Three Money Mistakes Almost Every New Business Makes
Most small businesses aren't run by accountants. Money mistakes happen, but here's some of the most common ones I see to help you get ahead.
I've seen a lot of small business finances at this point, and I can tell you the mistakes aren't usually creative. They're the same handful, over and over, and they're relatively easy to avoid once someone with a financial background points them out to you.
So, hi, allow me to point some of them out.
1. Mixing personal and business money.
It usually starts innocently. You use your personal card for a business expense because you're at the store anyway, or you pay yourself "whenever there's extra." Before long, you have no real idea what your business is actually making, because it's all tangled up with your grocery bill and your Netflix subscription. Separate accounts aren't just an accounting nicety, they're the only way you'll ever get a clear read on how your business is really doing.
2. Pricing based on what feels comfortable, not what the math says.
A lot of new owners set prices based on a gut check. What feels fair, what they'd be willing to pay, what a competitor charges. What almost never gets factored in is the actual cost of doing the work: your time, your materials, your overhead, the taxes you'll owe later. Comfortable pricing and sustainable pricing are not always the same number, and the gap between them is where a lot of small businesses quietly bleed out.
3. Not knowing what you owe the government until it's owed.
Taxes, HST/GST, payroll remittances, BAS, Activity Statements, and anything else your country requires. These don't disappear just because you were busy running the business. I see so many owners get blindsided by a tax bill they didn't plan for, simply because nobody told them to set money aside as they went. A basic habit of putting a percentage of every payment into a separate "future taxes" account will save you a lot of stress later.
None of these mistakes mean you're bad at business. They usually just mean nobody handed you the playbook before you started.
That's a normal, fixable thing, and it's a big part of what a Business Growth Boost session is built to sort out.
At Korporate Consulting Services, I help small business owners flesh out ideas, build a solid financial foundation, and sanity check big decisions.
Book a call at https://lnkd.in/gc8XamD2