Profit Check: What’s Working in Your Business Right Now?
As summer winds down and routines settle back in, August offers a powerful opportunity to pause and assess your business. The flurry of activity from earlier in the year has likely revealed what’s working, and what’s not.
This month, we’re encouraging all our clients to do a mid-year profit check. Not just a glance at your bank account, but a real look under the hood:
Which products or services are driving your margins?
Are your most profitable clients the ones getting most of your time?
Have costs crept up quietly while your focus was elsewhere?
Why This Matters Now
Waiting until year-end to evaluate profitability means missing months of potential improvements. A small shift in pricing, time allocation, or expenses today can compound into major gains by December.
August is also a natural time to review goals and make course corrections before the intensity of fall and year-end takes over.
But here's the key: profit alone doesn’t tell the whole story.
When Profit Looks Good—But Cash Feels Tight
We’ve seen it more than once, a client who had a P&L that looked perfectly healthy: strong sales, good margins, a tidy profit. But their bank account told a different story—low cash and rising anxiety.
The culprit? A big inventory purchase for a new product line. The money had gone out, but the sales hadn’t come in yet. The profit was real... it just wasn’t accessible.
That’s where an assessment of your cash flow statement steps in.
Your profit and loss report tells you what you’ve earned and spent. Your cash flow report shows where the money actually went. In this case, reviewing that report revealed a clear trail: a big outflow for inventory purchases, no offsetting sales—yet. With that clarity, the clients adjusted their buying habits and found peace of mind.
You can be profitable on your P&L and still not have enough cash to pay rent. That’s not a failure—it’s just a sign that timing and cash flow need attention.
What to Look At Right Now
Here are a few simple places to start:
Compare your profit to your cash: Does your bank balance align with what you thought you made?
Check your cash flow report: Is money flowing in steadily, or are there big timing gaps?
Review expenses: Are any creeping up, or outpacing revenue?
Inventory or large purchases: Have you tied up cash in future sales that haven’t landed yet?
Evaluating all the different indicators can be tricky. You need to know where to look, and what patterns to notice. That’s where an experienced advisor comes in handy.
How We Can Help
We’re here to help you go beyond the basics. Whether you need help pulling reports, interpreting the numbers, or just figuring out where the money went, we can walk you through it, step by step.
Let’s take this opportunity to tighten what’s already strong and adjust what’s not pulling its weight.
Ready for a Profit Check?
Let’s schedule a quick review. A short conversation now could unlock better decisions for the rest of the year.
