YOUR FINANCIAL YEAR
I’ve said it before, but that’s not going to stop
me saying it again! Financial Planning is essential
when it comes to running a successful business
and when I say Financial Planning I don’t just
mean working from month to month but actually
being aware of your whole year in respect of
your business - the months behind you and the
months ahead.
Whilst planning and implementation of those
plans does of course go on continuously and there
will always things that come unexpectedly out of
left field, it’s often helpful, during a twelve month
period, to conduct a couple of overall reviews of
where you’ve been and where you’re going. This
could be at the end of the year, perhaps over the
Christmas period and then again perhaps in the
of the Summer, possibly July, which is obviously
not bang in the middle but which often coincides
with a slightly quieter period.
Setting up of these reviews at roughly the same
times in your working year means you’re taking a
step back to ensure that, as far
as possible, you’re on top
and ahead of things and that you feel at all times
you have a firm hand on the steering wheel, in
other words you’re running the business rather
than the business running you.
If there’s one thing that my years’ of experience
of working closely with small businesses and sole
traders has taught me, it’s that all too often there’s
too much focus on the here and now and not
nearly enough on what’s coming up in the future
nor on where things might have gone a bit awry
in the recent past. I’m not denying there’s often
good reason for this. Running a small business
inevitably means that at any given time you’re
wearing any number of different hats including
marketing, selling, innovating, client contact,
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