Money Matters

Money Matters is the focused and powerful guide for business owners and chief executives. Read on for the best advice in the 5 critical Money Matters: cash flow, profits, growth, taxes, and costs.

Your private company can make more money if you choose that road.

• Money you can use to grow revenue and profits.
• Money you can use to make running your business easier and more efficient.
• Money you can use to develop new products and services of higher value for your best buyers.
• Money that will increase the value of your company and your personal wealth.

You are not alone. In the United States, businesses with fewer than 100 employees comprise 98.2% of all businesses. Everywhere you turn you find sellers and buyers keeping the small business sector of the economy going strong.

If you want to be a bigger company, you have to think like the owner or chief executive of a company the size you want to be.

Business failure is the biggest threat private businesses. The vast number fail for one of two reasons: 1) there is no market demand for their offerings and 2) they run out of cash.

You may be wondering “How can we ensure that our company continues to meet market demand and, also, how can we be sure that we never run out of cash?”

I. Cash Flow

In order to have more than enough cash in your business you need cash flow reports.

Cash flow reports show you where cash comes from and where it goes to and the timing of these outflows and inflows. The goal is to always have enough cash on hand (in your business bank account) to cover all payments out for at least 6 months. To achieve positive cash flow every month you need to know all your recurring payments and when they’re due as well as anticipated one-time or infrequent payments.

Pay attention to credit cards, billing cycles, and timing of expenditures relative to receipts. Try this cash flow calculator for an immediate picture of your company’s cash flow. Even if you don’t have all the numbers, it will instantly give you a picture of your cash flow. The more you input, the more accurate the picture.

You must take charge of your outflows and inflows.

Some of the most frequent causes of negative cash flow are:

• Deferred receivables. You have plenty of sales but there’s a delay in receipts.
• Accounts payable obligations that precede accounts receivables coming in.
• Relying on the P&L of your accrual accounting system to show you a picture of your cash. Revenue is booked into the system when a sale takes place, even if the receipts are delayed. Your P&L might show robust sales, while your cash balance is dwindling due to your expenses and AP obligations. Therefore, you must have a cash flow statement as well as a P&L.
• Failure to require a profit with every sale. Even if the timing of your AR and AP are coordinated, you can be short of cash if your sales don’t generate any or enough profit.
• Your billing processes. If your billing system has built in delays (for example, invoices are sent only once month) by definition you will have negative cash flow since your outflows occur weekly.
• Your pricing model. If you price after the fact, such as is required by hourly billing, your cash flow in will always be behind your cash flow out.

If you do only one new thing to help your company, improve cash flow. Do not be one of the companies that fails because of struggles with cash flow.

Free Cash Flow: Free cash flow (FCF) is cash left after all cash outflows. This is the cash on your balance sheet. Cash is your superpower.  Cash increases the value of the company (and owner wealth) and allows for expansion and growth. It is the cheapest source of funds for growth. (See Growth section below)

Free cash flow is the accumulation of cash over time, beyond your emergency fund, and it sits in your bank until you need it. Your CFO or banker should identify liquid investments that will store the cash and generate a small rate of return.

Flash reports: Flash reports are a game changer.  They are daily or weekly snapshots of key financial and operational data. They measure factors that are of particular interest to managers at any given time. Anything of value can be listed on the report. Often companies report liquidity (cash), productivity (sales), and profitability. They may report capacity utilization, the status of overdue receivables, the customer order fulfillment rate, and the amount of storage space left in the warehouse. The choices are up to management and should be data that helps daily or weekly decision making.

Flash reports at 80-90% accuracy are accurate enough for management to make decisions. They should be set up on a dashboard that is easy to access on any device. The report is only circulated internally; it is not intended to be perused by outsiders, since it contains confidential information.

Management uses flash reports to make immediate decisions. Examples include:

Liquidity flash reports show cash on hand and is of interest if cash is running lower than normal. That would lead to a conversation with the AP and AR departments about how they are handling receipts and payments and options to improve cash flow.

• Productivity or sales flash reports show new sales. Managers expect to see steady or increasing sales at a pace that is realistic for their industry. Sales of consumable products or services would show a pace different from that of an attorney or CPA. You should know your company’s historical pace and the typical pace for your industry and review your flash report with those in mind.
• Profitability flash reports can show profits by products or services lines as well as profit for the company as a whole. The data for product and services line makes it clear how much profit is contributed by each one, which helps managers make a variety of decisions. We go deep into profit in the Profit section of Money Matters.
• Order fulfillment flash reports show the rate at which orders are being fulfilled and shipped. This is a critical metric for product-centric companies. Seeing the numbers for a couple of weeks will help management make the small but critical changes that will increase fulfillment speed and improve customer service and online reviews.

Flash reports of any particular element can be created from the data in your accounting system.

We have seen how flash reports are a game-changer for a private company.

We’ll help your company reduce the anxiety about paying bills and increase the amount of cash on hand. 

II. Profits

Profits must be required or soon you will have no company left at all.

Too often business owners have a passion for the business (their “why?”) but not for profit. Without profit, the business is a hobby at best and a serious financial drain at worst. You cannot pay your bills with your passion or your vision.

All too often profit is a difficult issue for many private companies. Founders had their reasons for starting their own company, perhaps including a novel idea, a passion for helping or for achieving an outcome, or the desire to “be your own boss.”

No matter what, profit must be your highest priority.

Profit fulfills three needs. They are equally important.

1) Profit is critical for the long-term survival of the company. Profit produces the free cash flow that funds growth at the lowest possible cost.

2) Profit is the return on the investment risk the company takes by being in business in the first place.

3) Profit contributes to the financial estate of the owner.

When we start a relationship with a business owner we talk about profit:

• What is it? How do we calculate it?
• Why is it critical?
• How will the company make it?

We are committed to ensuring that every owner builds a valuable company and their own personal wealth as their well-deserved reward for the risk of business ownership.

What is Profit?

We use this formula for profit: Expenses+Profit=Revenue. Profit is a requirement for every sale. If every product or service you sell doesn’t produce a profit, you should not be selling it at the current price with the current costs. In other words, we don’t define profit as what’s left after you pay your expenses.

 

Set Profitability goals

We work with owners to set various profitability goals. There is the profitability goal for the company overall. What is the right profit goal given the industry, the competitive landscape, and the risk?

It is most realistic and impactful to set profitability goals as a percent of revenue. That helps you build profit into the selling price. Dollars of profit do not tell a complete picture. Companies often get tripped up by looking at the dollar volume of profit instead of the percent profits of sales. High volume, low value offerings generate lots of dollars but as percent they are very weak contributors to the company’s profit.

Companies improve their overall profit when they set profitability goals for divisions or sectors within the company. Each product or service line requires careful analysis to determine that line’s profitability goal. A low-value product may turn a small profit as a percent of revenue, while a high-value service may generate a high profit as a percent of revenue due do the value to the buyer and low actual costs. Any company that wants to increase overall profit needs to put high value, high profit offerings in the market. Understanding profit by sector helps owners fine tune their full range of offerings.

“What do we do about low-profit sectors?” is a question that often arises with our private business clients. You may need to make some low profit offerings available. Many people use them as a way of testing a company they don’t know. The company gets people in the door through these offerings and then markets higher value, higher profit offerings to them later.

We recommend that owners carefully monitor their low profit offerings to ensure they don’t invest too heavily in them, further reducing profit.

Strategic statements: We use Strategic Statements with our clients to help them write a unique expression of strategy for each product or services line.

 

Strategy Predicts Profit

Corporate Strategy at the highest level states what business the company is in (driving force) and to which market(s) it sells. Knowing your driving force and the needs and wants of your intended market allow you to generate profits—when the business is run well.

Strategic Statements break corporate strategy into discrete pieces that can be managed carefully. You can write as many Strategic Statements as you have markets and value provided.

The format of a Strategic Statement is: We (company name) deliver X value to Y buyers for Z profit

Write as many strategic statements as are needed to give a crystal-clear picture of the relative profitability of each buyer segment and each product/service segment.

Pricing models: how to charge for value delivered

Pricing models are the specific methods you use to calculate what you charge buyers for your products and services. The most popular methods are:

• Hourly billing by hourly rates
• Value based fee
• Hybrid: a price that is derived from a combination of factors that may include hourly billing, material costs (COGS) and value based fees.

Just because a pricing model is commonly used in an industry (you know who you are) is a poor reason to choose the same method for your company. We believe companies need to take a careful and thoughtful look at their choice of pricing model.

 

Our Take on Pricing Models

Hourly billing: There is a huge pitfall in hourly billing. It causes an ethical conflict between the company and its clients and customers. The customer or client benefits from receiving the value you promise sooner rather than later. You benefit from delivering that value later rather than sooner. Your company’s interests should never conflict with your customers’ and clients’ best interests.

Hourly billing creates a fixed inventory of available hours. This limits your revenue. The number of hours your staff can work per week is your inventory. You can’t exceed that. It’s no different than when the supermarket is out of milk. No bottles on the shelf, no more revenue.

Hourly rates compensate you for time, not for value. If you can deliver a high value service to your client or customer in a short period of time, you should get paid for the value delivered, not the time it takes. Hourly rates for high value products and services seriously reduces your profit.

Although many buyers believe that hourly rates guarantee them value for their money, they are mistaken. And buyers are on the hook for all risks that might cause work to take more rather than less time.

In the specific and limited instances where the service provider is not fully in control of the progress of the work hourly billing may be appropriate in part. We find this with litigation, where the opposing parties each have their own priorities. Litigation may be a good instance where hourly billing makes sense.

 

Value based fees: A win for the buyer and the seller

Value based fees provide compensation (revenue) to the company commensurate with the value to the buyer. The higher value, the higher the fee. It does not matter how long it takes to deliver that value. The company bears the full risk burden. If something goes awry or holds delivery up, the company is obligated to deliver for the agreed upon value based fee. Thus, the company is always highly motivated to do top quality work. This is a win for the buyer and a win for the seller.

We’ve heard objections from companies who do complex work. They are fully in control of their work, but there are complexities that often don’t surface at the beginning. These companies believe that hourly billing protects them from the risk posed by these complexities.

We counter that as experts in their field, they should know about the likelihood of complexities. But more important, they should be charging for the outcomes they deliver, not the inputs. They must design projects and value based fees that take the complexities into account. This is another example of bearing the risk and being compensated for it.

If you’re afraid to quote what seems like a high dollar amount for a value-based-fee project, you must deal with your own fear. Learn to articulate value in ways the client or customer can hear as a positive.  Exude confidence in your expertise and problem-solving skills.

 

Business development

Business development is a phrase tossed about with abandon and therefore it has many meanings. Our definition is this:

The activities a company undertakes in order to deliver their highest value to the right buyers and to maximize profit.

We recommend that private business invest 70% of their Business Development resources in current customers and clients because current customers and clients are most likely to be the right buyers eager for the highest value offerings.

• You leverage that they know, like and trust you.
• You shorten your sales cycle.
• You learn what else they want to buy
• You build significant customer lifetime value
• They become natural referrals sources. SGT

We’ll help your company earn the profits it deserves. 

III. Growth

3-year Growth Plan

A three-year growth plan that is updated annually helps the company measure growth, or trouble shoot, as needed year over year. Plans longer than 3 years are highly speculative in a fast-changing world and we don’t recommend them. For services companies, three years allows you to respond to changing needs and wants of customers and clients while generating an excellent return on investment.

Without a specific and well-written 3-year plan for growth, you’re throwing the dice on your future.

 

Choose Meaningful Measures of Growth

You are reading Money Matters because you want your company to make more money. Carefully choose the factors to measure. We measure the following factors because they directly contribute to making more money.

• Revenue (the Top line). This category measures all the money coming into the business. Without revenue there is no cash to cover expenses. There will also be zero profit.
• Profit as reflected in EBIT which stands for Earnings Before Interest and Taxes. Profit is the money left after all fixed and variable expenses but before paying taxes and interest. It is the measure most reflective of the business’s growth or loss. Are we bringing in more money year over year to cover our expenses, and how much is that as a percent of revenue?
• Sales Volume or Quantity. You must measure the number of transactions to make the right decisions about growth. We measure three key aspects of sales volume: sales by product or service line; sales to previous buyers; and sales to new buyers.

 

What does a 3-year growth plan look like?

3 Year Growth Plan at the Start of Year One

Year	Revenue	Profit	Sales Volume
Current (1st year)	Revenue goals for each product and service	Profit goals for each product and service (not just one company profit goal)	Number of transactions for each product and service
Measures actual vs plan (weekly or monthly)	+ or – for each product and service	+ or – for each product and service	+ or – for each product and service
Analysis (weekly or monthly)	Causes of actual vs. plan (both + & -)	Causes of actual vs. plan (both + & -)	Causes of actual vs. plan (both + & -)
Adjustments if any (weekly or monthly)	Options to increase actual	Options to increase actual	Options to increase actual
Year One End results	Actual vs Plan	Actual vs Plan	Actual vs Plan
2nd year	Percent increase for each product and service	Percent increase for each product and service	Percent increase for each product and service
Revise when year 2 becomes the current year
3rd year	Percent increase for each product and service	Percent increase for each product and service	Percent increase for each product and service
Revise when year 3 becomes year 2
Add a new year 3

The 3 Year growth plan is dynamic. Weekly or monthly depends on the type of business your company is in.

You must review and record your actual numbers weekly or monthly. Compare them to the plan. Analyze the differences and draw conclusions about why they occurred. If you are ahead of plan, you want to focus on what caused that and ensure you keep it up. If you are behind plan, you want to determine the causes and mitigate them. Do not ignore failures to meet the plan, because these failures will multiply, and you’ll fall farther behind.

 

How Do You Choose Your Products and Services?

Your Plan reflects your company Strategy and your Strategic Statements. Strategy is the one sentence that identifies your driving force and your target market.

“We deliver X value to Y customers and clients.”

Strategic statements are single sentences that identify each different product or service, the market for it and the profit required by every sale.

“We deliver X value to Y buyers for Z profit.”

The revenue goals in your 3-year plan are calculated in alignment with your list of strategic statements. There is one revenue goal, one profit goal and one transaction goal for each strategic statement. This sample chart doesn’t show you this embedded detail. Make sure you use a tool, whether Excel or a bookkeeping or accounting product, to keep a record of the plan and your results.

 

How to Start a 3-year Growth Plan?

The only way to start a 3-year growth plan is to start! Use whatever records you have to date as your foundation for the Current year plan. We believe in the adage “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”

Year One is the year you’re living in right now. It can start on the first of any month. There’s no special magic in Jan. 1.

Look at your data from the same month in the prior year. Add a percent that represents growth for that month in the current year. And so on for the remaining 11 months. Now you have a Current Year Plan for growth in all three areas: Revenue, Profit and Transactions or Sales Volume.

 

Is the 3-year Growth Plan Guaranteed to Work?

We get this question from business owners and chief executives who want a guarantee that they’ll meet their 3-year growth goals if they write and keep up with a Plan.

We guarantee one thing for sure: If you DON’T write and maintain a 3-year growth plan, your company will NOT grow. Which will you choose for your company? Noticeable growth results with a plan, or no plan without a guarantee?

 

Longer Term Strategic Goals

There’s an important difference between the 3-year Growth Plan and longer-term strategic goals.

Strategic goals are changes you make that impact the whole being of the company. The most frequent strategic changes are Vertical and/or Horizontal Expansion. Your company can create dramatic growth (more than 50%) by vertical or horizontal expansions.

Vertical expansion is expansion along the supply chain, both before your products or services and after.

Horizontal expansion typically is choosing to enter new markets. Look for tangents and similarities that can use your current infrastructure and organization’s skills.

 

Banking relationships.

Your business needs a bank that provides excellent services to businesses. Not all banks are effective business banks.

You’ll also need to choose the business bank that’s right for your company today. Most businesses with fewer than 100 employees will find the best value from local or community banks. Businesses with up to 250 employees may find a great fit with regional banks.

Remember that banks are more than a place to stash your cash. You need attentive services, the right level of fees, the potential for loans or lines of credit, and support for growth. And importantly, you deserve bankers who have a real appreciation for the life and times of small business owners.

 

Ownership and Exit Planning

Growth goals can be supported or stymied by the ownership structure of the company. Among important considerations are the current legal ownership structure, the terms of any partnership or shareholder agreements, and estate and exit plans.

Your efforts and costs to work with an excellent business lawyer will pay off handsomely over time. This is not the time to scrimp, do it yourself or put if off.

We have seen too many private businesses fall apart and leave their owners without money because of inattention to ownership documents and lack of exit plans. Do not let this happen to you.

Every merger and acquisition expert and estate lawyer will say “Start planning your exit on day one.” If you didn’t do it then, start now. You want to be prepared for your exit whenever and however it happens. Keep your company house in order. Many owners must exit for unexpected reasons. When you plan for it you have peace of mind knowing you’re well prepared, and as time goes on, you can (and should) update your exit plans.

 

The key documents for exit planning

You’ll need the following documents to ensure optimal exit planning:

• Business ownership (single; partnerships; stockholders);
• Business structures (you can have a single person corporation and a multi-person partnership, so be sure you know what you have and that there are enforceable documents that describe it;
• Clean and up to date financial statements (P&L, balance sheet, cash flow and working capital); insurance policies in order and up to date;
• Agreement or plan to dissolve the company if necessary.

If you’re not sure you have what you need, or you are curious about the exit process, invest in a qualified exit planning firm. At the very least they will give you a picture of your company today, and if you desire, a road map for the next 2-4 years.

We’ll help your company write the right 3-year growth plan. 

IV. Taxes

We  work closely with business tax experts to help private companies make the right decisions about corporate taxes. For your company to make more money, you have to understand the various tax obligations of companies, how they impact your money-making machine and how your decisions about taxes affects your company’s ability to make more money.

Employer/employee taxes are required by federal, state, and local governments. These add to your employee-related expenses. They should not be the reason you do not hire or add employees. You just need to be aware of them.

Income taxes are also required by federal the government and may be required by state and local entities. There’s more than one way to handle your corporate income taxes. Get opinions and recommendations from at least 2 different external CPAs or outsourced CFOs. There are times when it pays to pay more in taxes because you leave more cash in the business that you can spend. Your tax decisions should be made yearly, with your growth and exit plans in mind.

 

Business structure and tax implications

Your business structure has tax implications in addition to the impacts we discussed above in the growth section. You must consult with an expert tax lawyer (not CPA or consultant) to determine the business structure that optimizes both ownership and your tax situation. Again, this is money well-spent.

We bring the critical business growth perspective to the discussion about decisions that impact taxes. We’ll help you navigate this conversation with your tax advisor. 

V. Costs

Your company will have to spend money to increase both revenue and profit. Cutting spending is an anti-growth approach. The least fun part of making more money is controlling costs. It doesn’t have to be tedious; it must be built into your decision-making.

The pro-growth approach is to understand tradeoffs and return on investment. What profit will come from spending X? Profit increase is more important than revenue increase.

 

Start with a Budget

Budgets are the critical tool for managing costs. The budget lists projected fixed and variable costs for the company for a year, broken down by month to clearly see seasonal fluctuations. We recommend writing budgets for each product or services line. This helps you see and understand the variable costs per line. You will assign a portion of fixed costs to each line as well.

Budgets do not hold you back. They help you spend wisely (not based on emotion or “gut” feelings). Without a budget how will you know if your spending is generating profit?

Remember, profit is the amount of each sale that does three things:

1. Exceeds expenses
2. Accumulates cash
3. Compensates the owner for their risk

Your budget is the mechanism for ensuring there is enough profit for all three.

 

How to Budget for Profit

If you require a profit on every sale—which you must—your budget must reflect this.

The Money Matters equation is this:

 

Expenses+Profit=Revenue

When you add the expenses together with your required profit you are clear about how much revenue is required. You can apply this to the company as a whole and to each product and services line.

This Money Matters approach creates a budget that’s quite different from the typical formula of Revenue-expenses=profit where profit is what’s leftover after expenses.

Look closely at your various major expenses. These include: COGS, healthcare expenses, employee compensation; rent or mortgage and utility expenses; marketing and business development; sales; customer service.

Every company must provide enough of these resources to function at an optimal level. The skill lies in getting near perfect at identifying what is needed to achieve optimum performance of the company. There are always trade offs. And what is near perfect one year may be off-the mark the next year. Managing operating costs is an ongoing responsibility for the owner and chief executive. While your company may have a highly skilled CFO or CPA who provides you with plenty of information, it’s your job to assess it and be actively involved in cost-related decision-making every year.

The budget will also include projections or forecasts for revenue. You’ll want one projection for the company. It’s also critical to make projections by product and services lines. When you pair your revenue projections by line with your cost budget by line, you get a crystal clear understanding of your business.

The first question to ask is: will the revenue for each product or services line cover the costs enough to generate profit that meets the three profit goals? It’s nice to find many that do. It’s imperative to identify those that don’t. Both those that do and those that don’t need your attention.

 

Complete Set of Financial Statements

Financial statements are written records that convey the business activities and the financial performance of a company. Your CPA must provide you with a compete set of financial statements. The set includes your company-wide P&L; P&Ls by product and services line (use them to revise strategic statements and to reduce low value/outdated product or services lines); working capital; cash flow; balance sheet.

A key component of thinking as big as you want to be is to require and use a complete set of financial statements. No company with aspirations to make more money can do so without excellent financials.

Financial statements are necessary to show you the relative importance of each product and services line as well as helping you have a meaningful handle on your costs. Do not accept substandard or abbreviated financials because then your decision-making will be compromised.

We’ll help your company understand the deeply complex interrelationships between revenue, profits, growth, and costs.