I was quietly working on Friday when suddenly –
WAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAH!
My phone emitted the kind of high-pitched shriek designed to make you jump out of your skin.
Yours did too.
Like everyone else in the country, I’d just received the Government’s emergency alert about the growing risk of wildfires.
Although strangely enough, this wasn’t my first experience of that noise.
I’ve had one of these alerts before, when flooding threatened the area around our home in Wales.
So while everyone else was recovering from the shock, I was thinking, Ah. I know that noise.
And once my heart rate had returned to normal, it got me thinking…
Wouldn’t it be useful if your business finances came with an emergency alert too?
Imagine if, long before you ran into serious trouble, your phone suddenly shrieked:
WARNING: Financial risk increasing. Take action now.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t.
But your business does give you warning signs.
You just need to know what to look for.
And I know this because we see these warning signs all the time.
In fact, they’re often the reason business owners first come to us.
Has a VAT or corporation tax bill ever landed – and been considerably larger than you expected?
Are you making a healthy profit, but never seem to have enough cash in the bank?
If I asked roughly how much cash you expect to have this time next month, could you tell me?
Do you know your overall profit figure – but not which products, services, customers or branches are actually making you money?
Sometimes, the warning signs are less obvious.
Perhaps your business has grown from £100,000 to £1 million or more – but your finance function hasn’t grown with it.
You’re still relying on the same systems, processes and level of financial support that worked perfectly well when your business was much smaller.
None of these things necessarily means disaster is imminent.
But they’re all smoke signals.
They’re signs that you may not have enough financial visibility – or control – over your business.
And that’s when problems can creep up on you unnoticed.
That’s one of the reasons proper financial reporting matters so much.
Good management accounts, cash flow forecasts and other financial reports aren’t simply there to tell you what happened last month.
They’re your early-warning system.
You can see that your margins are starting to slip.
You can see that cash is likely to become tight in three months’ time.
You can see that one branch is significantly less profitable than the others.
You can see that your costs are creeping up faster than your revenue.
And crucially, you can see these things early enough to do something about them.
At Insight, we help businesses put that visibility and control in place.
And very often, the businesses that come to us do so because they’ve already spotted one of those smoke signals and realised that something needs to change.
So here’s my question:
Is your business giving you any warning signs right now?
If any of the examples above felt uncomfortably familiar, don’t wait for the financial equivalent of an emergency alert.
Simply email garry@insightassociates.co.uk or call us on 01279 647 447 and let’s have a conversation.
Kind regards,
Garry
You might also like: Cash isn’t king. Cashflow is – a look at why your bank balance only tells part of the story and how cashflow forecasting helps you spot potential problems before they arise.
Read the article. [insightass…ates.co.uk]
