5 Items for Your Business Financial Mid-Year Checkup
Entrepreneurs, over six months of the year is gone. Now is the time for a financial mid-year checkup. You’ve been paying expenses and earning revenue for the first six months of the year, so how will have you done? Are you on track to reach your goals? Do you need to tweak the strategy for the rest of the year? It’s time to assess the game plan for the next six months. Here’s what you need to analyze.
1) Cash flow Projections vs Actual
Near the end of the previous fiscal year you created cash flow projections, what you expected the cash flow in your business to be the following year. Pull out the estimated revenue and expenses for each month and start comparing to the actual. How far off were the projections? Did you exceed the estimated amount in revenue and/or expenses?
If you went over the estimated amount for expenses, then determine if you still have the cash on hand to cover current liabilities (bills and debt). If you do not, then consider what you can adjust to decrease the current and future expenses. Determine what caused the projection of expenses to be off, how this can be mitigated in the future.
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If you went over the estimated amount of revenue, first off let me say WHOHOO. That’s awesome. Now analyze what happened. Determine what caused the unexpected increase in revenue and if it can be duplicated in the future for the associated revenue stream and other revenue streams.
2) Budget Analysis
You analyzed the cash flow and may have determined new action that needs to be taken. Revise the budget to incorporate the new expenses and or revenue. Go category by category through the budget and determine what exactly needs to be adjusted. Here is where you can determine what expenses need to be decreased and which revenue streams can be and should be increased.
Think about how this affects the profit margin. Analyze all the revenue streams and calculate the profit margin on each. Is each revenue stream still profitable? If a revenue stream is not profitable determine if it should be kept and fixed or stopped.
3) Revenue Goals
Take a in-depth look at your revenue goals. From what you learned during the cash flow analysis and the budget analysis, decide if the revenue goals need to be tweaked. Consider how to change the strategy to reach those revenue goals. Aim high, but also be realistic and work off of your numbers (current size of audience, strategies to grow your audience, number of touch points with audience, rate of current sales, customer feedback etc.).
Determine the highest grossing revenue stream and the lowest grossing revenue stream. As yourself, what can be changed to increase sales in the highest grossing revenue stream. Determine any issues or bottlenecks in the lowest grossing revenue stream and incorporate the fixes into your overall strategy and budget.
4) Development Goals
Assess your progress with business development goals. These are goals such as optimizing your systems, increasing capacity building, and increasing education. You should be working on stabilizing then optimizing operations and revenue streams. Determine how on track you are with these goals, what still has to be done, and what new areas have been identified. Make sure money is set aside in the budget to work on these goals.
5) Lifestyle Analysis – are you meeting your personal goals, creating the desired lifestyle
Also assess how your business is meeting your goals for your desired lifestyle. When you started your business, you had goals as to what type of activity you wanted to be able to do throughout the day; your work environment; the number of hours you wanted to work; the number of hours spent with loved ones etc. Are you still building a business that will allow you to fulfill those goals. If not what needs to change for you to be able to achieve those goals?
Do your mid-year financial check up to make sure the business is still on track and to correct any deviations or problems that have occurred.
