Starting your own business is one of the best things in the world! Maybe you have this awesome idea for a service or product. Perhaps a franchise catches your eye and now you are a small business owner.
You spend your days creating promotional items, getting advertising coordinated, meeting with potential customers or clients. Your days are long, filled with working on building your business and creating an awesome client base to help you make money!
How long are your days? For most new business owners, the day starts before the sun comes up and ends well after the sun goes down. You are passionate about your business and it shows! You spend every waking minute thinking about it, working on it and creating it.
What falls between the cracks? Well, there are a few things:
1. Your personal health: I talked with a potential accounting client recently who actually owns a fitness related business. He is surrounded by fitness every day, but his days are consumed with marketing and customer relations. He isn't leaving time for his own fitness. Eating is a whole different challenge when you own your own business. Time is tight and sometimes money is as well. Quick stuff at a fast food place tends to be your choice unless you choose not to eat at all until you get home at night. Either option isn't good.
2. Your accounting system and tracking your income and expenses falls WAY BEHIND! I call it "Shoebox Syndrome". Your thought is that you will deal with that later, so you just throw it all in a box. The other thing that often happens is that you don't feel like you have the money to hire an accountant or bookkeeper, so you try to do it all yourself. I have seen many a business owner who ends up with a marathon session around tax time trying to get everything organized so they can have their tax return prepared. Not a good plan.
3. Family: Do your kids or spouse wonder who you are when you get home late at night? My husband just started his own business and a week or so ago, I sent him a text message after it got dark outside, asking "Where did you go?" I miss him sometimes because he gets so caught up in the job at hand that he forgets to come home!
How do we remedy these thing? The sure way to remedy this problem is to set hours and workspace, and MAKE SURE to schedule fitness, food and family into your day. Well, personal health and family, I will deal with in detail in a future post! Today I want to focus on 2.
Your accounting system will do several things for you that are vital to the long term success of your business!!! You MUST FOCUS ON THIS RIGHT AWAY FROM THE START!!
Buying Quickbooks is your first step. As a Quickbooks Pro Advisor, I can get you a discount on that software!! Just email me at jennifer.monsos@gmail.com and we will set up a time to take care of that part!
Secondly, it needs to be set up correctly so that you can track your income and expenses. It takes a little time and a good accountant to get that set up for you. It is not something you should tackle on your own generally. I have seen many a mess created that takes alot of time to fix if the system isn't set up correctly in the beginning.
Ok, so I guess the true first step is to find someone to help you get it all together, set up your system, monitor your system and be there for you to make sure that your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly tasks are completed! YES YOU CAN AFFORD TO HIRE AN ACCOUNTANT!!
Not hiring a good accountant from the start will cost you money in the long run. I have often told potential clients "If I charge you $1000 and save you $4000 in taxes was the expense worth it?". Of course it was! It may (actually probably will) cost you more to not have a good financial person on your team. You have to make sure that is part of your budget as you begin your business. A good accountant and accounting system is vital to your business.
How will you know if your prices are right if you don't know your profit margin? How will you be able to pay your bills if you don't know the balance in your checking account? How will you know how much to put aside for taxes if you have no idea what your net income is? How will you pay yourself?
Feel free to email me at jennifer.monsos@gmail.com or check out my website at www.simplicityquest.com for more information about me and my services. I would love to help you get your new business off to the right start!!
Jennifer
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