Financial fitness assessment

Do you feel like you're flying blind through a mountain range trying to read a dashboard that you don’t really understand?

Get an Iron Grip of Your Business Finances Without drowning in spreadsheets...

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Lots of small business owners are so busy attending to day to day issues that they never quite get around to taking proper financial control of their business. Instead, they rely on unhealthily obsessing over the content of the bank account and a quick glance at the accounts that their accountant produces about six months after the end of their financial year.

This happens for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps they don’t like figure work, they don’t really understand the accounts (but feel like they should so go into denial about it) or they think their bookkeeper or accountant is tracking if for them

(clue; they aren’t if they haven't been specifically engaged to).

We’ve seen businesses that have run like this for years on end, seemingly without a problem.  Owners spending hours of their precious time staring at spreadsheets and making ill-informed guesses about their financial position based on little more than the bank balance and an approximation of their margins.

Of course, no one would deny that understanding the profitability and cash flow position is critical to any business. But it isn’t just about preventing loss-making situations or liquidity challenges. The right financial information also enables you to make positive decisions about potential opportunities for growth and business development.

Perhaps more importantly though, it is about creating a state of calm control for the business
 owners and managers that enables them to focus on the most important and pressing commercial matters by enabling them to:
  • understand how the costs, revenues and processes of the business work, and what the levers of profitability are,
  • forecast and plan for the profitability and cash position with a degree of accuracy,
  • understand the risk profile of the business and how to mitigate and capitalise on this,
  • understand the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the business
  • make good decisions and select effectively from competing priorities for investment,
  • keep control of the costs and margins of commercial projects over a period of time.

  In truth, understanding your finances is can be the difference between profit and loss or liquidity and liquidation, especially in times of uncertainty and change like those we are all experiencing right now. Hunches, estimates and guesses are fine when the world around us is stable, but they are not well-calibrated for decision making in uncertainty.
It’s not difficult to gain this level of comfort and control. It’s about taking the work of your bookkeeper and turning it into valuable financial information and insight and having someone who can help you make full sense and use of it.

This is where I can help...

 

This is what I can help make reality in your company. I’m not just another accountant. I’m a qualified Civil Engineer as well so I understand that importance of using information to drive and track investment and expenditure decisions. I’ve used this unique combination of experience and skills to help numerous small businesses just like yours move from financial chaos to control and from control to financial mastery.

I can help you to:

  • get a sense of iron-grip control of your company finances and wider business performance and present it to you in a way that is engaging, insightful and that helps you to confidently make good commercial decisions,
  • implement streamlined, effective business processes so that you don’t have to worry about consistency and efficiency,
  • gain financial control of the commercial projects being driven through your company,
  • be the voice of financial reason in your planning, forecasting and day to day operational decision-making to give you a feeling of comfort and control in big spending decisions
Gaining, or regaining financial control, and the calm sense of assuredness it brings, is the single most important thing that you can do for a business. It enables you to honestly look at where you are, what is and isn’t working and to confidently plan a course forward.
It begins with a simple discussion about how you access and use financial information right now and what you need to put in place to get to that position of feeling and being in total control. Just taking this step and having this conversation with me can open up huge new possibilities for you and your company. 
It’s time to stop putting this on the ‘to-do’ pile and to reap the huge benefits that accrue financially and personally from getting under control.

You can book this complimentary opening discussion with me by calling 01245 967084 or emailing me at laura@chalkleys.com