I hear this a lot from customers – I hate accounting, I don’t like math, I don’t have time to do my books or even when your books are in good shape and you think you are doing okay – you aren’t really confident if your numbers are correct and what you should do with them.

Let me reassure you – you are not alone.  I have clients with masters degrees that don’t care for numbers and could care less about their financial reports.  For those clients I put their numbers into graphs so they can see things easier.

You are the CFO of Your Business, whether you like it or not.

I want all business owners to understand three things:

1. Everyone can learn how to understand the numbers.
2. Numbers are key to helping you run and grow your business.
3. Respect your accounting system – it is there to help you.

Everyone can understand their financial reports and what the numbers are telling them.  I don’t care who your are, what your background is or how little you know about business.  I can teach you what you need to know about your numbers.

#1 – You need to know where the numbers are coming from.

This is key.  This is your strong foundation that everything else comes from.  Your reports don’t do you any good if the numbers are not correct.  So, either hire someone really good, that you trust to help you with accounting and or learn how the accounting system works so that you know that you have good numbers.

Then learn how to read your financials.  Understanding what the numbers are telling you will help you make better decisions, more informed decisions.

#2: Using these numbers to run and grow your business.

With good numbers, you can control costs, decide with products/services to stick with or eliminate, decide which products or services to market or advertise more.  You can only cut costs so much.  At the end of the day if you want to make more money you have to increase sales.  Knowing how much your product or service costs, how much time & effort it takes to get it into the market is key to deciding what to market.

There are a few things you need to understand.

• You don’t have to be a math whiz to understand your numbers
• Anyone can learn the accounting basics that they need
• You can learn how to understand your numbers and combine that knowledge with your gut instinct.  The two are NOT mutually exclusive.

Do NOT be intimidated by your bookkeeper or CPA.  If you are, find another one.  If you cannot afford a controller, and most companies under $10 million cannot, please take a class and learn what you need to learn to run your company better.

#3: Respect your accounting system

Yes, accounting gets put on the back burner every time you get busy.  I get it.  I have been both an operations manager and a controller and sometimes both at the same time (major mistake – but that’s a different article)

Make sure that you are getting good reports at least every quarter.  I know most small businesses don’t study their reports monthly but at least every quarter, sit down and review what is going on with the company.  The sooner you see things happening, the quicker you can react. In today’s fast paced world that is a competitive advantage.

I have a new pdf download on how to read your Big 3 financial statements.  You can grab a copy on my home page www.debmousseau.com

Deb