This week's challenge is all about ensuring you get your books for October done next week so that you have timely and actionable data that you can analyze and use to improve your business .
Hello and welcome to the Bar Business Podcast , where we help bar owners increase profits , attract loyal guests and simplify operations so you can avoid burnout and finally enjoy your life outside of your bar . I'm your host , chris Schneider , the Bar Business Coach .
Every Monday , we do a short episode to give bar owners a challenge for the week One simple project that shouldn't take more than an hour that can improve your bar and your profitability . So the challenge for this week is going to be getting your books done next week , and this is our fourth weekly challenge .
If you guys remember from the first weekly challenge , we discussed how to analyze your books . Books are only good when they're accurate , complete and timely , and what we're focusing on here is that timely piece .
You need to get your books done for next or by next week so that you can analyze them next week , so that the data you're looking at is new and it's not so old that it's going to cause you to be looking at things that are such lagging indicators that they don't really help you improve your business .
Now , this challenge can be accomplished , and whether you yourself are doing your books or you have a bookkeeper can be accomplished . And whether you yourself are doing your books or you have a bookkeeper , you can still try to push to get these books done next week .
And if you have a bookkeeper , probably the first thing you need to do is get on the phone and call them up and be like , hey , I want to get this done next week . What can I do to help you get there ? So why it matters that we get our books done . Like I said , your bookkeeping records only work for you . They only help you .
They are accurate , complete and timely . So let's talk through those all real quick . When we talk about accuracy in your books , that means that the numbers actually reflect the numbers that actually happen , right .
So what you're looking for there is data entry errors Issues where , if you have systems connected so say , you're using SpotOn as your POS system and you're using QuickBooks and you have your SpotOn and your QuickBooks connected and your QuickBooks has pulled over a bunch of data from SpotOn for the last month Is it accurate ? Did it come over properly ?
Is it complete ? Did it pull over all the data . Have you gotten together all of the documents , all of the checks ? You've written everything you need in order to do your books properly , either yourself , or gotten together all that information to give to your bookkeeper to make sure your books are complete ?
And again , the big reason we're worried about this this week is because your bookkeeping needs to be timely . If it's not timely , it doesn't really do you much good . You wanna look at data that is very relevant , very new , very fresh , in order to drive your business forward .
If you're looking at data that is six weeks old , you're fine , but if you're looking at eight or 12 week old data , what you're analyzing and what you're treating as your current state is not really your current state .
Right , this is a past state , that was true a month or two ago and that's not necessarily going to give you information that's valuable to drive your business forward . So we have two goals for our weekly challenge today . The first one I'm going to give you is to get your books done by a week from today .
So get your October bookkeeping done by 11- 11 , so that you are less than two weeks out from the end of the month and everything is done . And then our second goal I'm going to give you is to analyze it .
So , if you did not listen to it , you can go back to our first weekly challenge , which was like four weeks ago and that walks through the analysis process , and then analyze your books by 11 , 15 .
So this is a two-step weekly challenge that , frankly , goes a little bit beyond the end of the week , but you have to get your data and you have to analyze your data . So what are your action steps ?
First , you need to gather all the information , all the data , all the invoices , all the different pieces of material you need for either yourself or your bookkeeper to get your books completed within the next week . Second , you need to get all the data entered .
I mean that sounds like an obvious statement , but if your data is not entered and along with entering your data , you need to reconcile your stuff . So you need to make sure that your checking account , your savings account , your assets are reconciled , your inventory is reconciled , so that you know the data you're working with is good and complete .
Now , once you have all that data entered , a step that I always do whether I'm doing bookkeeping for myself or when I used to do bookkeeping for clients is to run a profit and loss , a balance sheet and a trial balance and sometimes a general ledger for the prior month .
Print those out so I have hard copy paper in front of me and then review them and really you're just reviewing them . A this helps you understand your numbers better and see what's going on in your business and where different money is allocated . But B this is kind of your gut check of . I think I have everything correct .
Do the numbers on the paper make sense ? Because maybe you mistype something and when you go in and you pull your P&L it says well , hey , you lost 50 grand because you spent $100,000 on beer purchases when in reality you only spent $10,000 .
So it's very easy to add a number here or there and generally , by checking through your P&L , your balance sheet and your trial balance , you can figure out if anything seems off . Where the general ledger comes in is if you're looking at it and you go this is just not correct . I'm looking at data and my gut is telling me this is wrong .
That's when you then either go into your bookkeeping software and look at , say , that account and figure out if it is wrong , or you can just have a printed general ledger and just go through your general ledger and say , okay , what numbers here don't make sense . Where am I ? Obviously creating this ? You know 10 times multiplication of what expenses should be .
Now , once you get that done and once you have the bookkeeping accurate and correct , then you want to do the analysis and , like I said , if you want tips and a step-by-step guide essentially on how to do that analysis , go to the first weekly challenge post or episode , I should say , and that will cover all that information .
That's going to wrap us up for today . To get even more out of our weekly challenge , make sure you join the Bar Business Nation Facebook group . There's a link in the show notes . I make a thread there every week so we can share our challenges and successes and improve our bars together . Until next time , have a great day and we will talk again later .