Crafting Your Year-End Plan and 2024 Goals
The year-end close can be stressful, but it’s an important time for business owners to ensure accurate reporting and compliance, and to make informed decisions about the upcoming year. Often, the process of tracking down missing receipts and correcting errors can create stress and worry that things might be slipping through the cracks. To ease some of that stress, we’ve compiled a handy checklist and guide to putting a bow on this year’s books.
A Checklist For Your Year-End Plan
❐ #1 - Set a Closing Schedule: A clear timeline for your year-end close should include major milestones and deadlines.
❐ #2 - Gather Outstanding Invoices and Bills: Whether you’re waiting for payments to come in or you need to send them out yourself, it’s important to have any documentation of outstanding income or expenses on-hand to get an accurate picture of your accounts.
❐ #3 - Review & Reconcile: Take a close look at statements, balances, leger entries, and expenses to confirm all is in alignment.
❐ #4 - Prepare Year-End Reports: Translate the noise that comes with an abundance of data into meaningful, clear summaries and statements.
❐ #5 - Document Everything: For compliance and replication reasons, make sure all adjustments and findings are well documented throughout the year-end process.
❐ #6 - Contact MATAX Inc.: Make this whole process significantly easier by leaning on the experts at MATAX Inc. to walk you through it and take some of the load. Drop us a line.
Set Goals For 2024
Incorporating goal-setting into your year-end plan can streamline the process and make it seem less daunting because it’s common for goals to emerge while tying up loose ends. With that in mind, here are some seed ideas to help turn your thoughts toward 2024.
Redefine Your Brand
Is the elevator pitch you used a year ago – even six months ago – still accurate? Take a look at your company vision, mission statement, and core values. If they need tweaking to reflect where your business is today and where you want it to go, start there. Then you can move on to setting some useful long- and short-term goals.
Break Down The Big Picture
Entrepreneurs dream big—and they should! Thinking big can lead to groundbreaking products and services that become the foundation of innovative, successful companies. But in order to make those big ideas like “increasing market share” or “growing profits” happen, you need to break them down into smaller, specific goals and strategies tied to a budget and timeline. SMART goals. The key is to define goals that are measurable and achievable.
Crowdsource Smaller Goals
Thinking through how you’ll achieve your larger objectives can be a fun exercise – one you can turn into a group activity, including your entire team. With all the relevant information at hand and everyone at the table, you can establish objectives that align with your company vision, assign deadlines, and get buy-in on what everyone needs to do to see your ideas through to completion.
Final Thoughts
Of course, establishing a year-end plan and business goals are just a few steps in the journey. You’ll also need to monitor your progress, noting milestones and sharing achievements with your team on a regular basis. Tracking your results will help your employees stay motivated – and it also gives you the chance to adjust your goals and strategies in time to achieve the best possible results by the next year’s end.
