The reason some bosses hate the idea of you working from home is they think you are going to slack off. Being …

One of the best things about working in the city is being able to get out for a run at lunchtime. A …

A 4WD enthusiast told me that he wouldn’t trust a fancy new electric ute. What if it broke down in the outback?   …

My Octopus Teacher on Netflix blew me away. It is so beautiful, I absolutely recommend it. It’s a lovely view of lessons from …

It seems everyone wants to grow their business at all costs, to be the next Atlassian. But trying to do that can …

Even today people continue to talk about the difference between strategy and housekeeping in business. I catch myself doing it sometimes and …

Anyone who runs a service business knows the feeling, a constant concern about balancing the amount of work on and knowing when …

It wasn’t that long ago that we were discussing the end of jobs for life. How we would need to retrain a …

How do you know if you’re making money from your SaaS sales? It’s easy right? If you sell it for more than …

If you have to spend money on compliance, try to get some value from it. Bookkeeping and tax definitely fall into that …

There is no end of advice out about how to be more productive, to get more things done in your day. But …

Do Not Only Eat Cake It’s absolutely fine to put high-value, time-based, consulting work on top of your standard products. That suits …

We often recommend better management reporting, but also, the equally important, regular time put aside each month to review and interpret the …

Is your business really lumpy? Or is it just the accounts? And if so, is it, beneath all that distortion, having problems? …

In last week’s blog entry I talked about how what might appear to be a lumpy business is more often just lumpy …

Most people only have a limited number of different tasks to perform each day. If they are delivering work for clients, their …

Time flies – but it can also sink you. So how do you better control it? Usually only people that bill by …

Some things have to get done – else they will come back to bite you later – but they won’t necessarily grow …

If you have to present a budget paper to your Board and/or investors it’s a good idea to provide a document explaining …

Check out “Design The Life You Love” by Ayse Birsel. This is a great read for business owners. Especially the consideration of …

Human beings work better with constraints and we are usually not very good at restraint. Constraints drive better creative solutions, plus we get …

I recently did a podcast interview with the very cool Leigh Dunsfield from Waddle Loans Check it out https://soundcloud.com/waddlepodcast/thomas-taylor-t2-consult-podcast

If you have a 30 June year end you’re probably putting the finishing touches on your annual budget. If you are, it’s …

We mostly work with businesses that have really big clients, it seems to be the thing that defines us. And most knowledge …

There is that old saying that “if you what to improve something, first measure it”. And if you really want to know …

I remember being told at my first university economics lecture that we have to assume human beings always make rational choices. That …

Is running your own show is the best way for you to grow? One option might be to join up with a bigger …

A while ago I wrote about why you should bootstrap for as long as you can noting… “Apart from the obvious benefits of having …

The world seems to be splitting into extremes. Amazon and the like are wiping out traditional retail, luxury retailers are doing fine, …

There is something that I think happens at a particular stage in every growing company. The time you realise you don’t know …

Those mountains aren’t going to climb themselves and you need a good base camp or your best-laid plans will fail. Absolutely make it …

We all know about economies of scale for big businesses, and of course, there are major diseconomies too. Otherwise small business would …

Does your billing/front office system equal the accounts each month? If not you might have a black hole. Regardless, you won’t know …

These years just keep getting faster… Right now you’ve hopefully had a lovely break and thinking that getting stuck in can probably …

If you’re doing all the cool things like continuous billing, accruing and prepaying expenses, twice monthly salaries, something like ReceiptBank for automated accounts payable …

One of the best ways to waste time and/or money is to do your own bookkeeping in-house. But we all do things …

There are four ways to grow B2B sales. New Clients from Inbound Marketing A lot of people think that businesses that don’t …

We often put up with sub-optimum solutions. Things we’ve always done a particular way; ways that mostly just waste time and cause …

We all know that we need goals, and unless you measure something it won’t improve, but don’t get too stressed out about …

Give us a shout if you need a hand getting ready to change over to Xero at 30 June.   It’s good …

I had a great question put to me the other day. You often hear of companies saying “our growth almost killed us” …

When we assess a business for financial security and sustainability the following is what we look for. The big one is recurring …

Hotels have a magic number that they all aim for. That number is 80% occupancy. The percentage of available rooms occupied each …

Add Sensible Spinach To Your Smashed Avocado Thomas Taylor – Monday, May 21, 2018 We’ve changed our name. We are now Green Spinach …

Accounts staff will often tell you they’re too busy when you ask them to do something new. I get it thats annoying …

There might be 50 ways to leave a lover, but not many ways to leave a company that you have built. And …

These days, for most businesses, it’s all about recurring revenue. A lot of Real estate agents aim to fund their basic operating …

Guest Post by Raz Chorez In over a decade of consulting, I’ve learned to take nothing for granted. I don’t assume as much …

These days smart firms are forming their service offerings into bundled products that better align with and meet client needs. Once upon …

To manage your firm, you need to know the most important ratios. Utilisation is by far the most important for most, but …

The NSW government is giving small businesses in NSW a grant of $2000 if they employ new full-time, part-time and casual workers …

Remember when cruise control was just on flash cars? When a Mercedes stunt to demonstrate automatic emergency braking went terribly wrong and …

Humans have an innate tendency to take more risks when we are under pressure. Put what’s left on a horse race, kick …

This is for all the people that use timesheets. There is an old accounting saying that if something is out by only …

All those trend setters, not following traditional business models, have the opportunity to build a modern, agile and flexible businesses unimpeded by …

Happy New Year all. I hope you had a great holiday if you managed one. Fresh for a new year and, like …

The most successful businesses I’ve worked with have all had one thing in common, they all had some sort of advisory board. …

I know everyone is flat out right now but it’s a really good time to do a cash flow forecast and make sure …

That’s an old accounts joke. It’s only funny if you’ve ever struggled with an accounting course. And everyone does when they first …

The Dalai Lama said “It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself …

We like saying we are no smarter than anyone else but we get to see inside a lot of businesses at the …

Scenario planning is something that makes perfect sense but a bit daunting to tackle for a lot of people. An easy way …

Have you noticed that there seems to be a bunch of new Outsourced CFOs about? This is a great thing, I think …

Leaders do vision, they are responsible for the strategy, and then they facilitate the actions everyone needs to take to make the …

I’m writing this on a public holiday, the sun is shining and, after this, the dog and I are going for a …

It was years ago now, and before I met her, but Suzzie M told me a great story about how she helped …

A weekly cash flow forecast is one of the most important housekeeping tasks in your business. Many a business has failed because …

We’ve all heard it before … “there are too many people in accounts”….. but first a detour via refrigerators. Hang in there, …

You’ve most probably heard of middle office and decided it was a banking thing designed to try to stop dealers going off …

We are huge fans of outsourcing repetitive processes for SMEs, particularly processes that respond well to economies of scale. Things that get …

Thomas Taylor – Sunday, August 04, 2019 The other day I heard a scientist say there is no such thing as a …

I keep banging on about how people send things to accounts just because it has something to do with adding up numbers. …

Good solid businesses value recurring revenue, in fact, it’s usually the most important element when a business is valued for sale or …

The more time I spend working with growing businesses, the more I see that the biggest success factor is usually sales. I …

It’s hard to manage a business that provides consulting services, but even more so if consulting is not your only income stream. …

When you hear any combination of the following be very careful. “But that’s what we had to bid to win the work” …

If you think that time went fast over the weekend try fitting 6 weeks into a month. We have all seen management …

From the (Urban Dictionary): In contrast to what you might think about a claustrophobic reference, the “walls are closing in” actually means that someone was …

I’ve been talking to lots of business owners in the past week and one thing is crystal clear. After they have taken …

Payroll has to be done on time, every time, no matter what. If you have someone in-house doing payroll, even if that …

There are some great businesses with no office, or with a semi-distributed working model. I’ve been having many conversations about this, like …

A business running out of cash is like a boat running aground. If you’re passionate about either, seeing it will bring you …

Why the hell have Australian supermarkets stopped most deliveries? Partly because they have never taken it seriously. Like newspapers that lost the …

Sometimes you are forced to change how you do things. Call it pivot if you will. The thought of it can be …

It might sound counterintuitive but if your clients ask for a discount right now offer to do more for less, but put …

I’m sure you’ve been having a good look at costs lately so here are a few things to consider. 1) Better control …

It might sound counterintuitive but if your clients ask for a discount right now offer to do more for less, but put …

We all know that it’s hard to track which particular sales activities result in sales. It might be a conversation that you …

Big businesses have some enormous advantages but they have weaknesses too. How can you learn from recent disrupters and get a foothold? …

After the cost of delivering services, the cost of client acquisition is the most critical expense to control in your business – …

They tell people this when they teach them to race motorcycles. They tell you to look towards your escape route, not the …

“Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any …

A lot of people think that the health of your business is measured by the people in the back office, like a …

BLUF where conclusions and recommendations are placed at the beginning of the text, rather than the end, to facilitate rapid decision making. So …

It’s that time of the year again. When the Federal Government Budget makes the news you know that’s it’s time to start

Eating your own dog food, also called dogfooding, is a slang term used to reference a scenario in which a company uses its own …

Grab a copy of my book on Amazon Each chapter deals with the main issues that stop businesses growing strong  

These days smart professional services firms are leveraging bundled products and automation, not so much people. It used to be just people. …

Economists in the twentieth century, from communist through to fascist, and everything in between, almost exclusively relied on labour cost (per hour) …

Are you ready to let go of the edge of the pool? The traditional way of managing service firms, utilisation and charge-out …