As another financial year comes hurtling to an end it’s a great time to pause and reflect on what you can do to ensure FY 2024 is all you want it to be. Here are our top five confidence-boosting tips to prepare for the new financial year – tackle one step per week and you’ll be on track for success.
1. Set a budget for the year
When it comes to assessing your financial performance, it pays to plan ahead. Why? In order to understand whether or not your business is succeeding, you need to be able to measure your results against a previously set plan (or budget). Having a budget in place for the year ahead will also allow you to:
- Make important financial decisions around setting revenue budgets and sales strategies.
- Decide to invest in capital expenditure and team development
- Allocate personal remuneration
- Draw unexpected bills without fear
- Manage a cash flow crisis that you didn’t see coming.
Most small businesses start with a good idea, an identified market niche and a tremendous amount of enthusiasm to drive their vision to succeed. But to what end? Having a clear financial goal in mind assists in shaping your broader business strategy for the year, as well as providing you with a sense of purpose.
2. Set your top five goals and put them in writing
Setting concise goals for the NFY will help give you a sense of focus and direction. By identifying the five chief things that will enable you to meet or exceed your financial budget, you’ll be able to ensure that your hard work throughout the year pays off.
Of your top five goals, it’s great practice to identify the number one priority – that’s the one thing that is most important for your business to achieve. This way, you can target your efforts and distribute your time accordingly. It might be that your top five list contains longer term projects, if so, identifying shorter term milestones or actions within them can help keep things achievable and ensure that you’re making progress.
In short, the things that you focus on are the things that get done.
3. Use an advisory board
Being in business can be lonely, and being busy can mean time passes by without stopping to check on your progress. Implementing an Advisory Board provides owners a sounding board, guidance, and an outside perspective to hold you personally accountable. It is a great way to break the dynamic from working IN the business, to working ON the business.
We recommend at least a quarterly cycle of meetings, including a meeting agenda and financial reports (compared to your budget).
We recommend at least a quarterly cycle of meetings, including a meeting agenda and financial reports (compared to your budget).
The Advisory Board team may be limited to one or two individuals (depending on the size and complexity of the business and the internal skills in the business) and meetings should be kept to 2 or 3 hours maximum. In our experience, businesses with an Advisory Board more often meet their financial targets and stay on track with their strategic priorities than those without one.
4. Streamline your processes and declutter your business
Just like decluttering your home during a much-needed spring clean, seeking out an inefficient process in your business and streamlining it can reap great rewards – both in terms of efficiency and staff satisfaction.
We live in an age where technology can provide solutions for all sorts of problems, and you might be surprised to find that there’s likely an off the shelf answer to your process inefficiencies. Spending too much time entering and filing receipts? Instead, you can use clever apps like HubDoc to snap a photo of your receipts and bills and watch them load straight into your accounting system – no more filing paper. And that’s just the beginning.
Creating a culture of continuous improvement has immense benefits. Start with one small change now, and see where it takes you.
5. What to stop doing!
Now more than ever, time is a limited commodity. In order to achieve your goals and create positive new habits, you first need to address the old habits that may be holding you back. To identify what these could be, consider the following questions:
- Do you say “yes” too often? Next time, pause and consider whether you’re best placed to look after the task at hand. If so, does it need to be completed right away?
- Do you do things that others could do? Focus on delegation. Leverage others to get tasks progressed and only get involved when they are advanced to a stage where they need your input.
- Do you get caught up in trying to be a perfectionist? From now on, take a moment to consider whether the time spent lines up with the value of the task.
- Are you wasting your time on clunky, repetitive tasks? Take advantage of technology and start automating repetitive processes.
With some careful planning and forward thinking, you’ll be ready to take on FY 2024 and set your business up for lasting success.
