1/14/2024 0 Comments Beancounter pricing![]() ![]() Ensure that your website, marketing materials, and social media posts all have a consistent aesthetic and represent your brand in a way that is easily recognizable. How do you want consumers to perceive your brand? Should your brand's personality sound expert, professional, and upscale? Or would your audience respond more positively to a personality that is warmer, more approachable, and friendlier? No matter what you decide, your brand's voice and personality must be consistent across all channels. Apple is innovative, aspirational, and technologically advanced, whereas Ben & Jerry's ice cream is eccentric, laid-back, and reflects the founders' hippy roots. Consider the characteristics you associate with your favorite brands. Develop a distinct personality for your brand. When your company's values shine through in your marketing and customer interactions, it's easier to connect with the right customers, which is essential for establishing strong relationships. Clarify your brand's core values Use your brand values to guide every business decision, from marketing to operations for instance, if sustainability is a core value, it must be reflected in your choices regarding suppliers, packaging, distribution, and the causes you support. It sounds easy, doesn't it? Developing a competitive advantage will not always be simple, but it is essential for carving out a niche and expanding to meet your customers' needs. Focusing on building brand awareness and converting your existing customers and targets into brand advocates is crucial to achieving this goal. It can be difficult to distinguish your products and services from the competition in a crowded marketplace. It shows you how your finances are progressing by demonstrating how revenue is coming in and costs/expenses are going out (rather than cash coming in and going out, as you see in your cashflow statement and cashflow forecasts). Whereas the balance sheet is a snapshot, your P&L is more like a moving video. Profit & Loss – your profit and loss report (P&L) Your P&L gives you an overview of the company’s revenues, costs and expenses over a given historic period of time. The balance sheet is useful for seeing what stock and equipment the business owns, how much debt (liabilities) you’ve worked up and what the company is actually worth – all incredibly useful information to have at your fingertips when making big business decisions. In a nutshell, it’s a snapshot of what the business owns (your assets), what you owe to other people (your liabilities) and what money and profits you currently have invested in the company (your equity). Balance Sheet – the balance sheet shows you the company’s assets, liabilities and equity at a given point in time. As such, you can see where the cashflow holes may appear weeks, or even months, in advance – and that gives you time to take action, whether it’s increasing your income stream, reducing your underlying costs, chasing up unpaid invoices (aged debt) or going to lenders for additional funding. Cashflow Forecast – forecasting allows you to take your historic cash numbers and project them forward in time. In this ideal positive scenario, you have enough liquid cash in the business to cover your costs, fund your operations and generate a profit. Understanding these cash inflows and outflows in detail allows you to manage this ongoing process, allowing you to aim for a ‘positive cashflow position’ – where inflows outweigh outflows. Cashflow Statement – a cashflow statement shows the flow of money into and out of your business. It’s a benchmark you can use to measure your actuals (historic numbers) against, allowing you to see the variances, gaps and missed targets over a given period. In essence, the budget is your approximation of the money it will take to attain your key strategic goals, and the revenue (income) and profits you hope to make during this period. ![]() So, what are the key reports to focus on? Let’s take a look: Budget – your budget is the financial plan that's tied in with your strategic plan. To truly be in control of this cash, it’s vital that you can dip into your accounts, financial reports and dashboards and ‘see the genuine story’ behind your financial position. Whereas in the past, extra cash in the business may have been seen as a surplus that needed to be spent on something, recent years have shown us that having these reserves is vitally important for the survival and long-term health of businesses. Getting to grips with your financial reports. To track, monitor and drive your financial performance in this new business world, it’s increasingly important to have a handle on your key financial reports and metrics. For many businesses, priorities have changed, customer behaviours have mutated and revenue streams have had to evolve and pivot in order to create a viable business model. As a business owner, it’s never been more important to have a good grasp on your finances.
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