When your accountant calls to let you know that your accounts are finished, how do you feel?
Do you go ‘whippee’ now I can review in detail how I did this year, where the problem areas of my business are and how I can improve?
Or perhaps you just look at 2 amounts. How much profit you made and how much tax you have to pay?
As an accountant, it is disheartening just how little attention is often paid to financial data and reporting, not just annual accounts, as with the evolution of cloud based technology, your financial data is (or should be) at your fingertips.
We’re all intelligent…
The truth is while we are all intelligent, we are intelligent at different things. However, as a business owner, being reasonably intelligent across a wide range of business areas is incredibly important.
Financials show so much more than tax and profit. To list a few, they can show:
- Which product lines/services are contributing to increasing profits and which are dragging your business down.
- Why you feel that your business is struggling to pay the bills while your accountant says you’re making a profit.
- Where your business is trending, so you can add resources to develop a growth area or act before a downward trend swallows you whole.
- What you can do differently next year to make the same (or more) profit while working less, so you can achieve your personal and business goals.
The key is understanding what your business is trying to tell you, and a true understanding of the financials is required, with the help of proper financial reporting.
Time to upskill?
Too often financial education is given by heresy at a bar or picked up piecemeal from your accountant. While this is all well-intentioned, imagine if that’s how a builder learned how to build a house or a lawyer learned to practice law!
We believe that not enough attention is placed on ensuring business owners understand how their numbers work, thereby enabling business owners like you to better control their financial outcomes.
So, perhaps it’s time to go back to the classroom to truly understand how the numbers affect you and your business, and what you can do to improve your numbers?
Q2 Financial intelligence workshops
Starting in February 2018 Q2 are hosting Financial Intelligence workshops, where in small groups over the course of a year, business owners will learn what their numbers are, where they came from, and most importantly how to improve them.
If you’re interested in becoming more financially intelligent, please contact us at info@q2.net.nz or call 09 222 4448 for more information.