As the calendar heads from one year to the next, it’s important to take time to review your business year. Taking time to understand how things have been going and what your plans are for the coming year helps focus and progress.
Businesses vary in so many ways. Here is our end of year business checklist to keep you in good shape for the future.
Get up to date with your bookkeeping.
Whether your books are kept by you personally, your in-house team or your accountants, a month before your year’s end is a good time to go through them and understand them. A solid overview of where the money came to and left the business is essential. If you’ve let that awareness slip, catch up now.
Making sure any monies due or payable are up to date or at least planned will help highlight points you’ll need to plan for and around in the coming year.
While you’re there, decide if this is the time to update your accounting systems. Make the move from paper to electronic methods (we use QuickBooks), or seek help from accountants.
Review your financial reports
If your accounting system works you’re going to want to check your profit and loss, cash flow, and balance sheet.
Whether you’ve made more or less profit than expected or forecast either of those outcomes, now is a good time to be aware and to structure your responses. It may be that you need to reduce costs or make investments in the business to improve profits and plan for taxation efficiently. Great budgeting and planning come from knowing the numbers.
Reviewing your business planning.
Now you’re up to date with the business’s finances you’ll want to adapt and create plans to ensure success in the coming year. Using the financial information set against the other factors you’re aware of in the business, sector and even political environment will allow you to shape your responses.
It may be you’re facing inflation, technology or regulation changes, or issues surrounding recruitment or team expertise. Build all these relevant factors into your plan.
Try to keep things really simple and specific. Ask yourself what your goals are and how you’ll achieve those and over what time frame. You might decide finding new clients is a priority or retaining old clients is your goal, use the financial reports to determine where the real value lies.
You may have had significant success or some sticky moments in the previous year, in either case, try to identify why and tailor your planning to encourage or prevent repetition respectively.
Look after your data.
Modern business tends to rely more and more on stored data. There’s a real potential for significant data loss to end a business catastrophically. Take plenty of time now to review how you process and store your important work and make sure it’s safe.
Within this, you’ll have email, your financial documents, client and supplier information and notes plus your planning and review documents, etc.
Consider cloud-based and in-site solutions arranged in-house or via systems that automate the process. Review any security protocols used and assess if a power outage would leave you vulnerable. Stay on top of protections against malicious software, viruses, and attacks on your system.
Much of this is best achieved with subscription-based software outside the scope of your business expertise but a simple uninterruptible power supply might be a useful addition to essential electronic systems.
A useful ambition for data backup is to have two digital locations one of which is cloud-based and a physical copy held off-site securely. If that doesn’t work for your business, work out your ideal solution and plan to maintain that!
While you’re busy with digital stuff, ensure your staff understands the systems, security, and file handling/storage. Even something as simple as having a convention on file naming can make life easier and more efficient. Spend some time on training for digital success.
Care for your contacts.
Sometimes it’s the basics that give us the best results or the biggest problems when left unchecked.
Does your business run on the contacts list of your mobile phone or is it a notebook filled with your customer’s and suppliers details? Perhaps it’s rather more complicated than that but in either case, review and update.
Making sure you’ve got all the relevant details of the people that allow your business to be successful is essential. Can you get in touch with your customers by phone, email, and physical address? When did you last check? Have your suppliers made any changes you’ll need to be aware of?
Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
Insurance can protect you, your employees, and your business against many issues. Firstly however you’ve got to decide on policies and stay on top of any changes to their provision and relevance in line with your business’s development. You may be insuring your premises or stock, your company vehicles or public liability. Take some time to review these and ensure you get a keen quote at renewal time too.
How does the world see you?
Businesses often expend huge effort and expense on marketing advertising and social media exposure, take some time to review how that’s going for you. Your ROI counts and so does reputation, are you a household name or an up-and-coming contender? Review your strategy and tweak it to better fit your business needs in the coming year.
Look after your people.
If you have employees they represent a big investment and an essential part of the progress of your business. Make sure your stored details for each of them are correct in terms of both payroll and HR requirements. Check their training needs, carry out their annual review, etc.
It might be time to decide on pay and conditions, reward great work and seek their input to identify the good and bad points of their work experiences. Maybe consider bonus and incentive schemes if that fits your company structure.
On the other side of the equation, touch base with customers and suppliers. Having an active and friendly relationship with those folks who keep your business rolling will always pay off. Maybe taking the time to understand their needs and remind them of yours will improve the relationship and assist both parties.
Don’t forget your website.
Your website may be the crux of your business operations and even the smallest business is likely to be the first point of contact a potential customer has with your business. Try and get some ‘fresh eyes’ on your site or seek feedback from relevant users of the site. Is it functional, did it answer their questions, how easy was it to use on mobile…is the postal address correct for Google maps. Essentially if your customers can’t achieve ‘contact us’, they’ll be contacting someone else.
This process might be simple or huge depending but the big danger with websites is just not paying attention to them. It almost always means a problem will develop that damages your business without you even knowing and Google values activity and fresh content on your site so revisions are beneficial rather than damaging.
Take a good look at yourself.
Based on the findings of your review so far you might have decided certain areas are very time hungry or complex or that there are areas in which your understanding feels lacking. Make some decisions based on these outcomes. Do you need training or a formal qualification to complete your work better next year? Do you need to hire experts or employ specialists to help spread the load?
Did you find any shortcomings in your management style or company culture as you looked through the previous components of the business? Now is a good time to address these positively and plan for better outcomes.
Make a plan.
After all, that effort is sure to record the outcomes and use those to put together an overarching plan. Clearly state your aims for the next year and highlight those sections of the business that need adaptation and change.
Conclusion.
Hopefully, there will have been some useful food for thought here and we’d expect you’ll have been busy working through the various points. Having done so you’ll have a clear idea of your business challenges and successes. Wherever the balance lies between the good and the problematic, don’t forget to enjoy the positives and give yourself and your staff the praise they deserve.
Don’t forget we’re here to help and welcome your inquiry.
Feel free to download and print our free end of year business checklist below:
