Sometimes what works for everyone else might not be the right thing for you.  After all, your business isn’t like everyone else’s, so why should you follow the same rules?

Take accounting, for example.  It’s typically understood that you need a P & L statement, cash flow projections and an array of other historical data, but it can make a lot of difference in how you choose to use these reports.  Let’s take a look at three ways you can buck the traditional accounting rules and instead use them to grow your business.

Use Your Reports to Look Ahead

So many businesses use the data in their financial reports to take a look at how business has done in the past.  For instance, when you look at your income sheet, you can tell how much you earned in the month, quarter or even year. Those are great numbers to have, but if you want to use them to grow your business, you’ll have to look at them a little differently.  Rather than looking at those numbers as a mark of where your business is, think of them as a starting point.   What areas can you identify as having growth potential, and what areas should you stop pouring resources into?  Once you begin looking at your reports this way, entire now scenarios will open up before you, and soon you’ll be charting new territories in your business’ growth.

Don’t Use Out of the Box Software

Sure, prepackaged software is easy and convenient, but will it truly give you the best snapshot of your overall business health?  Because it’s sold to mass markets, boxed software allows its users to run standardized reports that are applicable to most businesses.  But your business isn’t the same as every other business, is it?  Instead, design your own accounting system—one that allows you to flag areas that you want to keep a close eye on, or create frequent automatic reports in expenditures in areas that you’re trying to reduce.  By getting creative in your accounting, you’ll be able to easily spot things that you may have missed if you were just typing in the numbers in some generic program.

It’s Not Always About the Money

Traditional accountants would have you believe that the monetary numbers on your reports are all that matters, but if you want to use those reports to grow your business, you’ll have to add more than financial figures.  In essence, you’ll need to determine which actions caused those numbers to appear on your reports.  You have $10,000 in extra sales this month?  Great!  Instead of just hoping that it happens again next month, work instead to come up with the metrics that made it happen.  Look at your sales representative’s call sheet—did they target a different type of customer or make more sales calls?  What about your marketing efforts that month—did you do something different?  Did your sales clerks up sell on a more consistent basis that month?  Whatever the difference was, find it, and then build it into your cash flow projections by ensuring that the actions continue.

Creativity seems to be the buzzword these days when it comes to running a successful business, and taking a fresh way at the way you do your books just may give you an edge.

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