Are You on Track with Your Financial Business Goals?
Running a business is no easy task. In addition to your daily operations, you may have financial business goals that aren’t getting the attention they need.
Staying on track with your financial goals brings a wave of positive changes.
The constant worry about finances fades as you see progress and reduce stress.
Feeling on track brings you clarity which helps to make better informed decisions.
Tracking your financial goals can bring a sense of confidence and even freedom.
You take control, chart your course, and move forward with the knowledge and power to achieve your dreams.
Fortunately, a bit of planning goes a long way in tracking and achieving your goals. In fact, when you’ve got a good system down, you may soon find yourself surpassing your financial business goals!
The Basics of Financial Business Goals
At Accounting Made Accessible, we believe business goals shouldn’t need a degree in accounting for you to understand and work towards them.
If you’re not sure about your goals yet, we’ve written an article about how to define your financial business goals, and about important key performance indicators (KPIs) which can help inform your decisions.
Make sure you're following SMART criteria so they are specific, measurable, actionable, and have a time frame.
Remember that goals don't just have to focus on income targets, but can include:
Paying off debt
Implementing new software to automate processes
Optimizing inventory management to decrease waste
Improving tax strategies
Write your goals down somewhere so you can always refer and work towards them regularly.
Start your work day by looking at your goals. Building your daily task list off of what will get you closer to those goals is a practice that many successful business owners use.
This won’t be achievable if you have too many goals to handle. Pick a small number to allow yourself to focus and increase your chances of success.
Build Your Tracking System
You likely don’t need a fancy tool to track your progress. But you do need to choose something.
Without an easy way to update and refer to your goals, you’ll likely be discouraged and not revisit them as often as you could. And then you may feel panicked or discouraged when you do finally crunch the numbers, update your tracking, and realize you’re behind.
Ensure you’re using an accessible accounting software. Everything is easier when your basic business information and metrics are just a click away.
Choose a tool you enjoy or already use regularly.
If you want to track your goals in a spreadsheet, go for it! Just make sure the rest of the team has access to the high-level information.
Do you like a nice visualization with pie charts and graphs? Make it happen!
Is there a tool you’re already using daily or weekly? Track your goals there…it will be much easier to make a routine.
Decide how often you’ll update your numbers.
If you’re keeping good records and using good tools, some business goals will be easy to track. You can click and see your financial reports right away.
But others goals may require a bit more digging, bringing together information from several sources. Decide how often this should be done, such as weekly, biweekly, or monthly.
Schedule your tracking and reviews like a business meeting with an important client. Make sure to have your goal tracking and review set up as a recurring event in your calendar, and don’t keep pushing it off because it’s “just internal”.
Extra Tips for Your Financial Business Goals
Proactive Planning
What’s the cherry on the pie when it comes to having goals and working towards them regularly?
Having a plan for life’s inevitable pitfalls.
You won’t be able to predict everything, but you can ask yourself:
What potential obstacles might prevent me from reaching my goals?
Which are the most likely, or might have the greatest impact?
How can I overcome them?
While planning for every scenario isn’t a good use of time, pick the key ones and prepare some basic contingency plans.
We talk more here about how you can use financial forecasting to make better decisions for your business.
Review and Refine Your Financial Business Goals
When revisiting your goals, it’s okay to change them in the middle of the year. Scenarios will come up, and maybe you’ll even do better than expected.
Update your goals as often as needed. However, if you’re working with a team, ensure they are kept in the loop for any changes and the rationale behind them.
As you review your goals, you’ll find each year you are more confident with setting and achieving them.
Support With Financial Business Goals
In the busy days of running your business, it can be hard to make the time to clean up your data, set your business goals, and constantly track them.
Fortunately, our friendly team at Accounting Made Accessible specializes in making this process easier for you. Our business exists to help you reach your financial business goals.
Book a free strategy call today.