While I’ll never profess to be a numbers expert, I have learned over the years how incredibly important it is to have a really good understanding of my numbers and where my money is coming from—and going! But I haven’t been able to do it alone. And so today I wanted to share with you the people on my “numbers team” that make it all possible. 

First things first. I don’t have a CFO in my small business. I don’t have someone on hand at all times that comes into the office and can tell me when I can and cannot spend things. But I do have a really good team of people—experts and advisors—that I contract out to for different circumstances. 

Here’s my financial team of cheerleaders. 

XERO: My accountant set Xero up for me and between myself and my office manager, we do all of the reconciling of accounts. 

ACCOUNTS MANAGER: My accounts manager kind of acts as my bookkeeper and is in  charge of the invoices and billing. She’s an employee of my business and I’m really lucky to be able to have her take on that huge chunk of responsibility in the business. 

ACCOUNTING FIRM:  So our accountants are the people that we call when we can’t figure out how things work in Xero! Ha! But also, our accountants help us each quarter and financial year to make sure we have all the documentation in order to satisfy the tax office and that we’re doing everything correctly. They also help us with our superannuation and our payroll. They have a great team of people who are in touch with us all the time, who can answer our questions and of course who meet with us to keep up on track and help with projections and forecasting. 

FINANCIAL ADVISOR: Once you’ve got all of the above sorted, I encourage you to get a financial advisor that can give you and your family advice on how and where to spend your money, where to put your savings and how to work out your superannuation and all of those fun things! It’s really important to get yourself a financial advisor that you trust, somebody that can break it down for you and explain it. I am very lucky that the people that I have advising me can speak very slowly and explain it very clearly to me because sometimes it’s overwhelming and some of it flies over the top of my head!

When it comes to ANYTHING with numbers, I encourage you to be vulnerable in those moments and ask the questions you’re thinking about. Don’t be embarrassed. I’ve become better at doing that but in the early days, I’d just sit there with my arms folded and nod and smile and then leave feeling lost! Now I feel a lot more comfortable asking what I feel are “silly” questions. I ask ALL the questions and make sure I understand what’s important and what’s of lesser importance. 

So that’s my financial cheerleader list for you! 

If you want to do some more work on your cash flow and really get a clear understanding of what’s going on, then you can join me on Valentine’s Day for our cashflow masterclass at 7.30pm!