Page 3 - The 7 Biggest Mistakes Trades and Builders Unwittingly Make

Having no visibility
2 2 of sales and profits

I come across this frequently; a lack of visibility diture. In most cases with Trades businesses,
of sales, expenses, profits and cash flow. With- we end up either employing an admin assistant
out having this information at your finger tips or outsourcing the bookkeeping and two things
(and this means having a system to automate then occur:
it), it is very difficult to make good decisions.
Either no decision is made i.e. the business a) the business owner has more time to
owner procrastinates, or they make decisions drive the sales
based on what their gut is telling them, which b) cash flow improves
can be dangerous.
Both of these outcomes mean that the ‘extra
Take the scenario described in point 1, where expense’ is not only paid for, but generates ex-
I am saying that any business owner needs tra cash in the bank!
to play to their strengths and outsource the
things they hate. A common challenge I hear TOP TIP – Create a monthly and annual fi-
is, “I can’t afford it”, but in every case, once we nancial forecast i.e. expected sales, expenses
analyse the numbers and create a financial and profit, and check in against this regularly
forecast, we can start to plan for this expen- to ensure you are on track.

EXERCISE

Do you have accounting software in place?

What is cash flow like currently?

What would be the first step to improve in this area?

3 Alison Warner The 7 Biggest Mistakes Trades and Builders Unwittingly Make http://www.buildandgrow.org.uk/