Business Health Check – End of Financial Year is the perfect time

in Business / Our articles  by Prathamesh 0 comments

There are only three days to go until we wrap up the 2013/2014 financial year in Australia.  It’s a great time to take a few minutes and reflect on the year that was, then use this insight to start planning your year ahead.

Take stock of where you are; what worked well; what didn’t; what you’ve achieve and where you can improve.

Think about:

  • How many jobs have you quoted?
  • How many jobs have you won?
  • How many existing clients have you lost?
  • How many new clients have you gained?
  • What was your turnover?
  • What was the average value of outstanding payments due to you over the course of the year?
  • What was your actual debtor days? ie how long did it actually take, on average, for your clients to pay their bills?
  • What was the longest time a bill remained overdue to you?

Consider these questions, then set about answering: ‘Has this improved since last financial year?’  Most importantly following each one, ask ‘Why?’ and ‘How can I improve this?’

If you don’t take the time to review and plan now you’ll just move into the new financial year continuing to run on the same hamster wheel. You’ll be working in your business, rather than on your business. There’s a big difference.

It’s also a great time to see your accountant to get a good idea of the financial health of your business.

A good accounting firm will help you to take a financial snap-shot of your business, save you time when it comes to your tax-return, as well as a myriad other financial forms, and let’s face it time is money. Depending on their specialty, some accounting firms will also provide financial planning advice and ways to help you grow your business too.

If you don’t already have an accountant consider speaking with one of the accounting firms like CharterNet or Watkins Coffey Martin. They are offering discounts to new and existing clients who secure their accounting fees up front through CheckVault and have already experienced the benefits to cash-flow this brings their firms.

Remember, CheckVault provides an easy way to not only make sure your client has the money to pay you for the work you are about to do, but can also help you keep track of things like your quote acceptance rate.

Think of CheckVault as a tool for your (hopefully) growing business.