Practical guides for running the books
Honest writing on invoicing, cash flow, AR/AP, sales-tax compliance, and the messy realities of keeping a regulated small business audit-ready.
Days Sales Outstanding: The One Number That Tells You How Fast You Get Paid
You can have a full order book and still run out of cash if customers pay slowly. Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) turns "we get paid eventually" into a hard number of days, and accounts receivable turnover shows how many times a year you collect your whole book. How to calculate both, what a good figure looks like, and how to bring the number down.
Customer Concentration Risk: When Too Much Revenue Comes From One Place
If one customer is 40% of your revenue, losing them isn't a bad month — it's an existential event. How to measure customer concentration, why lenders and buyers care about it, and how an income-by-customer report turns a vague worry into a number you can manage.
Reading a Comparative P&L: Why a Number Only Means Something Next to Another
A single month's profit number tells you almost nothing. Put it next to last month, the same month last year, or the budget, and it starts to talk. How to read a comparative profit & loss statement, what dollar and percent variance reveal, and which comparison to use when.
Job Costing: Knowing Which Projects Actually Make You Money
A service business can be profitable overall and still bleed cash on half its projects. Job costing tags every dollar of revenue and cost to a specific job, so you can see which work pays and which only looks busy. How it works, what to track, and how it turns a vague hunch into a number.
The Trial Balance: The Report That Proves Your Books Add Up
Before any financial statement is trustworthy, the books have to balance — every debit matched by a credit. The trial balance is the plain list that proves it, and it's the bridge between raw entries and the reports you actually read. What it is, how to read one, and what it can and can't catch.
Owner's Equity and Retained Earnings: What the Third Section of the Balance Sheet Means
Equity is the section of the balance sheet owners understand least and worry about most. It is not cash, and it is not the value of the business — it is the owner's accumulated stake, built from money put in and profit kept. What contributions, draws, and retained earnings really mean, and how they fit together.