The Financial Operating System by SmartBooks® empowers you as a small business owner to financially control your business, instead of the business controlling you. This means more profit, better cash flow, clearer and easier management, and less stress. SmartBooks will implement the System for a fixed fee as part of a three-month project.

There are 6 Steps to the Financial Operating System by SmartBooks®. SmartBooks will guide you through each step below. At the conclusion of the implementation, you can choose to self-manage the System yourself or retain a SmartBooks CFO to help manage the System.

Step 1: Clarify Your WHY

• Why are you in business?
• What are you trying to accomplish financially with your business?
• What is your business model?

Step 2: Assess Current Finances

• How well capitalized is your business?
• Is revenue growing or shrinking, and at what rate?
• What percent of revenue is dropped to the bottom line as net profit or loss? Is that trending up or down?
• Is the business producing positive cash flow?

Step 3: Define Goals and Metrics

• Which metrics best indicate achievement of your company’s financial objectives and successful execution of your strategy over the next month, quarter, year, and 5 years?
• This will be a mix of leading and lagging indicators.

Step 4: Upgrade Accounting Operations

• Determine required Finance Stack functions and who will perform those functions.
• Define accounting policies and procedures to produce required financial reporting.

Step 5: Manage The Business

• Implement a framework to track financial performance metrics.
• Operationalize the metrics throughout your business, including accountabilities for your managers and other employees for weekly activity-based metrics that lead to your target financial results.
• Create a monthly profit-and-loss forecast to predict future performance.

Step 6: Learn, Iterate, and Improve

• Utilize the System’s Operate-Report-Manage loop with an Agile mindset.