We are super excited to receive some great feedback from one of our most valued clients, at our standard 6 month feedback review! Check out a few comments …..

We scored 9/10 for the Performance reviews performed, with comments like : YES – Definitely in response to “In comparison to when Confident Cashflows was not part of your team, Do you feel more informed and confident regarding your business future and equipped to improve business Profitability in the future?”

And in response to : “If you have received great service from Confident Cashflows, please feel free to share your thoughts and feelings on how we have helped you in your business.” We received a comment : “It is great, I now know with confidence what is REALLY happening in my business and the areas I have to pay attention to”.

Another happy customer : Thanks Pauline!!
Although I am good with numbers, there is not always time to do such an indepth analysis as Tracey did. Tracey’s evaluation made it patently clear as to what my sales targets need to be, and also the areas of my business that had become financially bloated from a cost perspective. Well done Tracey.

I recently held a workshop with a range of different business owners and I asked them what their relationship with their accountant was like and what they thought was missing. None of the answers given surprised me. Perhaps you feel like this as well.

One participant said : “I would like more feedback. As it stands, the only feedback I receive is annually and effectively the feedback is purely tax related. Now that I think about it –  I think I have  trained my accountants to only give this feedback as generally the questions I ask my accountant are:

1. How are the tax returns going?
2. What is the liability going to be?
3. How much is this all going to cost!”

So maybe in some ways we get what we ask for and maybe we don’t ask enough questions, or more importantly, the right questions to get the feedback we actually need. The feedback that is actually useful to our business.

The feedback from your accountant is important but it is directly related to what you are asking for. A lot of the time small business owners are really sensitive in terms of how much their accountant charges them so if you are going to pay for that time, rather spend it asking the right questions.

Don’t let them dominate the conversation in terms of what’s happening in your tax return and where you are getting deductions. Ask them to tell you how much tax you have to pay, and that’s it – who cares about the details.  You don’t have to learn about the tax law, he needs to know the tax law and that’s why he is the accountant. Rather spend the time with him asking him the more pertinent questions like:

• How is my business performance like this year compared to last year?
• What can you see that could improve my cash flow?
• If you had to give me 3 areas of my business I had to look at, what would you suggest I do?

And remember, it’s really important to wrap up your year end as soon as possible after June.  If you are seeing your accountant a few months after year end – for example six months after year end, the first months’ worth of information is already 18 months old – it doesn’t apply anymore. You should actually be having these conversations more regularly during the year and looking at current figures more regularly.  Reviewing your business performance is not something that should be done once a year with your accountant, if you want your business to grow NOW – it’s something you should be doing NOW.

1. Today has shown me that all of us in the office tend to just get on with getting stuff done on a day-to-day basis and we don’t sit down and take the time that we need to budget, look at how much things are costing us and how much we are earning from it. I think without that information what’s the point of putting so much time and effort in the day-to-day stuff done when we aren’t getting accurate information about what we are actually getting from it –  so today was a good reminder to take a step back and take a look and track our costs in more detail.

2: I came here believing that I didn’t really know what was going on in my business and now I really know that I don’t know what is going on in my business! It has confirmed that if I don’t do something in this area in terms of understanding the figures, the cash flow,  and all those things that come together, unless I start to work towards that, the goals that I have for next year simply won’t happen. I’ll still be running that hamster wheel in the same way and that’s not good enough. I might as well close my doors tomorrow if I don’t take action. I have to take it up to the next level and this is very much been on my mind that this is what I need to do. So after having met Tracey and todays workshop,  I now know this is one of the steps that I need to take.

3: Today was great! It really highlighted and confirmed a lot of the things I’ve been working on and brought them home. It also gave me more information on certain things that I need to put into place. I know now that I can increase the cost of a few of my services to even out my costs so I’ll be in a better position.

4: Probably the biggest thing that I learned is how important it really is to look at         things on a regular basis. Monthly reviews instead of looking at the end of the year and wondering what do all of these figures mean. So monthly reviews are on the action plan.

Communicating effective targets to your staff helps everyone work towards your 'happy day'!

Identifying and communicating effective targets to your staff is the key to making the profit that you want in your business. Accountants often talk about a ‘break-even point’, something I call your ‘happy day’. This is the day of the month when you know that for the rest of the month, you are making a profit. You have earned enough to cover all your costs and you are past the ‘break-even point’. That’s why I call it your ‘happy day’.

By working out when your ‘happy day’ is, how much you need to earn to break-even and then blast into profit, you will be able to effectively identify and communicate targets to your staff allowing you to make the profit that you want in your business.