or less, you will gain the confidence, skills & knowledge to create a profitable bookkeeping business without feeling alone, overwhelmed or confused about your next steps. You can sign up for the waitlist and be the first to know about this exciting opportunity. To make sure you get all the upcoming notifications, go to www.FinancialAdventure.com/Elevate-Waitlist - I’ll post a link where you are listening to this podcast for you to sign up as well.
And, you know I’m going to ask…what’s at least one thing you will take away from this episode that will help your business succeed and grow your bottom line? If you need some accountability, join our PRIVATE Facebook community and post your action item, we’d love to support you.
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