Cleaning Up
Do Your Records Reflect Your Business?
Most of us run our aviation businesses with a keen eye to what is going on financially. After all, at the end of the day, you want your business and the work you do to reward you.
Over the years, however, financial records and the way that your accounting is organized can become inefficient. Financial records can become littered with extra accounts, or no longer reflect the way your business operates. There are a lot of reasons why financial records become congested or disorganized.
- Ventures that you pursued don’t work out and are scrapped
- Projects that were once active complete
- Departments set up to handle certain activities become obsolete and are tabled
- Bookkeeping, accounting, or administrative personnel change-and each had their own way of doing things
- Priorities change
But there are good reasons that you sometimes you just need to clean it all up!
“But I Don’t Want To Clean My Room…”
Working through your accounting records can be a big job. It’s important to tackle it with priorities in place. The key question is: what do we really need to measure in order to improve the value of our business?
If your aviation business has more than one main revenue source (for example, an FBO that also manages and charters aircraft, or provides maintenance), then what financial information would be important for the people running each of those departments or divisions?
Discussing these priorities with your bookkeeper, accountant or CFO, will enable you to give them the information they need in order to provide you the information that you need to see a clearer picture of the financials. It can give you a better grasp of what is really happening in your business and that can end up saving you money. Another key benefit can be that accounting and bookkeeping staff actually will end up spending less time explaining things or trying to determine how to account for various income and expenses.
Yes, just like cleaning your room as you were growing up, cleaning your financial statements can have multiple benefits. All of which add value.
