Setting up Financial Workflows and processes free up your time, improve financial reporting, and help you make more money.

As the Founder and CEO of your Good Food Business, your time is your most valuable asset. And ensuring that you are spending it on tasks that help move your business forward and make more money is extremely important. If you’re spending time making your financial workflows work that is not a valuable use of your time!

IDENTIFY YOUR ROLE IN YOUR FINANCIAL WORKFLOWS

Think about your Financial processes…

• How integral are you to making everything work right and get reported correctly to your Bookkeeper and Financial Team?

• Where in the process do you have a manual responsibility?

• Who else on your team is part of the process and what are their responsibilities? Are there better uses of their time?

• Think about the accounts or credit cards you use that your bookkeeping team can't access and require extra manual steps for you to verify and reconcile each month.

Things that feel like they only take a minute... ADD UP.

Once you’ve identified where you fit in your financial workflows talk to your team members about how you can automate or hand off anything that you are currently doing.

Don’t say, “it just takes a minute” or “It’s just quicker and easier if I do it”.
Remember that time is your most valuable asset and you need to be focusing on the things that move your good food business forward and make more money.

An Example of Financial Workflow that can and should be improved:

a Payment system that doesn't allow you to track who payments are from.

Let’s say you bill all Wholesale customers through Shopify, but they can pay through paper check or ACH that takes place outside of the Shopify system.

After payment or at the end of the month, you have to identify the payments received and link them to the right client and sales channel. As the CEO of your business this should not be part of your job, it is NOT a money making task so it also shouldn't be the responsibility of someone on your team.

Instead, create a system that do this work for you...

If you are billing your customers through Shopify, require that they pay through Shopify and have a clear set of products that only get sold to wholesale accounts so they are easy to track.

Otherwise use an alternate system like QuickBooks that offers an ACH payment option that links the invoice to the payment automatically, and if you accept paper checks create a simplified system for tracking checks received and reporting them to your Bookkeeper.

There are so many ways to streamline your Financial Workflows and get you focused on making more money!

If you want to learn more about Financial Workflows and connect with other Good Food Business owners, Join us in the Free Profitable Food Business Community!

And check out Episode 38 of The Good Food CFO Podcast.

About the Author: Sarah Delevan is a Food Business Financial Coach and Consultant with over 8 years of working in the food industry. She received her MBA from Rollins College and In 2017 she founded Sarah Delevan Consulting based in Los Angeles, CA and serving clients across the United States. She is the creator of the Financial Success Formula and the founder of the Profitable Food Business Group Coaching program as well as the host of The Good Food CFO Podcast. To learn more about Sarah and opportunities to grow a more profitable food business Click Here.