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Income Statement Breakdown (Part 1): Revenue

July 8th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted in Tips & Advice

Your business’ most basic numbers are revenue, expenses and profit and most people just pay attention to those. That might work at a basic level but “revenue minus expenses equals profit” is too simple. Business owners need to know how various expenses impact their business. In this 4-part series, we’ll break open the income statement so you can see how different elements work together and what each one means to you.

The first part of the income statement is the Revenue section. This is all the money that comes into your business. Gross Sales is counted here (which is all the money you get paid) and returns and discounts are taken off. At the end of this section is Net Sales.

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Fixed, variable, direct, indirect: What the heck is my accountant talking about?

June 16th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted in Tips & Advice

Your accountant isn’t speaking a secret language when they talk about fixed costs, variable costs, direct costs, and indirect costs. Here’s the secret decoder ring to know what they are talking about (and in a minute I’ll tell you why it matters to you):

Your business incurs costs. (You know that already!)

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Limiting Factors: How to Keep Small Things from Becoming Big Things

May 27th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted in Tips & Advice

In every business there are opportunities to expand and improve and optimize and it’s easy to get excited about those elements. But there are “reins” on the growth that pull back sharply if the growth starts to happen too quickly. These are called “limiting factors”. Every business has them but few businesses take the time to figure out what they are or what to do about them.

Limiting factors are like bottle necks in the “factory” of your business. They are aspects of your business that, no matter how well you do, will keep you from doing better without some kind of drastic measure.

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