Financial Insights
A financial blog for real people.
Building Your First Business Is Hard at Any Age
It took me years to build back up the kind of courage I had when I was 18 years old. I think that is one of the reasons the average age of an entrepreneur is 42 years old. The real world isn’t simple and it can challenge even the most optimistic souls. At the end of the day we all have to pay rent, right?
How Much Does a Financial Model Cost?
I love this question. My cofounder, Lindsey, likes to ask people, “Do you value your time?” For me the answer is a hard yes. I have charged by the hour for my consulting clients for years, I know how much my time is worth.
How to Build a Budget in Excel
Does building a budget, often called a forecast, in Excel sound too difficult or too intimidating? It can, but this article should help!
AutoCFO Partners With Private Equity Platform Astrella
AutoCFO is excited to announce our new partnership with Astrella, a cloud-based SaaS solution by AST.
Cash in the Bank
How Can You Tell a Business Is Successful?
They make money. Please, please ignore the Facebooks and Twitters of the world. There are venture capital unicorns… and there are the rest of us. 99.9% of businesses have to make money to stay in business.
Why Avoiding Your Numbers Is A Dangerous Game
Time to Tackle the To-Do List?
There are things we all avoid. Overdue medical bills, mowing the lawn, laundry, maintenance on the car. These are chores— things we know we have to do but don’t want to get around to. Usually, they involve painful or unpleasant experiences. Hanging out at the dealership for 2 whole hours with terrible WiFi. Folding the same clothes over and over again. Pulling the lawnmower out from behind the car and 2 tricycles. Did I mention cleaning the garage?
How a Customized Dashboard for QuickBooks Online Can Help your Clients
Whether you love it or hate it, budgeting is extremely important for all types of businesses. The key to successful and accurate budgeting is to not forget anything. What’s the best way not to forget anything? Have a checklist. When you use a checklist, you limit surprises and help ensure you didn’t forget anything during the budget building process.
5 Items Every Budget Should Include
Whether you love it or hate it, budgeting is extremely important for all types of businesses. The key to successful and accurate budgeting is to not forget anything. What’s the best way not to forget anything? Have a checklist. When you use a checklist, you limit surprises and help ensure you didn’t forget anything during the budget building process.
Why Excel Doesn’t Cut it Anymore
With more and more sources of data at your fingertips in our lives, stale Excel reports really don’t cut it anymore. If you are using these as the only way you communicate information to the business managers you work with, it’s time to re-evaluate.
Accountants, CFOs: Save Time. AND Be a Rockstar.
How much time does it take to answer a “simple” question like, “What was our revenue for X customer last month?” I once had a private equity investor grumble at me with a tone of complete and utter annoyance. He had asked one of our portfolio company’s controllers that question and received the response, “Can I get back to you on that tomorrow?”
Why Businesses Hire A CFO and Why Many Small Businesses are Missing Out
Why do businesses hire a CFO in the first place? They typically hire a CFO in order to get clarity on what is going on in their business financially. The CFO is able to perform analyses and act as a translation tool between the numbers and the operations of the business.
Selecting KPIs for my Small Business
The internet makes Key Performance Indicators (“KPIs”) seem like the gold pot at the end of the rainbow of business management. And thus these metrics are shrouded in so much mystery that the search for the perfect KPIs becomes an unachievable quest. Let me part the clouds of mystery for you.
6 Questions to Ask Yourself When Building a Budget
I have built hundreds of budgets and projections for businesses (yes, that many!). After the first 50 or so, I found myself asking a key set of questions. Here are the top six most important things to think about when building a budget.
Tax Time… Again
Tax season! Personally, it is not my favorite task. I love spreadsheets and financials and numbers, but I do not like doing my taxes. Tax season is also that time of year where we all take a hard look at how we did last year.
– Did we hit the revenue goals that we were expecting?
– Did we achieve the cash flows that we were planning on?
– Are we going to make a contribution to our 401(k) this year or defer that decision another year?
– Did I make enough money to make a withdrawal or pay myself a little more?
Top 3 Reasons Business Owners Don’t Build a Budget
I talk to business owners all the time who have heard that building a budget is a good idea, but don’t have a budget. Here are the three main reasons I’ve heard as to why this is:
– I’ve never built a budget and wouldn’t know where to start.
– I’m not a big numbers fan or I don’t like Excel.
– I’ve done one in the past, but never ended up looking at it so it seems kind of pointless.
Get Rid of the Noise
Have you ever opened the financials for your business and immediately felt overwhelmed? So many numbers, no point of reference, and 5-10 clicks to find the data you actually need. Not fun! See how AutoCFO can help you wrangle your data as if you had a team of financial analysts on your side!
Getting Detailed with AutoCFO: How to Create Your Budget
Before AutoCFO, your main option was to open an Excel spreadsheet, download your Profit & Loss statement from your accounting system (QuickBooks), copy the expenses from last year, then start typing numbers into the excel cells for what you think will be different from last year. It’s a bit exhausting just thinking about all of that work!
Breaking Down Budgeting
Why budget? Think about any big goal you’ve achieved in life. Whether your goal was strength training or planning a big trip, my bet is you have always been more successful when you had a plan. Your business should have a plan too. If you spend all of the money you receive from customers on a big marketing campaign to bring in new business, but don’t set aside money for rent or payroll, you may be out of business before you can provide the services advertised in your campaign.
Re-Organizing and Re-Labeling Your Financials
Your bookkeeper, accountant, and CFO all speak Accounting as a mutual language. Accounting is a useful language, and AutoCFO is going to teach you a few terms that will be important for communicating with investors, accountants and other finance people. But at the end of the day, this is YOUR business and we want you to set up your financials YOUR way.
[VIDEO] AutoCFO Quick Walkthrough
Watch this video to get a quick, no-nonsense walkthrough of the high level features of AutoCFO.
How Do You Build A Financially Resilient Business?
It is one thing to grow a business, and it’s another to grow a financially resilient one. The fact that you’re reading this article tells me that you’ve already set yourself apart from the pack by knowing that “growth” and “resilient growth” are not one and the same…