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Your first step would be to dig down and build the best possible foundation, to make sure your new house was based on solid ground. Only then would you start building on top, adding rooms and creating the perfect living space for you and your family.

The same is true of your business planning.

If you start developing grand plans for the future of your enterprise without getting your fundamental accounts and finances in order, you’re building your organization on extremely shaky ground – and that’s not an advisable plan for the long-term attainment of your goals.

Getting your financial house in order

 At Checkbox, we believe in getting our client’s financial house in order before any further strategic planning or business restructuring takes place.

When a business or nonprofit comes to us looking for our professional assistance, we will always encourage them to come aboard on one of our more basic service packages first. There’s a real method to this approach when it comes to delivering value for our clients.

By starting with the basics of good bookkeeping, streamlined financial processes and fundamental accounting, we can work with each client to ensure they lay the proper foundation. Once that’s done we can then move on to more aspirational, advisory-based services and guidance – all safe in the knowledge that the key numbers are in place.

For us, there are three fundamental elements to consider if your organization is going to be ready to move forward:

1. Your bookkeeping must be accurate and timely.
2. Your tax planning must be up to date and in order.
3. Your organization must be 100% legally compliant.

With that trifecta of bookkeeping, tax and compliance in place, you have the strength and structural integrity to start building, with the best possible foundation beneath your strategic business plan.

Don’t run before you can walk

When you’re running your own business, or heading up a nonprofit, it’s understandable that you’ll be filled with enthusiasm for your enterprise.

You’ll have big ideas and grand plans for expanding and growing your organization, so you’ll be keen to start strategic planning right away and begin the journey towards these goals.

But unless you have good numbers behind you, you don’t have a base to plan from. With your three foundational elements of bookkeeping, tax and compliance providing the internal strength, you have a robust starting point for any future plans. And because those three areas are all functioning at a high quality, you have the agility and flexibility to change your plans, pivot to meet new markets or to reach out and grasp those high-value opportunities.

Whether you’re a small business, a trade association or nonprofit organization, you have to master these fundamentals first if you’re planning to grow and scale your operations.

Get the support and advice you need

Getting complete control over the fundamentals is always our starting point when we work with your organization. So if you’re looking to begin your growth journey, please do come and talk to us first.

• We’ll work with you to streamline and improve your bookkeeping systems.
• We’ll review your tax situation and will create a tax-planning strategy that delivers the best possible profits for your organization.
• We’ll make sure every regulatory box is checked and that you’re completely legally compliant in every area of the enterprise.

When you partner with our team, we’ll set the strongest possible foundation before moving you through the next steps needed to achieve your goals.

Contact us at Checkbox to gain a partner in getting your accounting fundamentals in place.

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Having cash that’s available in the business for unexpected financial challenges is part of building risk control into your business model. In an uncertain world, knowing that the adequacy and growth of cash reserves has been considered in your budget plan provides real comfort that you will be able to:

• deal with the emergencies that may come, and
• build capacity toward the successful achievement of your organizational goals, whether those goals takes the form of an increase in profits or market share for your for-profit business, or the expanded and deepened social impact of your nonprofit’s programs.

On the flipside, not putting the right consideration into cash flow can have serious consequences for your reserves.

As an example, one of our nonprofit clients holds a regular, annual event which is its primary fundraiser for the year. A significant amount of board, staff and volunteer time is committed to making this event a success.  In the months leading up to the event, cash inflows from increased memberships, sponsorship support, exhibitor and attendee fees, caused cash reserves to swell.— So far, so good— But when the overall expenses for the event  were added up, including supplies, speakers and advertising etc., this overhead would subsequently cause the client’s cash reserves to plummet.

How, then, do you resolve this challenge of cash reserves being decimated by ever-increasing fundraising costs?

The answer was to supply the nonprofit with a trend analysis. This showed the client how, at the end of each year, they were ending up in the same cash position. Their cash was being emptied out and there was no profit to drive back into the charity. The organization as a whole was not growing.

With the information in the trend analysis, and our support and guidance as business advisors, the client could intelligently review the value of the event as it related to its social goals.

Running the event is a great fundraising opportunity for this client, but it needed to be planned with an eye on the organization’s financial stability and growth and with its ultimate and primary social purpose in mind. To do that effectively, they needed a proper budget and a cost center review.  Armed with those foundational tools, the client could then analyze if their event was aiding the long-term strategy of the organization and furthering its mission to serve a greater good.

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Whether you’re a small business who wants to increase your profits, or you’re an organization wanting to increase your social impact, Checkbox can help you achieve your goals.  Get in touch with us to get the expert assistance you need.

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Budgeting is one of the fundamentals that can often be overlooked by business owners, or non-profit CEOs, whose focus is pushing forward the next goal on the horizon. But when you neglect your budgeting, you’re setting a highly unstable foundation stone on which to build the rest of your business plan.

Why is budgeting so important to the health of your organization? And how can a more proactive approach to budget management improve your chances of achieving and maintaining your long-term business goals?

Why do I need a budget?

A good budget is the foundation of any business plan – you can’t finance your new product, your new office or the long-term expansion of your non-profit until you’ve worked out clearly and concisely what the costs are and what available cash you have to deliver on these objectives.

This means there’s a real imperative to think through each element of your project or strategic plan and to budget for these costs based on sound, realistic numbers.

It’s best to over-estimate, rather than under-estimate, but the costs you plug into your budget need to be an actual reflection of the overall spending that’s needed, and the funds that you can realistically access to meet this spending.

This is why building a budget that’s detailed, realistic and coherent can take some time. The process of gathering the necessary information can be lengthy, and the amount of time taken means that budgeting is often avoided as long as income is exceeding expenses.

Running your finances on a wing and prayer is never an advisable methodology, and that’s why a revenue plan and a good budget are so invaluable.

Comparing your budget to actuals

If you’re going to move beyond the ‘there’s still money in the bank’ mentality, your organization will need a sound revenue plan to guide its financial management.

By getting your planned revenues, expected overhead and other costs down into a more tangible format, you improve the vision and control you have over your financial destiny. And when you have clear budget targets to aim for, that can also become a motivating factor – both for you as the business owner, or non-profit CEO, and your wider management team and staff.

Your budget really begins to deliver once you begin to track and measure how well you’ve met your agreed targets. With a good accounting system in place, you can review your actuals (your historical transactions) throughout the year to measure them against your budgeted figures.

Comparing your budget to your actuals will show where there are any variances. These are gaps between the income/costs you’ve planned for and the actual income/costs that the business has experienced – in short, they’re the red flags that show you whether you’re meeting your budget, or missing those targets. And that’s essential information to be aware of when you’re in charge of the organization’s  future and financial sustainability.

When there are challenging variances coming through in your reporting, you can start getting proactive about improving revenues, or reducing costs: both of which can help to bring you back on track with your plan.

You can also use your variances and budget reporting to inform next year’s budget and ensure that the same pitfalls are avoided in the next financial year.

Get proactive about your budgeting

Your budget is something that should never be overlooked. With good budgeting, you not only set a clear structure for your expected revenues and spending, you also provide the information and data to analyze your performance and take the actions needed to keep you on track.

At Checkbox, we can help you to develop a sound, workable budget for your business or non-profit. And we’ll provide the necessary oversight to make sure you’re on track, realizing your potential and meeting your long-term goals.

Get in touch with us to arrange a budgeting session for your organization.

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