Why Your Business Feels Stuck Financially (And the Simple Fix You're Missing)

Every month of the year, you grind. The sales team is selling their hearts out. The ops team is scrambling to deliver on promises made by your sales team. All the other functions in your business are trying not to fall behind. It feels like you’re on a treadmill … you’re running as fast as you can, but you’re staying fixed in place.

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Every once in a while, you tiptoe down to your finance department to see how all the hard work is playing out. It’s no better. Cash is tight, and everyone is stressed to the max. It’s so defeating because everyone is working so hard, revenue is up, and yet you always feel pinched and tight. 

When it’s all said and done, you sometimes wonder if all the effort is worth it.

Is this you?

Do you really have any idea how your business is performing, good or bad?

Ever feel like it all comes down to whether or not your bank balance is greater than $0?

Is it, in fact, all worth it? 

This feels like an existential question, but it’s not. It just means you’re missing a key, boring-sounding, incredibly powerful system. And you’re not alone.

3 Signs You're Flying Blind With Your Business Finances

Let me guess. You’ve tried to set up good financial systems, but: 

• You dread your monthly management team meeting because you know it’s going to contain a bunch of reports that are outdated, contradict one another, and ultimately leave you even more confused.

• No matter how much time you spend studying your numbers, there are still months when you somehow come up wildly short.

• You have a sneaking feeling your most charming manager is calling the shots, since you’re operating in an information-free zone, and whoever can argue the most persuasively wins the day.

If this sounds like you, I have good news. The fix is quite simple: it’s time to upgrade your general ledger accounting function. 

Until you do this, you will continue to fly blind, running on vibes, driven by hopes and dreams, not an executable plan.

What do I mean by your general ledger accounting function?

What Is General Ledger Accounting and Why Does Your Business Need It?

This refers to a kind of accounting where, instead of just looking at cash-in, cash-out in a particular month, you see the whole picture of your business’s finances over the period. It’s a much more accurate take on how your numbers are doing.

To get nerdy for a minute, this is the science of producing monthly financial statements on an “accrual basis” that largely follow GAAP accounting principles. GAAP stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Accrual means that you are utilizing accounting entries to adjust for things not reflected by the cash transactions running through your bank accounts.

Accrual Accounting in Action: 3 Real-World Examples for Self-Made Business Owners

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Example 1: For many businesses, when you deliver a product or service to a customer, you invoice them, and they may have 30 days to pay. If you completed and invoiced the job in April, you can expect to be paid in May. So your income statement (sometimes called your P&L, or Profit & Loss statement) needs to reflect the revenue you earned in April, even though the cash won’t arrive in your account until next month. Likewise, if you have payment terms with your vendors and do not pay COD (“cash on delivery”), any expenses incurred in April should also be recorded in April, not when you pay the bill in May or June.

Example 2: For some lucky businesses, you may receive a large customer deposit up front before you do any work. This should not be recorded as revenue on your income statement at receipt, but should be adjusted to remove (or defer) this revenue until you have actually earned it at a later date. Otherwise, you will overstate your performance by recognizing the deposit as revenue when, in fact, you’ve earned nothing of the sort yet.

Example 3: Many businesses have large bills that they pay annually, such as software licensing or commercial insurance premiums. In these cases, your income statement should be adjusted to spread this expense over the course of the year. Otherwise, your profitability will appear to suffer in the month it’s paid, unfairly punishing that month for an expense that needs to be equally borne by the other 11 months.

(For those of you who use the personal budgeting system YNAB, you’re probably already familiar with some of these concepts!)

We could go through hundreds of examples of these types of “accrual” adjustments that are absolutely necessary to have a useful P&L because they show you the actual amount you are earning and spending, not just whether your cash balance increased or decreased in a particular period.

Is Accrual Accounting Worth the Extra Work?

(Spoiler alert: Yes, it is!)

Doesn’t this seem like a lot of work?

Sure. But without it, your financial reporting will be gibberish because your numbers won’t reflect what's actually happening, and they won’t be useful for helping you predict what is about to happen.

So far, we’ve focused on the income statement, but ultimately, what we are aiming for through this process is to have all three financial statements accurately reported: income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.

Your income statement is your best estimate of how the company performed operationally. Your balance sheet is a snapshot of your current financial position. And your cash flow statement summarizes the changes that drove your increased or decreased cash balance.

These are all critical to getting a complete picture of your financial performance and position as a business.

How Better Financial Clarity Can Transform Your Business Performance

Do you want your management meetings to be productive? Do you want your business performance to be more predictable? Do you want to make sure you’re placing your focus on the activities that are most likely to move the needle on your business?

Then investing in this next level of powerful financial clarity is a game-changer for you and your business. 

The good news is that nobody expects you to be able to do this on your own. This is exactly the kind of growth strategy that we help with. You've been working too hard to keep flying blind. At Doescher Group, we help business owners get the financial clarity they need to make smarter decisions, run tighter operations, and build something truly predictable. 

The first step is simple: book a free discovery call. In 30 minutes, we'll tell you exactly what's missing from your financial systems and what it would take to fix it. No fluff, no obligation — just answers.