Which Businesses Make Good Money
When I was just starting out as an accountant I spent some time doing tax returns for SMEs at a small accounting practice. It was interesting to be able to see inside lots of different businesses and try to work out what made them tick. I just saw the numbers because I was stuck in […]
How to choose good accounts staff
Just a few years ago people were saying accounting jobs were dying out – about to be killed off by automation. The 20th-century dream of “untouched by human hands” is looking pretty unlikely – for a while yet at least. Turns out it’s often more expensive to automate than for a person to do it. […]
Stop The Years Flying By
If you feel that the years are flying by it’s probably because you are fundamentally bored. One of my favorite podcasts had a great post about this – A Counterintuitive Cure for Burnout. Check it out. It got me thinking about what I see inside businesses. We can only hold a few things in our […]
How to be Accountable Working From Home
One of the great things about working from home is being able to put a load of washing on while you think about that email you’re about to send. You and I started moving away from 9 to 5 some time ago, getting emails at all hours etc, but Covid has been making blended work/personal […]
You Need Cash – Maslow Levels for Your Business
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs explains why people will risk their safety to eat. First things first. Makes sense. Maslow is also a great way to think about important aspects of your business. Level 1 – Can you pay the wages? If you have ever had to scramble to cover payroll you know how much […]
You Earn Margin Even If You Go To The Beach
That’s the lovely thing about recurring revenue and that is why it helps make your business more valuable. Margin is “earnt” by each minute a contractor is on the job, not when you send the client an invoice, that’s just when you batch it up. If your lawyer charges by the hour they earn money […]
The Art of Seeing Your Business From More Than One Perspective
Robert Hughes’ excellent book The Shock of the New helped me to understand cubism. A movement that tried to see things from more than one perspective. Cubism broke things down into elements and reassembled them in different ways. It was trying to make sense of a fast-changing and somewhat out-of-control world at the time. Some […]
Sales and Accounts – Divided by Common Language
It won’t help to speak louder and slower to the accounts team, it will not help at all. You need to be able to ask questions and make requests in particular ways. Some tips if you are required to venture into the accounts office…… Say something nice. Just like you should to anyone. My […]
Make sure your spreadsheets don’t add up to a hill of beans
Have you ever been shocked by your credit card statement? Surely you didn’t use it that much? How did three cheap lunches, and one pair of jeans, add up to $2,000? The same thing can happen with your business. All businesses have some sort of quoting mechanism but not all businesses make sure they […]
Is it all in your head?
Trying to keep on top of everything is hard enough at the best of times but Covid has made it even harder. My To-Do list has 80 things in it today, and it’s a Sunday. We have to make lists because we can’t keep everything in our heads. In 1956 George A. Miller published “The Magical Number […]