Issue #35 Operating vs. Finance Leases and What Changed Desmond Ferraro told his banker he had no debt. He runs Riverbend Courier, a same-day delivery company in Louisville that moves lab samples, legal filings, and pharmacy orders around Jefferson County. Six vans, a leased warehouse off Mellwood Avenue, eleven drivers. No term loan. No line of credit drawn. Nothing on the balance sheet that looked like borrowing. His banker pulled up the financial statements his CPA had filed three months...
5 days ago • 5 min read
Issue #34 FIFO vs Weighted Average, Same Stock but Two profits Priya Raghunathan sells marine hardware out of a warehouse in Annapolis, Maryland. Halyard Supply moves stainless shackles, cleats, turnbuckles, and rigging to boatyards up and down the Chesapeake, and the business has run at a predictable margin for eleven years. Last spring her bookkeeper migrated the company to new inventory software. Nothing about the business changed. Same suppliers, same customers, same prices on the shelf....
9 days ago • 6 min read
Issue #33 Job Costing Shows Which Projects Actually Paid Nolan Petrakis had his best year yet at Cutwater Signs, the commercial sign shop he runs out of a leased bay on the north side of Milwaukee. Revenue crossed $1.4 million for the first time. The fabrication floor ran six days a week from March through November, and the install crew was booked so far out that he turned down three jobs in September. Then his accountant delivered the year-end P&L. Net income came in at $84,000. A 6 percent...
12 days ago • 6 min read
Issue #32 Sales Tax Not Revenue and It Was Never Your Money Silas Renner spent four years building Fenwick Pedals out of a workshop in Minneapolis, selling guitar effects pedals direct to customers in every state that would buy them. In the spring quarter, his platform dashboard showed $612,000 in deposits. The previous spring it had shown $388,000. He read that as a 58% jump and did what a growing manufacturer does. He put a deposit on a CNC router, hired a second assembler, and moved into a...
16 days ago • 5 min read
Issue #31 Prepaid and Accrued Expenses Land in the Wrong Month Hollis Barnett opened her climbing gym in Chattanooga on a Tuesday in January, and by the last week of the month she had more memberships sold than her business plan projected for March. Foot traffic was steady. The chalk bill was the only thing rising faster than sign-ups. Then her bookkeeper sent over the January income statement, and the gym showed a loss of about $11,000. The culprit sat on one line. Hollis had written a check...
19 days ago • 5 min read
Issue #30 Contribution margin: The number that decides what to sell more of Every quarter, Ivy Sandoval printed a one-page sales report for Harbor Hollow Ceramics, her studio in Providence, and circled the top line. The Quarry dinnerware set, $220 for four hand-thrown plates, brought in 58% of her revenue. So she did exactly what the report seemed to be telling her to do. She aimed almost her entire ad budget at it, featured it in every email, and parked it at the top of the homepage. Revenue...
23 days ago • 5 min read
Issue #29 How Businesses Accidentally Misprice Everything Lena Voss had a problem she kept describing as a sales problem. Redstone Machine, her 14-person shop in Erie, Pennsylvania, was winning nearly every CNC bracket job it bid on and losing nearly every weldment assembly job. Her estimator assumed the competition had gotten aggressive on fabrication work. The shop was busier than it had ever been. But net income had fallen for three straight quarters. Nothing was wrong with the sales team....
26 days ago • 4 min read
Issue #28 What Is Cash Conversion Cycle And Why It Matters Tomás Delgado signed the best quarter in the eleven-year history of Tidewater Marine Supply. His Savannah distribution business moved $1.4 million in propellers, deck hardware, and outboard parts to boatyards across coastal Georgia. Gross margin held at 31%. His accountant confirmed the profit. Two weeks later he could not make a $58,000 payroll run without drawing on his line of credit. Nothing was wrong with his pricing, his sales...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Issue #27 Inventory TurnoverWhy Full Shelves Are Bad News Delia Mancuso walked a lender through Sixth Street Strings, her vintage guitar shop in Reno, and pointed at $312,000 of inventory on the balance sheet as evidence the business was solid. The loan officer asked one question that ended the conversation. How much of it sold last year? She went home and pulled the numbers. Of the 340 instruments on her floor, 118 had been hanging on the wall for more than 24 months. Those 118 represented...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read