Financial Planning
25 articles · Financial Planning
Your accountant says the business made £42,000 profit last year. Your bank account has £3,200 in it. Both numbers are co…
A retailer with 52% gross margin thinks they're profitable. They hire two extra staff, take on a new shop, and increase …
Most small business owners check their bank balance and call it financial management. The bank balance tells you where y…
Most small business owners plan for one scenario: the one they hope happens. Scenario planning forces you to build three…
A B2B business with £120,000 in outstanding invoices — 40% over 30 days late — has given its customers a £48,000 interes…
Gross margin is your survival metric — the percentage of revenue left after the direct cost of what you sell. A retailer…
Net profit is what you pay tax on. EBITDA is what buyers and banks use to value your business. A retail chain showing £4…
A £100,000 business loan at 8% costs you £12,788 in interest over three years and zero ownership. A £100,000 equity inve…
QuickBooks Cash Flow Planner forecasts your cash position 90 days out using machine learning on historical patterns. It'…
Xero's built-in Budget Manager lets you enter monthly budget figures for every P&L line. The budget vs actual comparison…
A subscription business that charges annually upfront and recognises all revenue on day one is overstating its financial…
A static annual budget is fixed in January and irrelevant by April. A rolling forecast updates monthly — always looking …
The standard advice is "three months of operating costs" as a business emergency reserve. For most SMBs with lumpy reven…
Most small business owners couldn't tell you their daily break-even number without a spreadsheet. But every single tradi…
The January/February tax bill is the most predictable financial crisis in small business — and still catches thousands o…
Traditional accounting: Revenue − Expenses = Profit. Profit First: Revenue − Profit = Expenses. The reordering sounds tr…
Top-down revenue forecasting says "we did £400,000 last year, we'll do £440,000 this year." Bottom-up says "we served 32…
Working capital is the cash tied up in running your business day-to-day — the money you've spent but haven't yet collect…
A £25,000 commercial oven bought outright drains your working capital and may have been available on a £450/month lease.…
Payroll is the largest cost for most service and hospitality businesses — and the hardest to manage because it feels per…