How to Develop Curiosity in Your Business Finances and Uncover Hidden Errors
If you’ve not been encouraged to be curious, if you’re scared of numbers or have been judged about those numbers, then you’re going to find that you don’t want to look at them, let alone get curious about them, but modern accounting systems are actually pretty cool for being curious. If you can pull your balance sheet or your P and L up – so profit and loss statement, is the story of your business for a period of time, about what came in and what went out. Your balance sheet is the story of your business at a point in time, not over, but at the balances at 30th of June, for example. If you can pull either of those two reports up on your screen in MYOB, Xero, QuickBooks – any of those – you can actually drill down.
It’s pretty cool. You can drill down into those numbers and see what makes them up.
You can’t really break it while you’re just drilling down. You’re not going to change any transactions. Don’t let your Bookkeeper tell you that you shouldn’t touch it. You should be curious.
Curiosity and discovery takes a bit of practise, but you’ve got to start somewhere. And the more you do it, the more you review your financial statements, the more you dig into things, the better you’re going to understand whether those numbers are right or wrong. They say numbers don’t lie and that’s fine. They don’t really, however, sometimes they’re wrong and sometimes things are allocated to the wrong place. And, unfortunately, in this day and age without computers and everything being automated, they’re quite often wrong because, you know, QuickBooks decided where to put that particular expense and the Bookkeeper didn’t think that that was wrong, so off it goes into this corner or that corner.
So, it’s more important than ever that we review our financial statements. And that’s why you got to be curious. So have a go. Check some things out. Start to get curious, start to discover everything behind your financials. And if you come across any problems, reach out to us. We’d love to help or reach out to your Accountant or your Bookkeeper that you already have. If they’re not giving you the answers you need, come and see us. We’re an additional service. You don’t have to change Bookkeepers or Accountants to have a chat with me about what your financial statements mean.
So I hope that’s been a little bit helpful. I hope you’ll get curious, share your stories with me about what you’ve discovered.
See you next time.
To make more money, find out more about how to read your Profit and Loss Statement and Balance Sheet. Numbers can lie if the decisions made about how they are allocated are misguided. Luckily you can drill down into your information to see what’s behind it and get a feel for whether it’s being correctly allocated. All it takes is a little curiosity – let me support you and show you the way with a free strategy session.
