When do you have time to review your business number?

I honestly think that we are all made to pursue the passions that we are born to follow. I know that this seems easy to talk about than in real life. As a business owner, you have a long list of to-do list, and it seems there is nothing enough time in a day for you to take care. Then, when do you have time to take care of your business finance – paying bills, reviewing the numbers, and then tax! Tax! For now, we can leave the tax part alone and discuss your business financial workflow so you can have a routine to check on your business numbers. I want to give you the actual, tangible steps to follow.

The secret is setting up a financial date – one per 2 weeks, once per month, or once per week. The more often you have the date, the faster it goes.

You may find that you fall in love with a Friday financial date. Get yourself cozy with coffee, some comfort snacks 🙂 and let’s work on your business number. Here is the step for your business financial workflow.

Eight steps in your business financial workflow.

Step 1: get all of the bank and credit card transactions into your excel or Quickbooks or accounting software you use.

Step 2: categorize all of your transactions for that period, both revenue and expenses side.

Step 3: review your Account receivable, send invoices, and remind anyone who has not paid your invoices yet.

Step 4: pay bills from your vendors and consultants.

Step 5: schedule paying for yourself – need to do this two times per month to help you plan your personal finance.

Step 6: review your P&L. Double check on the number that seems to be odd and ask why some numbers are too high or low.

Step 7: if you use software like QuickBooks, making sure you look on your balance sheet to see any number seems odd – like a bank account has a negative balance, liabilities are too high.

Step 8: Develop cash flow projections regularly. This step is where you plan cash coming in, and bills and expenses need to be paid 1-2 weeks or month. 

Suppose you have a bookkeeper or accountant who helps you in entering and categorizing the bank transactions. In that case, your financial workflow can be shorter and save you a lot of time in documenting and organizing your transactions. This is why I usually recommend having someone helping you with bookkeeping and financial reports. It saves you a lot of time!

I hope you take pieces of this blog post and start small by building them into your workflow, so your business number will not be on the back burner. Just like SO MANY of the essential things in business, there’s no one size fits all – it is a steady and consistent process. You can adjust the flow to work with your company and habits.