How is it June already?? A few milestones have passed already in 2016, with a few more come being mainly provisional tax and The Olympics in two months.
It’s now a good time to review your first half business performance to find out what worked, what didn’t, and plan for the next half year ahead. You can adopt a simple approach or go all out rewriting business plans, budgets and forecasts. As always we're here to help, so please let us know if you have any queries.
Our approach to a half year review would include a short activity review, taking a look at your goals and business plans, reviewing your progress against budget or forecast, looking at key metrics and identifying tax and bills to come uo
1. Quick Review
It’s time to identify for the first half of the year:
- What went well
- What went not so well
- What to improve
These can be in terms of employees, clients, business activities or anything to get you going.
2. Reviewing Goals and Business Plans
If you set goals at the beginning of the year, review these now to see how you’re tracking. If something needs to be adjusted, either make the call to adjust or set up some time to review thoroughly.
3. Review Budget/Forecast
Review your progress against budget and/or forecast. You can also “roll” your forecast forward so that you have a clear starting point for the second half of the year
4. Metrics
Taking a good look at metrics is key to a good half year review. Have a look at:
- What metrics did you track in the first half of the year?
- Did they contribute to your success?
- What metrics would help you track performance in the second half of the year
It would also be useful to determine some of your goals for these metrics, taking into account some some history, your aspirations, or business and industry benchmarks.
A good business advisor can assist in helping you to define your metrics. If you need assistance with finding the right metric, accessing the right data or not sure about measurement, please give us a call.
5. Tax & Bills
Lastly, its a chance to be clear about the upcomming tax payments for the year - i.e. GST in June, August & October, Provisional Tax in August. You can also use this time to identify any bills outstanding that you need to pay or put on arrangement.
Having this kind of review really helps set the tone for the rest of the year, and gets you and your employees engaged in helping business performance improve.
If you have any queries about the above please get in touch
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