u/Top-Setting-7098

sounds dramatic but I've seen it happen. worked with a small business last year that had great revenue. like genuinely impressive top line growth every month. the owner was buzzing. hiring people, signing a bigger office lease, all of it

except nobody was looking at gross margin. revenue was up but cost of sales was growing faster. by the time someone actually sat down and looked at the numbers properly the margin had gone from 45% to 19% over about 8 months. they were basically selling more and making less on every sale

the other one I see all the time is cash. P&L says you're profitable. great. but your debtors are at 60+ days because you're not chasing invoices and your creditors are at 15 days because you're paying everyone immediately. so you're profitable on paper and broke in reality. I've seen businesses with a healthy P&L that couldn't make payroll because the cash just wasn't there

the numbers that actually tell you what's going on aren't complicated. gross margin, net margin, debtor days, creditor days, cash position. that's it. five things. if you check those every month you'll catch problems while they're still fixable instead of finding out when the bank account's empty

most small business owners I know look at their bank balance and maybe their revenue and that's it. which is like driving a car by only looking at the speedometer and ignoring the fuel gauge and the temperature light

not having a go at anyone btw. most accountants don't explain this stuff properly either. they send you a set of accounts once a year and expect you to just know what it means

I run finance for a few small companies and every month it's the same thing. first two days just chasing invoices and making sure the books are actually closed. then accruals, depreciation, all the adjustments. then I spend the rest of the week building reports in excel which is honestly the worst part because it's not even real work it's just formatting

by friday I've got a P&L that looks right, a balance sheet that ties, cost centres broken out, ageing done, and I haven't even started writing the commentary for the board yet

and then three weeks later you do it all again

I keep hearing about people who close in 3 days and I genuinely don't know what I'm doing differently. probably everything. I think most of my time goes on the reporting side not the actual accounting which is frustrating because that's the bit that should be easy

anyway just needed to vent. January close nearly killed me and February is looking the same

intercompany is my nemesis. genuinely every single month I think ok this time the balances will agree and then they don't and I lose half a day figuring out why. last month it was because someone in the other entity posted an IC invoice to a random expense code instead of the IC control account. took me ages to find it

the other one that kills me is late invoices. we have a cut-off date. it's not a secret. it's the same date every month. and yet ops will send me a bunch of POs on like day 5 asking if they can go into last month. no mate they can't. but then the FC caves and suddenly I'm reopening the period

also if one more person "cleans up" an excel export before sending it to me I'm going to lose it. someone merged cells in the GL detail last month and it broke everything. I've told them three times now. THREE times.

anyway. what's yours? what's the thing that no matter what you do it just keeps happening every close