Are Your Business Records a Mess?

Speaker A00:00:29

Let me ask you a question. Are you one of the many small business owners that just don't know your numbers? Listen, you're not alone in that.Are you trying to make smart decisions in your business but lack clear financial details? Well, listen, if you're like a lot of people, that's where you found us today. I got this listener question. Listener wrote this.Hey, Ralph, I've been running my business for a few years now, but every tax season, I'm scrambling. I think my books are fine until my accountant tells me otherwise. What am I missing? Isn't bookkeeping just tracking income and expenses? You know what?When I got that question and I live in that field, I was like, yeah, it's a little bigger than that. So let me ask you this.If your bookkeeping system only makes sense to you, and even then, only sometimes, you're not alone in that, many business owners don't have bad books. They just have incomplete ones. Well, I've got the answers to fix this. On today's show. I'm going to help you get past this struggle.

Speaker B00:01:23

Running a business isn't easy. It's long hours, tough calls, and relentless pressure. No shortcuts, no handouts. Just grit, grind and the will to keep going when most would quit.Welcome to Grit and Growth Business, the show for entrepreneurs who know success is built the hard way. Hosted by Ralph Estep Jr. A seasoned business coach, accountant and fellow fighter in the trenches.Each episode brings you real talk, proven strategies, and the unfiltered truth about what it really takes to build something that lasts. Because if you've got persistence, perseverance and determination, this is the place for you. This is Grit and Growth Business.

Speaker A00:02:11

Welcome to the show. I'm Ralph. I'm a seasoned business coach, I'm an accountant, and guess what? Just like you, I'm a fellow fighter in the trenches.And I've been serving clients just like you for over 30 years now. I've been helping small business owners clean up messy books, but before tax time, hopefully.Because listen, when it comes to be tax time, it is a disaster. And here's the problem though. I've seen how disorganized records cost owners real money.A lot of people don't realize this is real money in missed deductions and listen in IRS headaches. And nobody wants an IRS headache or much less an IRS audit. And I'm not just one of those people that can tell you how to do it.I built my own systems that stay simple, accurate and stress free. Let me tell you about a couple clients I've worked with one particular client. I'll tell some horror stories as we get started here.I just one client that came in to meet with me, he really hadn't been taking care of his books.And when I looked at his books, believe it or not, we actually found $18,000 in missed write offs, miscategorized expenses, and things he wasn't even aware of. And see, the problem is his quickbook reports didn't mean much when the data was wrong. I say this all the time to clients.It really comes down to this old adage, you probably heard this a million times. It's garbage in, garbage out. Which leads us to some study details. Abby, my producer found this study from 2024 in Forbes. It was amazing.When I read this, 82% of small businesses fail. You might be saying, Ralph, okay, why do they fail? Listen to this. Because of cash flow mismanagement. It's truth.And most of the time you want to stay out of this. 82%. It's caused by inaccurate or inconsistent bookkeeping. Hey, there's a truth right there. 82%. We got a little deeper.What are the top problems of small business accounting issues? And trust me, I see these every day. 30% of small businesses report cash flow problems. Again, it's all about cash flow.When I meet with clients on a daily basis, probably the number one thing that I see people struggling with is cash flow. In fact, like we said, 80% of small business failures are due to cash flow issues. It's not about profitability.They can have a profitable business, but the cash flow is causing them problems. What leads to that? How do you uncover that? Here's the problem. 37% of small business owners do their own bookkeeping.What they say about attorneys, if you're your own attorney, you got a fool for a client. I'm not calling you a fool, but listen, let's talk today about how to break this cycle of having bad books.I want to start off with some basic things. And we're going to get into the gritty details in a minute. First thing I want to tell you, bookkeeping isn't data entry.A lot of people think, oh, bookkeeping, that's just putting numbers on a paper or in a spreadsheet. It's not what it is at all. An effective bookkeeping system is a decision data source. If you don't have good bookkeeping, guess what?You can't make good decisions. We're going to talk about that on today's show. Here's another thing about every transaction that you have in your book should tell a story.$10,000 in missed write offs, miscategorized expenses, and things he wasn't even aware of. And see, the problem is his quickbook reports didn't mean much when the data was wrong. I say this all the time to clients.It really comes down to this old adage. You've probably heard this a million times. It's garbage in, garbage out. Which leads us to some study details.Abby, my producer found this study from 2024 in Forbes. It was amazing. When I read this, 82% of small businesses fail. You might be saying, ralph, okay, why do they fail? Listen to this.Because of cash flow mismanagement. It's truth. And most of the time you want to stay out of this. 82%. It's caused by inaccurate or inconsistent bookkeeping. Hey, there's a tr.There's a truth right there. 82%. We got a little deeper. What are the top problems of small business accounting issues? And trust me, I see these every day.30% of small businesses report cash flow problems. Again, it's all about cash flow.When I meet with clients on a daily basis, probably the number one thing that I see people struggling with is cash flow. In fact, like we said, 80% of small business failures are due to cash flow issues. It's not about profitability.They can have a profitable business, but the cash flow is causing them problems. What leads to that? How do you uncover that? Here's the problem. 37% of small business owners do their own bookkeeping.What they say about attorneys, if you're your own attorney, you got a fool for a client. I'm not calling you a fool, but listen, let's talk today about how to break this cycle of having bad books.I want to start off with some basic things. And we're going to get into the gritty details in a minute. First thing I want to tell you, bookkeeping isn't data entry.A lot of people think, oh, bookkeeping, that's just putting numbers on a paper or in a spreadsheet. It's not what it is at all. An effective bookkeeping system is a decision data source. If you don't have good bookkeeping, guess what? You.You can't make good decisions. We're going to talk about that on today's show. Here's another thing about every transaction that you have in your book should tell a story.We're going to get into that today. The who, the what, the when, and the why. You got to understand that that's what accounting Bookkeeping details are all about.We're going to get into that today. Hey, big pet peeve right now.Before we even get rolling today, one of the big things we're going to discuss on the show today is making sure we keep our business and personal records separate. It's a thing called commingling. I'm going to get into that today.Another thing we're going to talk about, and a lot of people have heard this one, Ralph, I'll do my books when I get around to it. That's a bad plan. I'm going to tell you why we can't do that today. And we're going to talk about using systems not scattered spreadsheet.I'm going to tell you about a client that had this spreadsheet and that spreadsheet and this platform and that platform. And let me tell you right now, it was a disaster because here's the truth of Ralph truism, if you will.Clean books, accurate books lead to a clear mind and better profits. Now, before we get into deep today, I want to remind you every week when I do this show, if I remember to do it, we do an action sheet for the show.You can get to that action sheet by going to grit and growth business.com action. Listen, everything we talk about on the show is right there in the action sheet.You can put it into gritty work to make it work in your business again. You can get that by going to grit and growth business.com action. All right. Well, let's get into those gritty details.As I said, we're going to start off with the first one. Bookkeeping is a story, not a spreadsheet. A lot of people say to me, ralph, oh, you're good with those spreadsheets.That's not really what accounting is all about. Let me tell you about this client. I had a client. They did everything right. They had the best bookkeeping system in the world.But I couldn't explain why half of their expense categories even meant. I was looking at his reports and I said, what is this category? I don't know, Ralph. I just set that up. That's where that goes.And I asked him the next question. What is this? Well, here's the problem. This particular person had these huge big categories.As an example, we found $12,000 of office supplies were actually small business purchases that should have been depreciated. Now why is that an issue? Well, here's why it's an issue. He had spent a lot of money on buying new stuff that was equipment.It was going to last more than a year. But I looked at his financials and he thought he was doing poorly.But what I said to him is, I said, dude, listen, this stuff is going to make you money on year after year after year. But it looked like he had just spent a ton of money on office supplies. So that's what I'm talking about when I say garbage in, garbage out.Let me tell you about a bakery owner. A bakery owner had this marketing on her budget or in her financials. It just about included everything. And I said, what does this mean?She goes, well, Rob, if I don't know where to put it, I put it under marketing. This was things like customer gifts. She actually had packaging in there. She had delivery fees. No wonder she thought her marketing wasn't working.She was looking at this big expense for marketing, but 90% of what she was spending wasn't marketing. That's a key. See, here's the thing. I want you to understand this. Bookkeeping, if we're doing it effectively, is effectively a daily business diary.And your numbers, this is what's so important. The numbers should narrate the week, not hide it. When you look at your books, it should tell a story. It should be like a novel I'm reading.What's going on in my business? I've got the details to know how to make better decisions. That's the first thing.Second thing, and I mentioned this at the beginning, every transaction has got to answer the who, the what, and the why. I'll give you a great example of this. I see this on clients books almost every day. Amazon purchases after Amazon. Listen, we love Amazon, don't we?But here's the problem. What was it for? Was it cleaning supplies? Was it clients gifts? And here's the problem.Six months later, when we go to do your tax return, we cannot remember what that Amazon charge was for. And here's the thing. The IRS has gotten wise to this. It's like a huge IRS and state auditor red flag.When they see Amazon, they get excited, they get giddy. They have a smile from ear to ear because they're like, oh, this is going to be a great place where we can audit a client.Because they're not going to remember what these things are for. Give you an example. I had this client that did remodeling work. I was redoing his books. He got audited. He said, ralph, my books are a mess.He had the old shoebox approach, just receipts everywhere. And he had a bucket full of Amazon charges. Let me tell you how Many? He had 300Amazon charges. It took us hours to sort through them.But once we were able to sort through them, we actually looked at each expense. We figured out what it was. And what we figured out was he was overspending on consumables, and he had no idea where his money was going.He just had this line item. He thought it was office supplies under Amazon. So here's what we did for him, and I thought this was brilliant. We started adding short memo notes.So when he would make a purchase, right in the Amazon purchase, and there's a cool thing you can do right online, he would put some memo notes in there. For example, he would put client thank you basket, or he would put truck parts. And listen. Then when he went and looked at his books.Now we're going to talk a little bit later about how to keep track of that on a monthly basis or a weekly basis instead of the end of the year. But it cut his cleanup time in half.And all those mystery expenses, they became actual things that he could use to make better decisions that killed those deduction opportunities. And at the end of the day, he was able to prove his business expenses. He's like, ralph, I'm ready for the auditors now.And I said, this is a key IRS audit issue. So if you don't hear anything else I say today, pay attention to these things. Let's move on to number three. This is what I call commingling.A lot of people say, rob, what does co mingling mean? Real simple example. It means that your business books and. And your personal books need to be separate.This is a major issue, and you can't make exceptions for this. I'll give you a great example. I work with a restaurant couple. This couple had one checking account.They had been to a different accountant, and the accountant never really sat them down and said, wait a second, guys, this is not a good plan. And when they came into me, I said, listen, we got to go through this. We got to figure out what is business and what is personal.And they said to me, ralph, it's so much easier to just carry one credit card with me. We just put it all on there. So here's the problem. You can't make good decisions then because you don't know what your true business expenses are.Second thing, if you ever get audited, you're going to have a disaster, because the IRS auditor is going to come in and say, wait a minute. How do I know that this purchase was for business and this one's for Personal. That's one of the things I tell clients all the time.When you work with me, I create separate business and personal records. That way, if an auditor comes in, I can say, listen. Auditory. I got a great set of books here. Here's their personal books. Here's their business books.The two don't meet together. Now, there are transfers in between. They get a paycheck. They may take an owner draw, but then the IRS can say, okay, I get it.When they spent with this credit card, that was business. When they spent with this credit card, it was personal. So it's not just the audit thing. I had a gym owner. This is the other problem.If you confuse these things, if you use your personal card for buying business stuff, those are missed opportunities. Somebody like me, you come in to get your books done.They see you come in and get your taxes done, and I say, okay, give me all your business receipts. And they're like, okay, here's all my business receipts. But then all of a sudden, they say, wait a minute. Why am I showing a profit?And then they remember, oh, Ralph, I forgot to tell you. I used my personal credit card for this. Or maybe they don't even have a business credit card.And with this particular gym owner, he had been buying a ton of inventory. And when he finally said to me, I said, okay, this makes sense, because I said, man, you've got a huge property.He goes, ralph, I don't have the money for it. Where'd the profit coming from? So we were able to figure that out once we separated his books. Another thing. I see this all the time.I had a client that was audited for claiming mileage, and they didn't keep track of what was personal miles and what was business miles. And the IRS just disallowed it all. That's. Here's what the IRS does.If you can't prove that it was a legitimate expense, they're just going to disallow it. And that's why you've got to have that story that tells the when, the why, and. And also keep them separate.So here's a great foolproof way to do this. I have one client, man, every month, we were doing their books, and they were constantly mixing stuff together. I said, here's what I want you to do.I said, when they came in and sat down in front of me, I said, give me your wallet. He's like, I'm not giving you mine. I said, just hand me your wallet. I said, do you have a credit card for the business?He goes, yeah, Ralph, of course. Here it is. He handed it to me, and I said, do you have a credit card for your personal? He goes, oh, yeah, of course. Here it is.I said, here's what we're going to do. I reached in my drawer, I got some of those stickers, you know, you put on an envelope, and I put two white stickers.He goes, what are you doing on my credit card? I said, I'm going to make it foolproof, dude. I put the stickers on it.I got a Sharpie out, and I wrote a B on his business card, and I wrote a P on his personal card. I said, this way, when you go to make a purchase, you open up your wallet, you got a choice to make B or P. It was a quick fix, but guess what?It did. It cleaned up his books. And then he remembered, oh, here's the thing. This is a business purchase. Ralph said, here's my baby. Oh, here's Ralph.This is a P. In fact, what he ended up doing, he had one of those credit cards. You could create your own picture, you could create your own image on the credit card.He actually made one that said business, and he made one that said personal. He told me he would take it to the store, and people were like, that's a really interesting credit card design.He says, keeps me out of hot water with my accountant. I said, good idea. Here's another thing I'm going to definitely recommend that you got to do. You got to reconcile monthly.Not want to get around to it. Tell you my own story. Listen, as an accountant, you would think my books would always be in order, right? Well, guess what?I spend so much time worrying about everybody else's books, and I forget about mine sometimes. Well, a couple years ago, I never forget this. It was the end of the year.I was trying to get caught up on all my bookkeeping so I could get my taxes done. And I was going through my books. I'm doing the reconciliation. Month after month, I'm doing them all at once.And all of a sudden, I realized that, wait a minute, I have this $4,800 deposit that I have on my books, but I don't see where it ever hit the bank. Well, turns out I forgot to push a button. A client had made a payment, but I never processed the payment. I almost lost $4,800.Now, good news is, the client I contacted my said, hey, listen, I apologize. I said, did you notice I never took your payment?She goes, ralph, I figured eventually you'd figure it out, but that's because I wasn't reconciling monthly. I wasn't paying attention to the details. And trust me, I'd bail out clients like this all the time.I had a landscaping business just a couple weeks ago, I was working with. He hadn't reconciled his book in eight months. When he came in, he sat down with, the first thing we do is say, let's get your books in order.I said, give me all your bank statements. Give me your credit card statements. Well, guess what? I found duplicate charges. And he had actually done the same thing that I had done.He forgot to make two deposits. I said to him, I said, on your books here it says you made this deposit. I said, but the bank doesn't have it. He goes, you know what, Ralph?Hold on a second. He walks out to his truck, and in his visor, this is where he put the deposits. And he goes, ralph, he said, that was six months ago.He said, the checks are sitting up here in my visor. Now. He had to turn around and go get new checks from his customers. But he found the money.If he had been doing his books month by month, he would have found that. I see this all the time. I had a boutique owner. She again, wasn't looking at her book. She came in and sat down with me, went through her books.We discovered that she had a billing error and she was not getting paid. And people were not paying her for three months. She wasn't paying attention to the details.She was so busy running her business that she wasn't paying attention. This is why you've got to set aside sometimes. I have a builder client, he calls it money Mondays. First thing, every Monday morning.It's all about money for him. He doesn't want to have any surprises. That's the thing about taxes. Sometimes it's a surprise. Or maybe for you, it's a financial Friday.I have clients who do both the money Monday to financial Friday. The key is this. That reconciliation is a business health check. And if you do it more frequently, you can't do it when I get around to. But guess what?If you're like most small business people, you're not going to get around to it because you get busy. The day goes without. So set those times in place, put it on your calendar. Make it one of those events that you don't want to miss.You want to make sure you don't miss it, Put it on your calendar. Money Mondays, Thursday, whatever you want to call it.Thursday, financials, whatever that works like for you, but do it because you can find problems before they snowball. Which leads me to this idea. One of the things I really want to enforce today. We got to get rid of the shoeboxes.If you're not an accountant, you probably don't know what I'm talking about.But a lot of clients, they've got this shoebox where they're all throughout the year, whenever they have their seat, they just throw it in that shoebox. And then they come marching into my office and marching like, ralph, here's my shoebox. Good luck. Not a good plan.So I'm going to encourage you right now. Use systems. Now, I have some clients who are like, oh, Ralph, listen, I got systems. I got a Google spreadsheet for this. I got Venmo for this.I've got Square for this. I got this one. Yeah, you know what? That's a disaster because then you don't have any single source of truth.You're trying to figure out what happened here, what happened there. So what I like to do is I like to use QuickBooks online because it saves people money. Let me tell you about some stories I did.I had a retail shop client. She had paper receipts. She had this old school register. And what she would do is, as she was spending money, their seat went in the register.Here's the problem. Most of the time, I don't know if you know this or not. A lot of this stuff's printed on thermal paper.And after about three, four or five months, you can't even read that receipt. Talk about a year later, you can't even see it. Don't even look like there's anything there.Not to mention the coffee spills and all the other crap that ends up on those receipts. So what I did with her is I got her a scanner and she used a product called Hubdoc.I'm not even sure it's still available now, but she scans her receipts every day. She just goes right into the Hub doc. It gets scanned in and then it's there. I had a side Hustler client do a lot of side Hustler clients.It's a big thing right now. And I set him up on QuickBooks Online. And he was amazed. He said, ralph, I was looking at QuickBooks Online has this thing called bank fees.I said, yeah, QuickBooks Online is cool, because here's what you can do at QuickBooks Online. You can connect your bank account, you can connect your credit card accounts, and guess what happens? All those transactions feed right into it.And all you got to do afterwards is Go in and categorize that. It cuts your bookkeeping time by amazing.I had clients that have gone from doing bookkeeping from three hours weekly to just 30 minutes, all by just linking your bank accounts. Now, that to be said, I don't want you to think that automation is a replacement for review. You still got to review this.You still got to spot check it. Because here's the thing. Unless you. You might not believe this or not, but machines aren't perfect. AI is not perfect. It will make mistakes.A lot of these software things now have built in AI I think everything's got AI Think my hair dryer has AI now. But everything's got a AI built into it. But guess what, you've still got to look at.That's why even if you automate things, that review is so very important. And here's the last thing I want to reinforce today. Clean books, accurate books, they lead to a calm mind and better profits.A lot of small business owners dread looking at the numbers. It's not because they're scared of what they see, but they're just not clean. They're a mess.They come into me and they're like, ralph, my books are a mess. Can you fix them? We do that for them. And listen, let me tell you right now, the meetings after that are joyous meetings. I just had one yesterday.The guy's like, this is so much fun, Ralph. I can see what my business is doing. I can compare last month and this month. I can compare last year and yesterday. Yes, that's right.But because once you have clean books, you've got clarity. You know your true profit.Listen, you might be having a tough time in your business as well, but you can see that with clarity, what I need to do, maybe like many clients, you gotta raise some prices. You finally see the truth.I had a coaching client that I'm tell you right now, this guy almost broke down in tears the moment his books were organized. He said, ralph, I can sleep at night again. I feel like my business is something that I can actually manage.Because here's the deal, you got to know the facts. The other reason you need to know the facts, and this is going to happen to a lot of small people.Maybe your business is experiencing growth and you're like, oh, Ralph, I got to go get a bank loan. I had this happen like maybe six months ago. Clients books were a mess. They weren't working with us at the time.He went to the bank because his business was exploding. He said, ralph, I need to go get a Bank loan. I went to the bank. They asked me for a profit and loss statement. Ralph, what in the world is that?I said, listen, you better know what that is because the banker needs to know it. And that's where you've got to have clean books to build those banking relationships.And when I work with clients, they call me and they say, ralph, I need financials for the bank. I say, give me an hour and I'll have them done for you. When you're organized, you can stay on top of that. You can build those relationships.That's credibility. And confidence comes from that Credibility. Confidence comes from clarity. And clarity starts with clean data.I know we've covered a lot today, but I want to encourage you right now, get that action plan again. You can go to that by going to gritandgrowthbusiness.com action again. That's gritandgrowthbusiness.com action.All right, well, now let's get into the action steps. I always want to give you some key takeaways. You're like, ralph, how do I make this work for me? Number one thing, clean up your chart of accounts.You might be thinking, ralph, what are chart of accounts? Don't overthink it. What are those buckets? What are those categories? So many of my clients don't understand. Make those useful to you.They don't have to be the ones that come with software. If you spend money on a particular area, you're like, I want to know this. Fine, rename it that.For example, I've got contracting clients that say, you know, they got maybe one that says dump fees. They've got one that says nails. They've got one that says glue. If that works for you, if it helps you make better decisions, then use that.Listen, if you've got categories you don't use anymore, get rid of them. There's no reason for them to be on your chart of accounts. You is another pet peeve of mine. Look for duplicates. I had one particular client.They had repairs and maintenance. They had repairs. They had maintenance. They had repairs, common maintenance. I was like, this is insane. How can you make any decisions?Look and merge those things. When you're doing your review, look for those things. Here's another pet peeve. Miscellaneous. Listen, the IRS loves miscellaneous.It can't be that vague. You got to rename those things. Break it. If you've got more than a couple transactions a month going to miscellaneous. That's not miscellaneous.You can't make decisions if you don't know where your money is going. So first Thing I said is, clean up that chart of accounts. Merge duplicates, delete out data categories, and listen. Make it useful to you.There's no rules that say it has to be named this or that. Make it work for you. Second thing, schedule that weekly money meeting. Invest in yourself. It doesn't have to be this long, elaborate corporate board.We don't all need to sit around a big table with. With Robert's Rules of Orders and all those things. Give me 30 minutes. Review your income. Review your expenses. Look at your bank balance.Hey, look at your bank statement. I don't know how many small business clients I have that don't even bother to look at their credit card statements.They don't look at their bank statements. I had a client in yesterday, for example, one of my coaching clients.We were on a call, and I said, do you realize you're paying such and such $150 a month? He says, ralph, I haven't been to one of those meetings in two years. I'm like, well, see, this is why you're not looking at your stuff.And he's like, rob, I'm so happy you found that. It took me 10 minutes. Do that every week. So, second thing, schedule that weekly monthly meeting.Another thing I'm going to encourage you to do is automate that data flow. We talked about QuickBooks. There are a bunch of other softwares that do that.Connect those bank accounts, connect those credit cards, connect those receipts, apps. Because every transaction then will land where it belongs. And it's so much easier for you to do it now than to wait a year from now.I could tell you some horror stories about going back to a client and saying, okay, let's just give you an example. March comes around. It's tax time. I have a client sitting in front of me like, oh, I'm recreating your books. Last February, you spent $17 at Amazon.Can you tell me what that was for, Ralph? I have no idea. Automate that.Put those little memo lines in, because it's going to save you a ton of time in the future, which leads me to this thing. A lot of people are like, raf, wait a second, Ralph, are you really going to go there? Yes, I'm going to go there, hire a consultant or. Or a pro.You're not going to do this the best yourself. People like me can help you make your business grow. We can help your business come into clarity, because I can help you review your reports.I can help you catch errors, because this is what I do. I know what to look for, and I can help you do that before they become costly. I always say this to clients. You do what you do well.Let me and my team do what I do well. Don't be afraid to spend some money. I make this guarantee to my clients. I will save you five times what you pay me in clarity.And final thing I want to really reinforce today is create a checklist for yourself. Have a what I call a month end closeout checklist. Make sure your accounts are if you're going to do it yourself.Now, if you've got an accountant, make sure they're doing these things for you. But if you're going to do it yourself, make sure your accounts are reconciled. Look at those bank statements. Look at those credit card statements.Review your reports. Look for any inconsistencies. And here's a little pro tip again. Back up your data. Make sure you have a backup of that.I don't know how many clients, it's less now with the cloud, but I remember when QuickBooks Desktop was a thing. I don't see too many clients with that anymore. But they never even had a backup. And I had some horror stories.Clients computers completely locked up and crashed. And guess what? There went their data. So back up your stuff, because in the end, it's all about building that consistency.I want to see you get to the point where your books don't scare you anymore. They can be used for clarity. So let me ask you this question.If someone new looked at your books today, would they really know what's going on with your business? Cause, see, that's the way your book should look. I always say this to clients all the time.If I look at your books, I should be able to look at your books and know exactly what's going on with your business. So ask yourself right now, if you sent me over your financial reports, would I understand what's going on with your business?If I don't, we've got a problem. Which leads me to the second question I want to ask you today. When's the last time you reviewed your books?When's the last time you actually look at it? Maybe it was like, oh, Ralph, I just got a call from the bank. I need to send over a financial statement.Or maybe, like so many of my clients, it's time to file taxes. I better figure out what's going on. But that's not the right time to do it.When's the last time you looked at it with the intent to learn about your business, to understand what's working in your Business. One of the things I ask clients all the time is tell me what works in your business. They're like, ralph, I don't know.I say, well, tell me what doesn't work in your business. I'm not sure that's a problem. Here's another question for you.What system or habit would remove 80% of your bookkeeping stress if you committed to it? See, a lot of people don't do bookkeeping. They don't keep track of their stuff because it's stressful. Ask yourself that question.How could you make it less stressful? Is there a system you can use? Is there automation you can use? Hey, maybe it's an outsourcing thing a lot of people don't understand.It's not that expensive to hire somebody like me to help you. You will gain a ton of benefits from it. So here's my question for you today. Are your books stressing you out?Are you tired of playing catch up every tax season? Is your accountant getting on your case like I do with my clients? You don't have to live like that anymore. Let's fix that together.I'm going to encourage you to go join my coaching program. We'll start with a discovery call. Just go to gritandgrowthbusiness.com coaching let me talk to you. Let's get to know each other.Let me understand your business, and let me show you how you can simplify your bookkeeping so you have better answers, so you have clarity. I want to help you sleep at night. I want to give you peace of mind and finally feel in control of your numbers. That's a number one takeaway.My clients tell me, ralph, I feel like I'm in control again. If you want to get to that control, schedule that call with me today. Again, that's@gritandgrowthbusiness.com coaching I just want to recap today.Bookkeeping isn't about compliance. A lot of people say, well, Ralph, what you're talking about is compliance. I want to stay out of hot water with the irs. That's part of it.That's a big part of it. Listen, nobody wants to go to jail. You don't want to get jacked up with the IRS because you did something wrong. I'm cool with that.But that's not the big component of it. Businesses fail because they lack clarity. And bookkeeping is about bringing you clarity. We said this at the beginning. Garbage in, garbage out.Well, bad data leads to bad decisions. If you've got bad data, you can't make good decisions. But consistency. Paying attention to the details beats complexity every single time.And great books. Build trust with your accountant. Hey, you want to be in good stand with your accountant? It builds good trust with your lenders.Bigger than all those things, it builds trust with yourself. You're like, Ralph, I know what my books are. I know what's going on. So stop guessing. Know your numbers.Your books are a story, not that proverbial shoebox. I want to encourage you again. Reconcile monthly, no exceptions. It's your financial health check. Because clarity builds confidence.Confidence builds profits. I just want to thank you for listening. I'll see you next week again.When we get into the trenches again, sign up for my coaching@gritngrowthbusiness.com coaching. I'll see you next week. Have a great day.