You might be beating your budget or falling behind, but it is highly unlikely that you are exactly on budget and also unlikely that your budget for 2012 is now an accurate gauge of business performance.

There is little to be gained from comparing actual performance against an out of date benchmark. Perhaps it is time for a reforecast?

No one likes surprises

Most successful businesses have a formal Business Plan and budget to help them to meet financial and other objectives. But four months in to a financial year the world has moved on and what might have been a reasonable assumption last November when the Business plan was being written might now be very wide of the mark.

So now would be a good time to reforecast the outcome for the year and share your thinking with your colleagues and investors. It’s also the time to make the key decisions that will help you achieve the best result you can. The longer you wait, the less impact these decisions will have on this year’s result.

2012 – not an easy year

Recent developments in the UK economy and from the EU suggest that 2012 will be a year of great uncertainty and low growth, but there will still be lots of opportunities – the UK economy is a big place.

As you prepare your reforecast you might want to think about:

• how your competitors are doing – why are the strong ones successful, can you pick up the pieces if any go under?
• whether the time is right for investment in a new product or a new geographical market
• hiring new staff or downsizing if things are not going so well
• how to fix any under-performing parts of your business and how to boost the parts that are doing better than you expected

What is important is to be aware of the state of the market you are operating in and make sure you remain competitive and successful against a backdrop of change.

And finally….

Don’t spend too much time on the reforecast process. Get it done and get back to running the business. And don’t forget to do another one in September to make sure you stay on track!

We have been on the QuickBooks ProAdvisor list for several years, from pretty soon after we started using QuickBooks in our own business and realised how helpful it could be for just about any other business.

Great for us, but what does this mean for QuickBooks users who need a little help?

Essentially it means that we can show you how to harness the full power of QuickBooks in your business.

Two learning curves

Accounting is not something that everyone can easily get their head around and mastering any new software application takes time and usually requires some help and training. So getting on top of accounting software is likely to be something of an uphill climb.

But we are accountants and we understand QuickBooks, and our training, ideally in your office, using your actual financial data, will get you up both learning curves very quickly.

Specific help for YOUR business

Accounting is hardly worth doing if you can’t get useful information that tells you about business performance and informs better decision-making.

The aspect of QuickBooks that sets it apart from any other accounting package we’ve seen is the reporting function. Totally brilliant. One of the reasons we went the QuickBooks ProAdvisor route.

But, as with all software the GiGo rule applies – Garbage In Garbage Out.

So, we take a little time to understand your business and the information you will need and then make sure that data entry – the way you enter your transactions – is done in a way that will get you the reports you need.

And we’ll help to design a suite of management reports that you can run with a click on the mouse whenever you want.

Got a QuickBooks problem?

We have a number of short QuickBooks training videos that you might find helpful.

If you are looking for more help than the videos can provide then please give me a call on 020 7384 6800 to see if we can help you directly or at least point you in the right direction.

In the meantime, good luck with QuickBooks!

QuickBooks ProAdvisor network

To find a QuickBooks ProAdvisor in your area click here.