Why revenue is a vanity metric
Revenue isn’t the only metric of “success” – what you should be really looking at is your gross profit margin. Here’s why sales really don’t fix everything.
Customer Acquisition Costs
Customer Acquisition Cost (“CAC”) is a metric that has been growing in use among Internet businesses. It’s a metric that can make or break your start-up. However, we find that many ‘traditional businesses’ fail to measure CAC, giving them limited insight as to whether they are acquiring customers profitably. In this video, Rowan shares how…
Customer Lifetime Value
Seasoned entrepreneurs say that revenue growth, profitability, and cashflow are the most important financial metrics to your business. Of course they are important, however we see one significant metric is often missed. https://www.youtube.com/embed/O99etdlZV0s Customer Lifetime Value (CLV”) Customer Lifetime Value is not a new concept but it’s an important metric to measure for your business.…
What you need to know about Gross Profit Margins
Gross Profit margins are a critical metric that every entrepreneur needs to be on top of. It’s a make or break metric for every business, irrespective of your industry. Most entrepreneurs think they know their Gross Profit margins – but from our experience, most don’t measure it accurately, which can have dire consequences. In this…
The Metrics of the Modern Accounting Practice Part 1 – What are you Measuring?
“If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it” – Lord Kelvin It always amazes me that most businesses don’t practice what they preach. Let’s face it, we’re all guilty of it. Let’s face it – if we were to be ‘advisors’ of our perfect selves we would have made our millions already… While at…
The 9 metrics Accountants must know when advising Startups
This post was written by my CoFounder Rowan Grant. Startups are sexy, and everyone’s uncle is working on the next big calendar app (no jokes, I did get pitched another calendar app last week). As a result, professional service providers are now offering ‘startup’ packages or services to try to capture a chunk of this…
Lesson learnt #2: Know your customer. The 3 step process we used to determine our target market
Niching for a Startup is critical. It levels the playing ground between small and large businesses. The challenge is however, when you start a new venture or develop a new product, you say yes to anything and everything. You take every meeting, every phone call, every bit of work that comes your way. Even if…
Lesson learnt #1 – Communication is King
SmartBooks Online is a virtual business, meaning an array of challenges are immediately apparent. Just to name a few, these include building trust with clients and their accountants, showing the world that we know our sh!t without warranting a face-to-face coffee promising everything, and most of all managing expectations. We’ve received mixed feedback from both…
Fail Fast – The 5 invaluable lessons we’ve learnt @SmartBooks Online
SmartBooks Online has been floating around the internet over the last 12 months. During that time, Rowan and I were both working full time and progressing in our respective careers – jobs that we genuinely enjoyed doing – whilst running the business by night. Some called it part time entrepreneurship. Others called it a lifestyle…