Love your business but not a numbers person? Try this mental shift

For a lot of business owners, managing the financials – bookkeeping, payroll, management reports – is a struggle. Here’s how you can change that.

One of the biggest myths about running a business is that you have to be good at everything. But this isn’t humanly possible.

Most entrepreneurs start their business with a love of the products or services they offer and the solutions they provide to their customers or clients. For mission-driven business owners, it’s the joy of knowing you’re making a positive impact on the world.

Managing the financials, including bookkeeping, accounting and payroll, are typically not a business owner’s happy place. The reality is that not everyone is a number cruncher and trying to be your own bookkeeper or accountant can cause you massive stress. It can also have a detrimental impact on your business.

Do you know what you’re looking at?

A common pain point that Adam Cole, managing partner at KPMG Wollongong and KPMG Finance Hub lead sees with business owners struggling to handle their own financials is they’re not getting accurate or timely information.

“Business owners and CEOs are focused on running their business and it’s a tedious task for them to get regular monthly reporting that clearly shows them how their business is performing,” Adam tells Kochie’s Business Builders. “When they do get the financial results, they often don’t have confidence in the accuracy, as the numbers aren’t reflecting what they’re seeing day to day.”

This lack of accurate information is even more of an issue for businesses hit by the challenges of COVID, especially when it comes to eligibility for government funding which requires figures from a current period compared against those of the same period in a prior year.

“If you don’t have that accurate and timely information, you may be delayed in being able to assess whether you’re eligible to get funding,” warns Adam. “Or, you may not even be eligible if you can’t provide the information needed.”

Let someone else take care of your business financials

You didn’t start your business to spend all your time bookkeeping and analysing complicated financial reports. So, just like Princess Elsa from Frozen, the biggest mental shift you need to make is to let it go.

Letting trained and experienced professionals manage your business’s financials frees you from stress and allows you to spend time growing your operation and doing what you’re good at.

KPMG Finance Hub, for example, is an outsourced bookkeeping, payroll and finance service designed for startups and SMEs. It combines cloud-based technology with skilled advisors to give you clear and accurate information about your business, and takes care of all your financial processes from end to end.

The best part is that it’s designed to make it easy for you to use. Forget complicated management reports that you need a degree in forensic accounting to understand. Instead, you have a simple dashboard – tailored only with information that you need to make smart, strategic decisions.

“I measure success by how simply we can present information back to you,” says Adam. “We start by finding out what’s important to you and your business goals, design the right system and make sure you only see a relevant, real-time snapshot. You don’t need to see or know about all the detail that we’re doing. We also spend time guiding you on how to easily access and understand this information, so you have complete day-to-day control of how your business is tracking.”

One of the extra advantages of an outsourced service like KPMG Finance Hub is having access to advisors who can help you make more informed decisions about your business. “You’ve got a team who are all accessible to you and who understand how you’re performing, what your growth aspirations are, and where you’re up to on that journey,” says Adam. “You’re not being left on your own.”

Outsourcing saves you time and money

One of the main reasons business owners try to do their own bookkeeping, tax reporting and payroll is because they believe it saves them money. But that’s not necessarily the case.

Without access to real-time data about the state of your business, you’re at risk of getting your tax obligations wrong, or underpaying your BAS or superannuation. The costs to your business for fixing these mistakes can be high, and can even make you liable for fines.

Hiring a full-time or part-time bookkeeper also poses challenges, because if they leave, you as the business owner are taken away from running the business and forced to figure out how to keep invoices up to date and staff paid.

Pricing for KPMG Finance Hub is based on the volume of transactions and the level of activities in your business. Combined with access to streamlined technology and efficient, robust, secure systems and processes, this makes it cost-effective for smaller businesses, SMEs and larger corporations alike.

Ultimately, you need to consider all the costs in running your business. This includes your time as well as the costs to your physical and mental health of trying to do it all yourself.

Ready to free yourself from the stress of your business’s financial processes? Find out more about how KPMG Finance Hub can help.

This article is brought to you by Kochie’s Business Builders in association with KPMG Australia.

Feature image: AdobeStock