Gross Sales

[integritytrans]

Every single month for the past five years we have grown and grown and grown.

 

Business is great.

 

But at the end of every month all the money that gets deposited into the bank account gets withdrawn.

 

Whats some of the saving techniques or any type of tricks you all do to grow that rainy day fund?

 

 

Thank you in advance

[andresauto]

Have you grown in staff size, number of bays, car count, customer base, gross income, net profits? All the above? ONE of the above?

Because you can grow in size and debt simultaneously with no financial gain if there's no financial control.

 

You are really going to have to audit your own company. If you're making net profits of 20% or better than there is a discipline/financial mismanagement problem from your financial management team. Might be just you or could be the department in charge of financial planning OR financial planning/management doesn't exist at all and it's all hand to mouth.

 

Is this a business only issue OR business and personal? You have to assess this correctly because if it is only business, and personally you save like a champ than your shop income is not being allocated properly or you are not really making money. If it is a business and personal problem you need a financial plan for your monthly income and expenses. Separated out.

 

Business financial plan.

Personal financial plan.

 

You need to create a monthly financial plan and know your cost of existence both business and personally. Then you need to divide that weekly. From a weekly perspective you can see how much you need to make a week to break even and how much is left over. Also you can chart your required daily income.

 

For each monthly financial plan create a breakdown of predictable (expected) income and fixed expenses and planned expenses adding in a minimum 5% savings of your gross profits on the business spreadsheet as a fixed expense and another separate 5% on the personal spreadsheet as a fixed expense. That way your business is saving 5% and you are personally saving 5%. I will assume you are taking a regular paycheck from the business and not just sticking your hand in the cookie jar.

If you are not taking a regular paycheck start doing so and stop living off the business or you'll always wonder where the money went or like many guys do, claim they're not making money.

 

So lets get back to SAVINGS: Future you and your company starts charging present you and your company a 5% gross income tax. Deposit the 5% self imposed income/savings tax to unlinked accounts at some credit union somewhere which would be out of the way to get to if your worried about self discipline. From your business this 5% comes from gross profits for the week, from your paycheck this comes from your gross pay for the week.

I'm also assuming your income is greater than your expenses. If not, this has to be remedied to save any money at all.

 

If you don't know how to create a financial plan, get a legal pad and create a break down of income and expenses. Make sure you keep personal income and expenses under personal and business income and expenses under business. You are two different entities. You deserve a paycheck. Your business is your child producing for you. Don't short change your child either!

 

 

Also the reason you use a percentage instead of a fixed dollar amount is because with a percentage you are not defying the law of physics by saying I'm going to save $500.00 a week when it may not be physically possible if you don't have it. But when times are really good the dollar amount saved is higher and when a week or so are not so lucrative, the dollar amount saved is lower. With saving money you are looking for consistent actions done on a weekly basis. You may need to write or sketch this out on paper to really grasp it.

[Mario]

Turn the salesmen away. So many shop owners are up to their eye balls in debt. Weekly payments on this, monthly payments on that, rent, utilities, insurance etc...

 

.I have a friend the next town over who just spent another $10k on storage roll cabs from s/o. I asked him why so much and why snapon to store seldom used equipment. His response was because it's only $90 a week.

[alfredauto]

I think you need at the minimum a monthly profit/loss spreadsheet. Say you gross 100k a month, minus 8,000 for sales tax, minus $10,000 payroll, minus $2000 credit card processing fees, minus $50,000 for the parts, minus $10,000 for rent/utilities there's $20,000 left in your bank. If payroll is $15,000 and parts is $70,000 there's no money left oops. If people owe you money you are really screwed.

 

Its super important to manage every category of expenses and whittle them down a couple % each. Same goes with gross profit margin bump them up a couple percent. Take a salary, and don't spend anything over it. I take a fixed salary rather than a percentage but everyone's different. My personal expenses are very low so it works.

[PACMAN]

Hire a certified business accountant who can set you up with what you need to track your business.

[GeeZ]

You have grown but still not making any money. Otherwise your bank account at the end of the month should be growing. OR you have taking too much home. It's real simple. The difficult part is determining why.

[mspecperformance]

Increase in Gross sales means nothing if you don't have a handle on net profits. Look at what your Gross Profit is and also what your expenses are after cost of goods (Tech Labor and Parts). If your Gross Profit is hovering in the 60% range then you are doing well in charging appropriately for labor and parts margins. Are your expenses going up exponentially?