Tag: Financial Planning
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Budget vs. Forecast: What’s the Difference?
TL;DR — budget = original performance contract; forecast = rolling best guess Our leadership team gathered in Vermont this week to review our latest quarterly performance and spend a few days hashing out big picture trends and goals. The agenda eventually steered toward the 2025 budget and where we thought the rest of the year would…
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Connect, Collaborate, & Conquer: Expand Your Network, Grow Your Profits
Over the weekend, I went to a trade show and met a number of very interesting people working on very interesting projects. One conversation went down the rabbit hole of the benefits (tangible and intangible) of networking. We agreed it best to approach networking from the standpoint of curiosity and learning (what’s your story? what…
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Avoid Cash Crunches with a 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast
Let’s take a look at one of the most useful tools in all of small business (actually, businesses of any size should be using this). Imagine a financial roadmap for the next three months. That’s what a 13-week cash flow forecast is. It’s a simple tool to predict your business’s incoming and outgoing cash over…
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Building a Financial Review Routine
What’s your financial cadence? Business owners have a typical financial review process that goes something like this: Financial statement analysis is the primary tool when it comes to evaluating business performance (I’ve said this before). There’s a “what” component and a “when” component to that analysis; here’s a simple routine that should work for most…
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Capex 101 — Investing for Growth
How well do you understand the concept of depreciation and capital expenditures (capex)? Can you relate it to your own business or another business owner? It’s a tough one even for seasoned finance pros. This is the best explanation of capex I’ve ever come across (book revealed later): What is capex? Capex is money you…
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Gross to Net — A Guide to Margins
What’s your margin? Does anyone ask what your margins are or tell you to watch your margins? What does that actually mean? Understanding margin(s) starts with which one you’re looking at. Here are the “big 4” that are worth your time: A “margin” is simply the difference between the price and cost of something. It…