Have you got annual profit goals? Monthly profit goals? Weekly profit goals? Daily profit goals?
January is always the time for forecasting and planning…well maybe not for us accountants who are elbow deep in Self Assessments…
After the reflection of December and what you managed to achieve in the previous year, we all naturally look towards a fresh start. It’s time to wipe the slate clean and decide what you want from the next 52 weeks.
If you don’t design your own life, everybody else will.
It’s very easy to get swept back up into the day-to-day jobs of your business, to blindly start working through your tasks and check your profit and loss sheet at the end of the quarter. We like to think a bit differently. We want you to know exactly what you need to do today to achieve your financial goals.
Here at Not Just Numbers, we don’t just install these systems for easy accounting purposes, or for you to look back at your numbers, we want you to plan, to forecast and to know exactly what numbers you need to hit. Every day.
Having annual profit goals is great, but we want you to know what sales and profits you need to hit daily to achieve those annual goals.
Ask yourself these searching questions:
How much money do I want out of my business this year?
- Considering last years net profit and margins, how much do I need to make to achieve this?
- How many clients/projects/sales do I need to make to achieve this figure?
- If I break this down into monthly sales goals, what are my sales targets?
- If I break this down into weekly goals, what are my weekly sales targets?
- Can I go one step further and know my invoicing target every day?
- Can I create a goal sheet on my wall that has project invoicing vs actual invoicing?
- How will I be accountable to these targets, every day?
In Xero you can easily use the budget manager to have monthly forecast goals, for any particular sales code in your business. You can then view budget vs actuals to see if you’re hitting them.
We say go one step further and use Crunch Boards, Spotlight Reporting or simple pen and paper to have a daily/weekly budget vs actuals on your wall/screen. There is nothing like coming in to the office in the morning and seeing what you need to invoice, it spurs you on in the right direction. Then you can start questioning whether the work you have planned for that day is actually the best type of work. Will it be profitable work?
To enquire more about how Not Just Numbers can help your business, get in touch by email hello@notjustnumbersltd.co.uk or call us on 0113 385 4656.