Your reports and schedules, when understood and responded to, are precious to keeping your profit. They represent the financial control of your business. You need to use your balance sheet, income statement, working capital schedule and your schedule of estimated cost to complete jobs in progress as a sanity check against your field review, office feedback, job cost reports, project notes and other weekly and monthly schedules.

By understanding how to effectively manage from our financial and job cost information, we permanently increased our gross profits by 20 points and increased our sales by another 20%.

David Newton, President, XYLEM Builders, Weymouth, MA

The problem for many smaller and mid-market companies in the construction industry is that they are often misunderstood or ignored because their reports and schedules are not trusted to be accurate. They are often not accurate because the reports are used primarily as a tool for the accountant to prepare a tax return or to fulfill a bank-reporting obligation, so they do not contain complete enough information for you to control your business.

Let’s go backwards. Let me explain the purpose and value of a “Balance Sheet” and an “Income Statement”.

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We are happy to announce that several of my articles have been published by nationally know publications. “How to Read Your Financials”, was published in the September issue of Construction Business Owners Magazine and “Don’t Be Fooled By Your Job Cost Reports”, was published in the Sept/Oct issue of Florida HomeBuilder magazine, the official publication of the Florida Home Builders Association. Also this month, I am a guest columnist in the Florida Homebuilders Association website where my “Management” column article is posted and entitled “How To Make Your Employees Accountable”.

It was a pleasure to present two workshops on August 15th and 16th, 2007, in Long Island, NY, to two separate groups from Vistage International, the world’s largest CEO Membership Organization that specializes in executive leadership development, CEO coaching and business coaching. One presentation was entitled “Succession Planning” and the other, “Seven Deadly Mistakes Businesses Make…How to Recognize, Quantify and Avoid Them”, both of which were successfully received and well-noted by all attendees, who were prominent executives, businessmen and speakers in their own right. I am available to offer workshops or presentations at seminars, trade shows, special meetings and events. If you know of a speaking opportunity that might be a good fit, or would like to know more about my presentations and availability, please contact me.