# 235 [WebTV] The Numbers You Need To Know at The End of The Year

Wonderful Web TV

2017 is so close I can almost taste it! I’ve got a feeling 2017 is going to be my best year ever and I really want to help you have the best year too.

Before you can plan a year that will be profitable and also less stressful, there are a few numbers you need to know.
I explain it all here and also mention the software we use to make it easy.

I’d love to hear your thoughts after you watch the video. And if you have any questions or ideas to help other viewers, then please feel free to share.

Cheers

Janet

P.S. Pass this on to any friends or colleagues in business who you think this will help. Let’s make 2017 a rockin’ year for everyone.

Transcript

Janet Beckers: Hello and welcome. Janet Beckers here with your wonderful Web TV tip of the week. You know what? It’s nearly 2017. We are so close, just a few days off, and it’s now that if you haven’t done it already that you will be planning out what you’re going to be doing for the next 12 months. You’ll be looking at what programs you’re gonna offer. You’ll be looking at your … what sort of promotions you’re going to do and really thinking about what changes will I make. Before you do that I want to give you a couple of exercises that is absolutely essential for you to do, because if don’t do them you could end up burning yourself out next year, or you could end up going broke while you’re doing that, or you could end up not meeting the potential that you could if you don’t do these exercises first. I’m gonna cover them in a few videos.

The first one today is, you know what, before you can start planning for next year you’ve gotta do a good review of the previous year. I’m gonna talk specifically about one exercise that I need you to do to be able to really review your year, and that is I want you to take any kind of emotion and energy out of everything that you’ve done in your business for the last 12 months, and I want you to let the numbers do the talking for you. Now what’s absolutely essential is you need to be able to have your numbers on hand, okay? You need to be able to know what is the revenue that I have made from each product and/or service that I’ve got and what are the expenses for that, so you can look at everything that you’ve offered and you can know what was my break-even. Have I made a profit from that? Are the expenses too high? Have I discovered when I do this that there is a program that I’ve got and actually is a little gold mine waiting there because the profit margins are really, really good, but I haven’t really taken too much notice of it? You don’t know until you do those numbers.

How do you get those numbers? I’m gonna give it to you super, super duper briefly, but the most important thing, it doesn’t matter if you’re starting out or if you’ve been in business for years, you need to have some kind of a counting software. Most importantly whatever you use you have to have somebody who is entering that data on a very regular basis. You can’t wait to do it just once every three months when you’ve got to put in your tax forms. You’ve got to be doing it regularly. If you’ve only got a very small turnover you might only do it once a month. If you’ve got quite a few transactions you’re gonna need somebody doing it weekly, sometimes daily. It’s absolutely essential that that is done and it doesn’t have to be you. This is where it’s data entry. It doesn’t have to be highly skilled work.

Whatever program you’re gonna use, it could go from an Excel spreadsheet, it could go like us where we use Xero X-E-R-O. Other companies might use MYOB. They might use QuickBooks. It’d be really interesting if you share down below what software you find that is really good. You might use a book. Whatever it is that you use, the important thing is that you need to be able to say, “This revenue came from this product. This expense came from that product.” Of course there’s other ones that are general running expenses. Now you need to be able to really look at it dispassionately.

Of course be very aware of the life cycle of that program. If it’s just started out you might look at it and go, “Well, that was a lot of money.” You’ve got your reality check of, “You know what? I’ve only just launched it,” or, “It’s just the first time. It hasn’t actually had it’s opportunity to pay me back yet.” Of course you’ve got that. Other than that really look at the profit and loss per product. Now I know that this is a bit of a bummer, isn’t it? We’re here in the Christmas period, we’re going to the New Year, it’s celebration time. That’s okay. You can do this when you get back after your holidays. Make sure it’s the number one thing you do if you haven’t done it already. If you don’t have a system where you’ve got somebody entering in your data all the time, if it’s not you, if it’s not somebody else, don’t beat yourself up. That’s a really common thing that happens in companies. You just set the intention that you’re gonna be one of those ones that is spot on.

I can tell you the difference that it’s made in my business. 12 months ago I brought on a … I call him my Chief Financial Officer, because he’s much more than a bookkeeper and he’s much more than an accountant to me. He works with me on a weekly basis, he keeps my cash flow forecasting, and we get to meet once a month. A couple of times a year we’ll meet for a whole day where we actually go over all those numbers, we analyze them, we make decisions, he asks me the hard questions. As soon as we did that there programs that I opened, and they were programs that I closed. They were programs that I reviewed. It just makes such a huge difference. The other part that came as the benefit of that is my profit margins increased and my reliability on my cash flow and how much money went into my personal bank account just evened out perfectly. It makes a huge difference. It truly, truly does.

That’s my challenge to you. Before you start planning those big things, get the reality check so you know that you’re making your decisions on the things that really matter in terms of bringing the revenue into your business. Now in our next video, I’m gonna just share it in a couple of days rather than in a week, we’re gonna flip it around, and then we’re gonna stop talking it with dispassionate, and we’re gonna go and have a look at some passion stuff in the next video so I’ll see you in that one. Bye.

Meanwhile I’d love to hear from you any recommendations on program that really work well. Do you have some recommendations of books that people should read that help them to be able to make sense of this? Or some systems that you have in place, I’d love you to be able to share them down below. It will help a lot of people. I’ll come and join the conversation. Bye.