What is a business finance coach and how can they help you?

Sep 25 

Written By Melissa Houston

You may have heard of a financial planner where that professional helps you with your investing needs, but what exactly is a finance coach?  A financial coach specializes in helping their clients organize their personal finances, create budgets, and make a plan to pay down debt and help work towards financial goals that are important to their clients. They typically only work with individuals on a fee-based advice model and don’t sell insurance or investment products. 

More specifically now, what is a business finance coach and how can they help your business?

A business finance coach is geared to help business owners and entrepreneurs manage the finances within their business.  A business finance coach is typically a finance professional that can help a business owner organize their business finances, create a financial plan for the business, and monitor their progress against that plan, manage their cash flow, and work towards their business goals.  

A business finance coach will meet with you and assess your needs and work with you to achieve your business finance goals.

 

Things you can expect to work on with a business finance coach:

 

1.     How to measure profit within the business

Profit is more important than revenue in the sense that a business is operating to generate income.  The income that it generates is revenue less expenses and taxes which equals profit.  If a business is operating at a loss, it will not be a viable business. Your business finance coach will guide you through this process.

 

2.     How to read and understand financial reports

Many entrepreneurs struggle with the value of financial reports, mostly because they do not understand how to interpret the information that these reports are conveying.  A business finance coach will help you understand the financial results of the business.

 

3.     Creating a business budget

Business operating budgets are a great tool to plan out your business goals for the year.  They break down your operations by month and tell you how profitable your business will be. Business finance coaches know how to help you create your personalized business budget.

 4.     Monitoring your progress against the budget

The best part of a budget is to track and monitor your progress against these budgets.  This allows you to identify any financial issues as they arise, such as overrunning on costs, lack of profitability for a time period, not meeting sales targets, and the list goes on. A business finance coach teaches you how to monitor your results at a minimum on a monthly basis.

5.     Cash management

Positive cash flow is essential to successful business, and you never want to be cut short on cash.  Cash balances are necessary to meet payroll and other types of financial obligations.  Without cash coming in on a consistent basis it can be tough to meet outgoing requirements.

Business finance coaches know how to set up a cash management system for your business so that you can easily monitor your cash levels.

Of course there are many other business finance topics a business financial coach can cover with you, as there is an endless amount of ways your financial information can work for you.

The bottom line is if you are an entrepreneur running your business without a strong financial knowledge, you are essentially leading your business blindly.  

When choosing a business finance coach ensure you hire someone who is qualified to do the job. To help you thoroughly understand how to manage the money in your business, your business finance coach should be an accredited professional.

Grab your free copy of the 5-Step Roadmap to Biz Finance Freedom to get a start on your business finance management system.

 

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