Halloween is right around the corner, so we’ll tell you a scary story.
The story begins with… your finances. Are you nervous yet?
That word “finance” makes a lot of people squirm, and the story usually goes something like this: A small business owner avoids digging into his financial reports all year. Then, tax season rolls around.
The business owner schedules his annual meeting with his CPA and finally gets an accurate report. Only, by then, it’s too late for him to use his financials as a tool.
If he had reviewed his profit and loss statement in the middle of the summer, he might have noticed that sales were climbing. One of his channel partners had begun aggressively selling two specific products.
By the time his CPA asked the questions that turned up these insights, the opportunity to capitalize on them (and mitigate any potential tax impact) had passed.
Of course, if you are a business owner, you don’t have to share a similar fate. You can use your financials as a tool. They can help you make more informed decisions.
Wait… What are financials?
When we talk about financials, we’re referring to the “analytics” of your business: how much money you’re making, how you’re making it, where your business is losing money, your operating costs and other expenses, and so on.
Your financials gather up and organize the data created by your business.
Specifics vary from industry to industry, but the general methodology stays the same. And the value of financials certainly applies across the board. If you’re not measuring and tracking certain numbers, how can you monitor the health of your business?
What do you do with financials?
Financial files often just sit on a computer hard drive until tax season rolls around or a board or company officer asks for an annual report.
But businesses thrive when the numbers get attention.
Accurate, up-to-date, and relevant information helps you avoid pitfalls and seize good opportunities.
When you have the right information at your fingertips, you can do the following:
- Properly analyze your business
- Identify your successes and failures
- Identify what needs to be done differently
- Know what you’re doing correctly
- Improve your pricing strategies
You can use data, not hunches, to make decisions about your business.
Obviously, decisions made with incomplete information still look a lot like hunches, so your goal is to have all the information and to derive the right conclusions from it.
You may think your business is growing, but the numbers can give you definitive proof. Numbers speak louder than words.
Who can help?
In short, we can. Many of our clients only schedule one meeting a year.
At that point, the best we can do is clean up their books and do a little remedial work to make sure it’s a reasonable reflection of the past.
Do you know what we’d prefer to do instead?
Meet at regular intervals throughout the year and serve as a true partner. Using current information allows you to make more timely decisions or changes when there’s still something you can do about it!
After all, Culpepper CPA does more than prepare taxes. We can handle everything from bookkeeping and payroll to taxes and business advising.
We tackle many forensic or investigative accounting cases, and beyond your books, we can make recommendations for experts we trust in other specializations, such as wealth management, law, insurance, and even marketing and business development.
The more holistic our involvement, the more impact we have.
If you keep us abreast of what’s going on with your business, then we can make recommendations that will be game changers for you:
- “The best time to get a line of credit is when you don’t need it.”
- “Now that you’ve built up your cash reserves, have you considered adding to your sales team?”
- “You’ll want to buy that piece of equipment before the end of the fiscal year to get the tax deduction.”
Besides, if you allow us to stay engaged, then preparing your taxes will be relatively fast and painless. And it won’t involve any surprises! You’ll know where you stand taxwise based on our work and planning throughout the year.
We’d love to work alongside you, every step of the way, and help you make sense of all the numbers.
Give us a call at (865) 691-8509, and let’s discuss what you’d like to see happen.
Even scary stories involving “finance” can have a happy ending.
