Kara Janowsky, CPG CFO & Cashflow Strategist

08/15/2024

Cash flow management vs. forecasting:

Cash flow management means proactively deciding when, who, and what your business spends and receives money from.

Cash flow forecasting projects these decisions for at least 12 months, helping you understand how individual choices shape your long-term cash availability.

Check the comments for a cashflow planner template you can use for your business.

08/08/2024

If you're using your bank balance to determine what profit you can distribute to yourself, wouldn’t you like to feel more confident in the amount?

Set a Profit Margin Goal.
Use the Profit First approach.
Budget backwards from your personal budget through to your revenues.
Make a plan and hold yourself accountable to it.

Better yet, get yourself a financial partner like me who will do the legwork for you, based on your unique goals, and deliver a simple status update to your inbox each week.

08/06/2024

Our section went live! 🎉

COGS can be a big, hairy, scary calculation, especially for early-stage founders and through model evolutions. It can be tough to understand exactly what goes into your COGS, and how it impacts margins.

We broke it down in a truly digestible read as part of Chapter 3 of the Foodbevy Complete Guide to Starting a Good or Beverage Business. Check it out and let me know what you think!

https://guide.foodbevy.com/s3-chapter-09-cogs/

08/05/2024

People often mistake cash flow for profitability.

Cash in the bank does not mean you are making money. Risk-averse folks will often feel more confident looking at their money sitting in the bank, forfeiting opportunities to grow their wealth in favor of false security.

On the flip side, when your bank account is looking grim, you could still have a profit and owe the IRS at the end of the year.

Cash flow and profitability are distinct metrics and you should regularly review both.

07/26/2024

A good accountant will be responsive and accurate.
A great accountant humanizes the numbers so you can actually relate to your $$

07/24/2024

It's been a great summer of accounting partnerships so far.
More please🙏

07/18/2024

Foodbevy spearheaded the impossible - building a comprehensive *Guide to Starting a Food or Beverage Brand*

I'm thrilled to have contributed a small part to the COGS chapter. So many founders struggle with calculating cost of goods, and their profitability suffers.

Check the comments for the link. This guide is surely going to help many founders navigate the rocky road of CPG.

07/12/2024

You'll thank yourself for keeping a cash forecast when ALLLL the decisions come calling at once!

07/11/2024

Cashflow is the life of every business, and many business owners aren't sure how to manage it. They make decisions based on their daily bank balance plus a rough idea of what's coming down the pipeline...

That's the beginning of cashflow *management* - aka proactively deciding when, who, and what your business spends and receives money from.

Attempting to manage your cashflow without forecasting is largely an ego-boosting effort. You FEEL like you're making good decisions because you are putting thought into it.

But if you aren't tracking the impacts of your decisions over time, there's no compass to guide future decisions and ensure you are moving in the direction you want.

Cashflow *forecasting* projects your decisions for at least 12 months, helping you understand how individual choices shape your long-term cash availability.

It's surprisingly easy to forecast your cashflow and I've got an awesome Gsheet template. Let me know if you want to take a look!

07/08/2024

Max published a business owner's complete guide to Sales Tax! He digested all of the regulatory mumbo-jumbo into a concise yet comprehensive article.

So many founders try to manage it on there own, only to be met with letters indicating thousands in fees. Reach out to us if you need help. We do offer sales tax "only" services.

Sales tax is a major ongoing concern for any business that sells physical products. Let’s take a look at how sales taxes work...

05/13/2024

There are many excellent accountants out there, but biz owners often feel underserved. I'm working on something to help here...