Your business is probably your biggest asset. We produce the numbers a licensed planner needs, from a Cedar Rapids bookkeeping practice. We do not give investment advice.
Personal Financial Planning in Cedar Rapids, done the Brightside way For owners, the business is the retirement plan, which makes personal financial planning inseparable from clean business books.…
Read the guideA landscaping owner near Marion sat down with a financial advisor to talk about retiring in about eight years. The first question he was asked was what the business was worth and what it earned him. He did not know either number.
He had a rough idea of revenue and no idea of profit after his own draws were counted honestly. His books had personal spending mixed through them, three years of equipment purchases expensed in one lump each, and no depreciation schedule at all. The advisor could not plan around any of it, and told him so. He came to us to fix the inputs. The balance sheet that came out nine months later was the first time anybody could say what he actually had.
For most small business owners the business is the largest thing they own. Planning around it starts with knowing what it is.
Being unusually blunt here, because the phrase covers a lot of licensed work.
We do not advise on investments, retirement accounts, insurance, annuities, college savings or estate planning. Those require licences and credentials we do not hold, and anybody offering them without those is a problem rather than a bargain.
We produce the numbers a planner needs. What the business genuinely earns, what it owns and owes, what it can sustainably pay you, and what a buyer would be looking at. Real figures instead of estimates.
If you want a planner, ask your CPA for a referral to a credentialed advisor. Then come to us for the inputs, or keep us if we already do your monthly bookkeeping.
Two questions he could not answerWhat is the business worth, and what does it earn you. No advisor can plan around a business nobody has measured, and most owners have never measured theirs.
Whether or not anybody has said that out loud.
Trades and service owners around here rarely have a large pension or portfolio. What they have is a business, some equipment, maybe a building, and a house. When people talk about retiring, what they usually mean is selling or winding down the business and living on what comes out of it.
That makes the business the single most important number in the plan, and it is the one nobody has. Revenue is not it. Profit before honest owner compensation is not it either.
What matters is what the business earns once your own pay is counted properly, and what somebody else would pay for that. Working that out is the same exercise as due diligence, just pointed at your own business.
Have these and the conversation is productive. Miss them and it stalls.
That last one is the one owners underestimate. A business that only works because you are in it every day is worth considerably less than one that runs without you, and that gap is a planning problem worth knowing about early.
Revenue is not a retirement number. A business billing $400,000 that needs you on site six days a week and clears $52,000 after honest owner pay is a job with overheads, and a plan built on the bigger figure will not survive contact with a buyer.
Four moments where the business numbers decide what is possible.
Underwriters want two years of documented, stable income. Irregular draws and a return showing minimal profit both work against you. Setting a consistent draw well ahead of applying is covered on the personal finance consulting page.
Somebody joining needs a value to buy into and a structure that works for both sides. That starts with knowing what it earns rather than what it feels like it earns.
Buyers pay for provable earnings. Three years of clean books is worth real money at sale, and three years of messy ones costs you in the price and in the questions.
Illness, divorce or a partner leaving all force a valuation at short notice. Having current records means that happens on your terms rather than in a rush.
The local pattern shapes what a realistic plan looks like.
Seasonal income makes the sustainable draw harder to work out than it looks. A landscaping business around Marion or Robins earns most of the year in seven months, so a monthly figure that feels comfortable in July may be unaffordable in February.
Equipment-heavy businesses have another wrinkle. Much of the value sits in machines that depreciate, and a plan built on their original cost rather than current book value overstates what you have. That is why the depreciation schedule matters more than it sounds.
And a lot of local businesses are genuinely sellable. Route-based work with recurring customers, cleaning contracts, established trade names with a reputation. Those change hands regularly around here, which makes knowing the number worth having.
We work across the whole service area, out to Lisbon, Mt Vernon, Ely, Swisher, Springville, Bertram and Covington.
Three professionals, three jobs, and it goes wrong when one tries to do all of it.
A good advisor will thank you for arriving with real numbers. Most of their frustration with small business clients is that the inputs are guesses, and no plan built on guesses is worth following.
Nothing meaningful can be established until the records are accurate. If the file is behind, that is a cleanup and it comes before any of this.
Personal spending separated, a market wage for your own labor counted, add-backs treated properly rather than optimistically.
Balance sheet, earnings, and a note on what is durable and what depends on you. Written so an advisor can use it without a translation call.
A snapshot from two years ago is not a plan input. Monthly bookkeeping keeps the numbers usable whenever the conversation comes up.
You own a business, it is a large part of your net worth, and you are thinking about a mortgage, a partner, a sale, or stopping work at some point.
You are looking for advice on where to put money, what to invest in, or which insurance to buy. Those are licensed activities and we will point you at somebody credentialed rather than guess.
You will never get an investment opinion here. That restraint is the reason the numbers we do produce can be trusted.
Profit that ignores what your own labor is worth is not profit. Most small business numbers we inherit have never been adjusted for it.
Planning conversations tend to arrive unannounced. Books closed by the 10th means you are never nine months from being able to answer.
It is part of the monthly service rather than a planning fee.
Monthly bookkeeping starts at $350, set by transaction volume, how many accounts need reconciling and whether you run payroll. Establishing owner earnings and the net position comes out of that work. A one-off package prepared for an advisor or a lender is quoted flat. Details are on the pricing page.
Try answering the two questions now: what does the business earn you, and what is it worth? If either answer is a shrug, that is the work to do before any planning conversation is worth having.
It starts with a free Books Health Check. Fifteen minutes, screen shared, your file open. We tell you whether the records could currently support a planning conversation, and what would need fixing first.
Call (319) 382-9017 or use the contact page. You get a real reply within one business day.
If the question is nearer term, these might be closer.
No. We can tell you what the business earns, what it owns and owes, and what it might be worth. Whether that funds a retirement is a question for a licensed financial planner.
That is advice we are not licensed to give. What we can tell you is what the business could afford to contribute, which is the number your advisor or CPA will ask for.
We can establish what it genuinely earns once add-backs are honest, which is the figure a valuation is built from. A formal, defensible valuation is separate work by a credentialed appraiser.
For a sale, three years, because buyers want to see clean history. For a mortgage, at least one. For retirement, as early as the question occurs to you.
No, and it is a common answer. They need a profit and loss and a balance sheet that reflect reality, which is what we produce.
Yes, with your say-so, and it is usually faster than passing everything through you. They tell us what they need and we deliver it in that shape.
No. We do bookkeeping, job costing, payroll support and the reporting around them. Sales tax filings are not something we take on.
The free Books Health Check takes fifteen minutes and answers what the articles can't: where your books stand.
Get my free Books Health CheckFlat-fee bookkeeping for small businesses in these cities and everywhere between.
