Hello and welcome to voice notes from your CFO. Bestie, I'm Harriet Formby, your fractional CFO and holistic business mentor, bringing you money chats, pep talks and financial know how that's practical, relatable, and actually feels good. Whether you're a business owner, a founder or an entrepreneur looking to get a handle on your finances, I'm here to help you make sense of it all.
Hello and welcome back. So today we're going to be talking about creating finance routines, and in particular ones that feel good for you. So the reason that we kind of care about finance routines is, and it's a question that I'm often asked is, kind of what, what should my routine look like? And what that is getting at is, basically, we know there's some things we should be doing with our finances and money so that we can kind of get confident with where we're at, what might need to change, or just feel reassured that, you know, things are okay and we're on top of stuff, and having, like, some financial data that's up to date is really quite important then for kind of being able to make decisions And just generally feel more at ease with things.
And the difficult part sometimes is if you kind of go along with the idea that you've got to just follow some rules, and as long as you follow the rules, it all will be well, however, those rules and structures might not actually fit with you know who you are as a person, your preferences, your style, your kind of lifestyle, and how that fits in with. You know, the way you run your business and run your finances, and this is particularly true if you are neurodivergent, the routine aspects of this can be extra challenging.
So that's something you know, we're going to address here is kind of what good maybe looks like. And some tips and tricks, really, on how we can do this in a way that is going to feel good for us in our specific setup and situation and preferences. So one of the key things to kind of back all of this up is actually to have a system in place where you can kind of house all your financial stuff relating to your business. And what this means, basically, is probably either a accounting package like Xero. So that is accounting software that allows you to track, you know, your
transactions that are in your business, and being able to you know many other things, but that primarily to categorize your income and expenses in a way that you can view them and make sense of them. Also allows you to kind of do invoicing and track who owes you money and who you owe money to, and that kind of thing.
If you are quite a sort of early stage business and you're self employed, perhaps rather than a limited company, then it could be as simple as a spreadsheet template that you use just to track your transactions as they happen.
If you're interested in, getting a template or anything like that, you can, yeah, either look on my site or message me, and I can kind of point you in a direction of something to start you off with.
But yeah, this is going to be the key thing, really, is to have somewhere central to kind of house all of these things. So once you've got yes something to kind of track, we need to then consider, well, what is it we actually need to be doing? So a really basic level, we need a way then of capturing our transactions, so the money in and out of the bank account,
and it is really helpful in this situation.
If you have, like, a separate bank account for your business, it's a must for a limited company. If your sole trader, it's not as strict as that. You can have things merged, but you'll generally find it a lot simpler. If you have, like, a dedicated card or account that houses all of your business transactions, basically, and that's the one you use, and it's separate from business things. So that's a really good thing to consider. It's going to make it less kind of messy than when you're dealing with transactions.
So yeah, so it's about tracking the spend, and that will look like, you know, either adding them to your spreadsheet or doing it in an automated fashion, or having them come through on a bank feed to your accounting software. And the other side of this is, you know, having a bit of time to make sure that you are kind of invoicing clients promptly. If there's a, you know, it's not like they click and buy they actually you have to invoice them, ensuring that they've actually paid you, and that, you know, that there's nobody you need to chase to kind of pay you money. And obviously, the quicker you invoice and keep that moving, the quicker you tend to get paid. So those are kind of some of the key things. And then also being able to kind of step back and look at that maybe on a month to month basis, to be able to say, Oh, these are my sales across these different kind of offerings and services. These are my costs in various categories.
From there, you're able to kind of actually make maybe a provision for tax, or kind of, yeah, identify maybe that something maybe needs to change, or perhaps, you know, you're spotting something strange, like you've been overcharged, or something like that you kind of need to address. So then there's quite a bit of choice, really. So I tend to say, you know, we're all different in terms of what works for us. So some people, you know, you might want to kind of do this, like, on a daily basis.
So you kind of, like, if you've got, you know, quite a few transactions going through the business, you might want to spend five minutes a day, you know, just tracking things and either kind of updating your kind of online account, like Xero account, or, you know, reconciling your transactions, or coding your transactions as they come through in a sort of spreadsheet format. It might be something you just want to tack onto your you know, sometimes you can do it a bit absent mindedly in the evening or something. Or you might want to sort of do it, you know, first thing in the morning, it's very much about what's right for your routine. And you're somebody that just wants to kind of deal with it a little bit, a little bit every so often. And that can be something that really helps you just not have to kind of sit there and go at it for hours and kind of feel really annoyed that you want to be doing something else.
Obviously you might be then, sort of between that extreme, then you might be sort of saying, well, actually, that's a bit much every day I don't want to be looking at every day. I'll just set aside, like once a week, Friday morning, say, I'm going to sort of spend 20 minutes, half an hour on it. And that can be really good to kind of pop it in your diaries, like a recurring appointment, and just make sure that you kind of, yeah, address it fairly often.
Um, equally, you might be of the mindset that you just want to, like, power through it once a month. I'd say it's best to try and do it at least once a month, because once you've got multiple monthŐs worth of stuff, just so it can be a bit, bit more chaotic, you might lose the opportunity and time to kind of influence what you're seeing, and maybe you miss that someone hasn't paid and a few months passed.
So I definitely say like, as a minimum, once a month. This could just be, you sit down and you blitz through it once a month, get it done. And that works for you, because you've got a bit of an adrenaline going, you've got a bit of focus, and you're just gonna sort of hyper focus on it, power through, and then you're like, great, I've done it. So I would say very much, you know. And at different stages, different things work, because sometimes maybe we have a daily routine, but then we get really busy, so it goes out of sync, and, you know this, and that happens.
But sometimes then when you've got a bit of a build up of stuff to get through, that can be feeling like, well, actually, you know, I don't really want to have it like this. And there's something I found with my own stuff. At the moment, I'm in a routine with my own businesses accounting, that I tend to dip into it every day or so and just kind of organize things and reconcile stuff. There has been times when I've kind of gone off the boil with it, and I've had like, you know, my VAT returns coming up, and I've got like, a month's worth of transactions to sort and it's been really not very fun.
And at the moment, I'm really enjoying just kind of, yeah, doing a bit every single day, pretty much, yeah. So there's a couple of options there. So then I've got a couple of tips really just around, like, how can we make this something that is, like, engaging and maybe even, you know, stimulating, enjoyable. And sometimes it can be that we need accountability. So actually, you know, who's somebody you know in business that's like your business friend, who's also in a similar position to you, you know, running a business. And perhaps you can sort of do this together, and you can sort of set aside, you know, a bit of a co working virtual or in person, where you do it together, have a bit of accountability. You can have a little chat while you're doing it, and it make it kind of a bit more social.
You might also be somebody that needs a bit of like, you know, the environment's important, and maybe you need to be like, somewhere really busy, like a cafe and like, bit of people watching while you're doing it. Or perhaps you need to be, like, really snug on the safer, like with snacks and drinks and a blanket, and make it really, like, cozy and and enjoyable that way.
Um, it's really good also to kind of have, like, yeah, some sort of treat, I suppose, like that you can, you can do, like, an activity, or, like, a nice bit of food or something that you can have once you finished. That can be a bit motivating as well. And also just to kind of acknowledge that, you know, that the importance of having, like, a bit of a ritual around it, you know, being comfortable in a nice space of your choosing is that, you know, when we deal with money, like emotional stuff can come up as well.
So it's really important to kind of consider, like, well, how will I be feeling when I'm addressing money, and how can I kind of nurture myself so that whilst I'm doing this thing, I am doing the best I can to kind of, like, regulate my nervous system. Might be like going for a walk in nature afterwards or before, being warm and cozy and having your needs met. Make sure you, you know, hydrated and you.
Got nice, nourishing food with you, and that can just be something that, you know, we can take for granted, but can really make it, you know, go from being something we're really dreading to something that's actually, you know, a well being type of thing, and we are kind of looking after ourselves at the same time. So I think the main takeaways there is, you know, having a system is really important because, you know, without having, like, some sort of spreadsheet, some sort of accounting software, yeah, it is a bit madly and once you've got that in place, you can have and a bit of a routine with it. You can be up to date with what you're doing.
You can be on track of, like, how profitable you are, how much taxes to start putting aside who owes you money, or, you know, that sort of thing, or any action you need to take based on you know your results, and really make sure you've got a routine that works for you, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, with accountability, being cosy, all of that good stuff. So hopefully that helps.
So if this has like resonated, if it's given you a really good idea to go off and try something with your finance routines, I'd love to know how you get on. So keep me updated. If you go to Instagram, our podcast account is CFO underscore voice notes. You can drop me a message or a voice note there. Tell me what's working for you, how things are going with your routines. If you've got any questions that you maybe want to kind of ask me about it. Share your woes or wins. I'd love to hear from you until next time
