A business without goals is likely to float along without ever realising its full potential with the business owner working long hours and taking few (if any) holidays. Having clear goals, in contrast, can help your business succeed by providing focus and motivation for you and your team.
With goals in place, you are more likely to be able to provide for your retirement and maximise the value of the business for an eventual sale. Setting goals isn’t as hard as it may sound and right now is the best time to start. The start of a new financial year is a great time to review the performance of your business in the previous year and set goals for where you want the business to be in 1, 3 and 5 years from now.
Your goals may include targets for sales, profitability, number of clients or number of employees; moving to cloud accounting; changing business location; buying or renting the premises; and so on. Before you decide on your goals, you need to know the areas of the business that you want to improve.
There are tools to help you with this, such as a SWOT analysis to identify business strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats or comparing your business with others that are similar to give you valuable benchmarking information.
In my experience, one of the most important things you can do towards achieving your goals is document them in your business plan. It’s important to review your goals regularly, and this is why I suggest you keep your business plan in a place where you can easily put your hands on it – you’ll forget about if it’s kept out of sight in a bottom drawer. The purpose of your regular reviews will be to remind yourself of your goals; monitor the success of your strategies; make adjustments if there have been significant changes in the business environment; and take up the opportunities that present themselves.
As your accountant, I can help you brainstorm and decide on your business goals for 2018/19 and beyond, plus the strategies you will employ to reach them. From there, I can help you prepare a budget, cash flow forecast and other reports. Most importantly, I can make sure your financial reporting is providing the information you need to achieve your goals.
Your next step…
If you’d like help setting goals for your business for 2018/19, let’s talk about it soon. Please make an appointment with me today by calling 5479 5499 or emailing info@vbatax.com to arrange a time.
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At VBA we specialise in strategic tax advice, offering tax and financial reporting for individual income earners, family businesses, tradies and construction companies.
Victor Bimrose Accountancy Pty Ltd (ASIC No. 1259423) ABN 53 010 957 294 is a Corporate Authorised Representative of Merit Wealth Pty Ltd ABN 89 125 557 002, Australian Financial Services Licence Number 409361.
General Advice Warning: This information has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Because of this, you should, before acting on this information, consider its appropriateness, having regard to your objectives, financial situation or needs.
