Читать книгу Start & Run a Catering Business - George Erdosh - Страница 30

Many, if not most, small-business owners detest the numerous chores that keep popping up at the record keeping end of their business. They consider record keeping and bookkeeping unnecessary headaches and procrastinate as long as possible, except when it comes to depositing the checks. The longer administrative chores are postponed, the more difficult they become to do, not only because of the sheer volume of the work but because you forget the useful little details you didn’t record when they were still fresh in your memory.

The best way to approach office chores is to do them daily, keeping up-to-date on every record keeping system you use. There will be some extremely busy periods in your business when you simply cannot get into the office. Fine. Postpone the office stuff, but only until the next opportunity comes for a free hour or two. Don’t let your mind tell you there is no free time. Much of the office work approached this way can be, if not exactly fun, at least tolerable. Adding up your books every month can definitely be fun, provided your cash flow is a healthy, positive one. Whether you prefer the traditional low-tech tools of bookkeeping or newer accounting software programs, you have to add your own numbers to know how your business is doing.

Without good records you face many potential problems. You don’t know how much you owe your staff. You’ll have to rely on their record keeping — a very poor practice. You don’t know how much to charge clients. You forget a scheduled event because it wasn’t written on your calendar! You don’t know how your business is doing, what your actual expenses and your total receipts are, and what your gross and net profits (or losses) are. Your business is doomed under these conditions, no matter how good your food is.

Your other choice is to hire someone to do all the office chores. But remember, if someone else is doing your bookkeeping, you will still have to hand your records to him or her, and the bookkeeping won’t be any better than your record keeping.