Your Small Business Team
A small business depends on its team to deliver what it sells. In a lot of cases, it’s the business owner wearing a lot of hats to make it all happen. No matter how many are on your team, knowing the numbers is the key to making it successful.
Owner/Investor/General Manager – The bottom-line person – often provides the seed money to get the business going and is the place where the buck stops. But wait, there’s more!
- Designer/Inventor
- Sales Manager
- Operations Manager
- Customer Service
- Admin
- Operations
- Bookkeeping – Records the transactions of the business, provides financial reporting that gives the Owner/Manager information on the performance of the business in all aspects. Has key insights into the trends in the business and effective metrics to monitor.
- Accountant – Tax planning, optimization and filing.
When your plate is full and you’re wearing more than one hat in your business, you need to know your efforts are effective. You have to keep your eye on the metrics all the time.
Here are a few indicators that you may need more support inside your business:
- Long hours at work after business hours – following up admin, accounting, organizing for the next day – all while the family spends their evenings without you.
- Unable to sleep while thoughts race about the things you need to remember.
- No ‘me’ time.
- Important work tasks fall behind:
-
- Invoicing for completed work.
- Uncollected Accounts Receivable.
- Missing payment deadlines or bouncing payments because you’re too busy with Operations to be planning and monitoring cash flow.
- Not enough time to manage all the tasks, and not sure how to change that because you don’t have the time to update your books to get a sense of the resources you have available to you.
-
If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, get support. Hire a bookkeeper for your business early, so that you can start reaping the benefits of being able to make plans with good financial data about your business. What can you afford to pay yourself, new staff or contractors, are you charging enough for your services (or could you be worked off your feet and barely making ends meet – is your business in demand but you’ve not raised your rates to reflect that demand)?
A small business depends on the Owner to deliver the right resources so it can succeed. Get the team you need in place to support you.
