No? Well, don’t feel too bad. Many an otherwise brilliant and successful business owner’s eyes have glazed over when faced with numeric detail. Executives in large companies with this little eye problem turn to the financial experts in their company to interpret financial results. But most of us in the small business world don’t have that luxury. So, what do we do?

Well, we find a way to figure out how to deal with the financial side of running a successful business. We read, take a class and learn to do it ourselves or we rely on outside expertise from a business consultant or CPA. If we do nothing, we risk our money and our businesses because running a business without good, current financial data is analogous to a pilot flying blind. Definitely not a good thing!

Business finance is one of the first operational issues we generally need to tackle with our clients. In fact, we see it as Step 2 of our 12 Step program for business excellence. It’s a big area, probably too big and too company-specific for a newsletter. So, we will take a more general approach and, over several newsletters, offer some of our quick tips on how to get a better handle on your company’s numbers.

Before you can get any value out of your financial statements, let alone apply quick tips, you need to have the data. For a business, this data begins with your books. Bookkeeping is not difficult, but doing it well requires training. In our experience, many entrepreneurs and owners of small businesses don’t give bookkeeping the importance it deserves. Giving this basic but critical function of business short shrift is truly pennywise and pound foolish. Unless your books are complete, accurate and current, you have nothing upon which to draw for that critical business information. Even if you have financial statements, if they are based on bad data, you have nothing. Or, worse yet, you may be making business decisions based on bad information.

So begin by ensuring that your books are in order. Hire a pro. If you are not sure how to evaluate the technical skills of a bookkeeper you are considering, get some help. A good business consultant or CPA would be a good source. Remember, good bookkeeping requires more than a working knowledge of QuickBooks. It requires a grasp of bookkeeping and accounting principles.

With your books in order, you can produce those critical financial statements. Watch for future editions of this newsletter for some of our tips on interpreting and applying the information they contain.

For the business person interested in just some of the steps, we recently added one more version of our 12 Step Program: "One Step at a Time". This offering is 12 individual teleseminars. You simply enroll for the individual sessions you prefer.

Interested? Learn more by attending a free overview teleseminar. The next one is scheduled for February 27th at 12:00. Call or email to enroll. You can read more about all of our seminar offerings by surfing to the Next Step web site. You can also give us a call at 425.918.1910 for information and enrollment.