Page 25 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

Put in place strong accounting. We all say we have a great accountant, but do we really? A great accountant puts in place disciplines to help you financially manage your business. They ensure they get financial reporting to you in quick time and ensure you are heading in the right direction for a profitable, sustainable business.
This paragraph is more aimed at the very small business owners, but you must insist on professional accounting software from day one. None of this using Excel spreadsheets. I am a great Xero accounting software advocate, as it’s so flexible for doing other things, for example building quoting modules. Every day when you open it up, you see a bank balance. ‘Walk around with bank balances in your head.’ Malcolm Hughes drummed that into me, and he was running a cash book (a manual, hand- written system back then) every day.
Sit down with your accountant and discuss how you can get a Profit and Loss (P&L) report after the end of each month, within that first week of