As if you didn’t have enough to do getting ready for the holidays, your business has its own checklist of to-dos that need to be addressed before the end of the year. Before you ring in the New Year, here are five year-end to-dos for your business that you definitely want to have checked off:
1. Balance Your Budget
Hopefully, at the beginning of the year, you created a budget for your business that estimated the revenues and costs for each month. Now that the year is coming to a close, it’s time to compare what you projected versus what you actually achieved to learn what worked well, what didn’t, and what you may want to do differently going forward. Gather up all your financial documents and check out our previous article Tips for Your Year-End Budget Deviation Analysis for advice on how to get the most from your budget deviation.
2. Measuring Marketing ROI
Marketing can be one of the most difficult areas in business to track. But you need to make sure you’re spending your time and money wisely. That means measuring the ROI of your campaigns to make sure you’re getting enough bang for your buck. Fortunately, there are a slew of tools and applications to help along the way. Most social media sites provide analytics, as well as email marketing applications, Google Ads, and Google Analytics for your website. These are great places to start. Once you have determined the effectiveness of each of your marketing campaigns, you can then use this information to start planning for the upcoming year – eliminating strategies that didn’t work, reinforcing ones that did, and exploring new options.
3. Set Your Goals for The New Year
A new year means new goals and resolutions! We recommend that our clients use the “look forward by planning backward” approach to goal setting. This means that you set your 3-year goal and then break them down into individual years, months, next week and to identify specific action items for attaining your goals. This approach helps you set goals that are actually realistic and creates a plan of action. So no excuses for not getting it done!
4. Tax Planning
Everyone’s favorite time of year, tax season, is right around the corner. Now is the perfect time to get in one more last-minute meeting with your accountant or bookkeeper to start preparing. This means getting your books in order, gathering tax records, evaluating your current strategy, and possibly even identifying some last-minute deductible opportunities. Remember fortune favors the prepared. Act now and you may pay less later – literally.
5. Celebrate Your Success
You’ve made it through another year! Woohoo! In between all the chaos of the holidays and getting your business ready for the end of the year, don’t forget to take time to celebrate all you have accomplished this year. Small as it may seem, celebrating success is important to maintaining your own happiness and satisfaction with your business. So, call up those you love, plan a night out together, and give yourself a round of applause.
Once you have these items checked off, you can rest easy and enjoy the rest of the holiday season. Here’s to an even more prosperous and exciting New Year. Cheers!