This is another video lesson I recently published. I give a brief overview of the differences between a direct and indirect cash flow report. Followed by a quick cash flow forecast using the direct method with information from QuickBooks Online.
If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail us at [email protected]
We are also available to help your small business project it’s cash balances.
Thank you for watching and have a nice day!
I recently finish reading the book Profit First: A Simple System to Transform Any Business from a Cash-Eating Monster to a Money-Making Machine by Mike Michalowicz and wanted to publish my review of the book.
Let me start by saying that the book was very easy to read and I enjoyed the author’s writing style quite a bit. It was a quick read that delivered deep content in a surprisingly light manner. The author, Mike Michalowicz, has a good sense of humor and at some points I was literally LOL. The book was well organized and whenever a new concept was brought up in a chapter, the author did a good job clarifying and always providing examples of even the simplest of concepts. In addition to his thorough explanations, at the end of every chapter you will find a detailed, numbered action plan/ directions to implement the subject of that particular chapter.
In this next part of the review I want to discuss the content. First off let me give you a little bit of background about myself so that you know where I am coming from. I am an accountant by trade and love reading business books, always looking for those golden nuggets of knowledge that I can use to provide value to my clients or use in my own business. I believe there were definitely some great ideas and concepts in this book that I would love to share with some of my clients, and that is part of the reason I am writing this review. Although the author’s system could technically work for everyone, it does take discipline and some extra leg work to implement and customize to your business. Luckily as I mentioned earlier, the book does a great job directing the reader how to go about customizing the system for your business.
As an added bonus the author also included a chapter about how you could apply this system to your personal finances, which is much the same way you would with a business.
I think this book is a great read for any business owner. There is some great content to be found and it is very easy to read. I would particularly recommend this book to readers that are having cash management issues, as the author has a great system to remedy that. Even if you decide not to apply the book’s system, I believe that the book still points out some information that every business owner should be aware of.
If you wish to purchase the book I included a link below to the Amazon page. I bought the Kindle version, so I can attest to the hardcover or audio versions. If you decide to purchase the book, or have previously read it, please leave some comments below, I would love to discuss. As always thank you for reading and have a nice day!
This is a new video series I am producing showing viewers how to read and analyze financial statements. In this installment, I introduce the inventory turnover ratio. I show how to calculate and discuss what the ratio indicates about your business or the company you are analyzing.
Below is the video. Subscribe to this blog and our YouTube channel for up to date reminders of our newest content.
Graph Strategic Planning
There are so many businesses that are struggling today, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, only 1 out of every 20 businesses becomes profitable and survives 10 years. There are many reasons for this statistic, but in this blog post I wanted to focus on just one of the reasons, the lack of a strategic plan. A strategic plan can be defined as the strategy and process a business will pursue in an effort to head in a specific direction.
There is a quote by Lewis Carroll that demonstrates the importance of having a specific direction, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road can take you there.” This is the way many entrepreneurs and business owners run their business, without a specific strategic plan for their company. As a result of not having a plan, they usually end up going through the motions of their daily operations until one day they are faced with an obstacle they did not foresee and is too great to overcome.
My goal is to help business owners realize the importance of setting a strategic plan for their company, followed by specific goals in order to push their company in the direction they desire. Through the use of key performance indicators (KPI) a business can measure their progress towards their goals. (I will write more about KPIs in a later blog post, so be sure to subscribe).
A strategic plan does not have to be complicated. You can start off with a simple plan that will lay out how the company will grow in the upcoming years. After you have a core plan in place, you can build on it by starting to include specifics pertaining to your product/service types, marketing strategy, etc. The important thing is to have a plan in place for you, your manager and employees to work toward so that everyone is on the same path. Once everyone in the organization is working on the same goals the business will continue to achieve new successes.
