Financials...how important are they?

Not to offend anyone reading this, but here I am coming in to do a business plan and when I ask for financials I am told that there are none other than a tax return. Ok tax returns work, however your managerial skills will look even better if you were actually doing the bookkeeping or paying a qualified bookkeeper to keep your books.

There are many people who start businesses based on their experience as in working knowledge and never had to do the behind the scenes bookkeeping. There is nothing wrong with that, however keeping the books current is important if you want to run an efficient and strategic business.

When you are looking for money because you want to expand your business, if you go the bank route, they will ask for atleast 2 years of past tax returns. Which is good, however if you have an accountant that is very efficient and is dwindling away your profit with deductions or showing your business at a loss for the past 2 years this will make it harder for you to qualify. On the other side of it, think of all the receipts that never made it to their destination and are forever lost because in the daily task of running a business most business owners are prone to lapse in memory.

This is between you and your accountant, but it is not always smart to take all deductions possible, it should be strategically and legally planned. If you are actually keeping the books and not taking in a shoe box filled with receipts to your accountant, then you will have a credible profit & loss and balance sheet that will show a proper picture on how your business is doing. You will probably pay less money to your accountant because he or she does not have to add up receipts; instead it will enable your accountant to be both efficient and strategic because he or she has the time to do it. Remember it is crunch time for your tax accountant, the easier you make it for him or her the less money you will spend and it could possibly lead to a better end result.

The last thing to discuss is that if you are keeping books, what better way to know throughout the year how your business is doing. You can make goals, budgets, use tracking metrics; all of which will help you when you are looking to be funded through a bank or investor(s) to expand your business. Better yet wouldn't it be useful if you discover that there are cost cutting strategies you could implement or be enabled to eliminate unnecessary spending and employee theft. In 2 years time it might even be possible to fund your own expansion without the help of a bank or investor(s).

Internet Cached

I learned something new today. I do a lot of research on google. I cannot count how many times that I finally found something in a search that looked like it would benefit me or my client; clicked on it only to find out that it is a broken link. This of course happens after spending hours researching on google.

Did you know that google takes a polaroid snapshot of a web page to cache it? So the next time you click on a broken link and you really want to see what use to be there use the back button, then click on "Cached" that is displayed on the last line of the link description.

I also discovered that are also text descriptions of a web page and if you click on the word "text" a text version of the page appears. There is also the "Similar Pages" link that is displayed to the right of "Cached" that could possibly be of help because it may allow you to see similar web sites if any. I also started to click on all the available options on the cached copy the links and discovered descriptive information of several internet tools that google has; look for "Learn More".

There is a very good book out there that you can purchase through amazon.com called "Take The Cold Out Of Cold Calling" that reveals "Web Search Secrets". The author of the book is Sam Richter. I totally recommend this book if you utilize the search engines regularly on the web.

When all is said and done this may not be a bright spot in your day, but it is in mind. I cannot believe that it has always been there in front of me. The things we tend to overlook in life sometimes can make all the difference in making our lives a little less complicated.