Happy Holidays from Team Startupr – Preparing for the New Year 2019

With the end of the year fast approaching, there are a number of exciting things that you need to do. Amongst those is to make your new year resolutions. For many people, this means setting up a milestone for their life, while for other entrepreneurs it is planning for ideas to grow their business. It’s high time to analyze and develop new strategies to make the new year the best for your business.

Setting up an actionable goal cannot be attained overnight; professional entrepreneurs have met their business goals because they have worked hard to attain them. So, if you are willing to set up a newly-formed business for the New Year, then we want to provide you with the information and insights on how to go about a smooth transition by taking time to develop and plan your ideas.

Start Early

The best thing about December is that you are already primed and ready for self reflection for the next year. If you want to make positive changes in your small business, you don’t need to wait until December or after the first of the year to create next year’s business plan. Developing a business plan requires a mix of tactical and strategic planning based on the projections for the future and review of your past experiences. Start your planning well before taking off for the Christmas and New Year holidays.

Review your Year

The next thing you need to do is to review your year with the bookkeeping and accounting department. Look at your numbers such as profit margins, revenue, other KPIs, lessons, and trends that you have learned until now.

Reviewing your previous records and financial statements will not only help you in tracking evidence of what works, what doesn’t, and why, but it will also assist you in preparing for your future. More importantly, these tasks will help you in finding potential mistakes in your records and ensuring accuracy on your tax returns by allowing your accounting department to backtrack and find potential mistakes in your records.

Design Projections

Before you start considering new ideas for your business, you need to ask your management team to create projections for the next year based on the things you did this year. In fact, you should ask your sales department to provide you with their best estimates for the coming year, if your operations and the market generally stay the same.

In addition to this, you should consider analyzing your customer satisfaction chart in order to understand whether more or less of your customers are buying your products or services this year. By examining all the charts and graphs, you will not only able to match the level of your competition, but customer preferences will also change your marketplace.

Once you are done with all the analysis, discuss with your colleagues about how you can do things differently. Look at the effects of a cost-containment effort, new promotional strategies, changes in your distribution and your prices.

Build Your Budget

As soon as you are done with the projections of your expenses and sales for the next year based on your discussion with your management team, the next thing that you need to do is to build a detailed master budget for your business. The budget should include all the cash flow statements, credit availability estimates, income and expense projections, balance sheet, cash reserves, debt-service numbers, and profit and loss statement.

While building your business, it is pertinent for all entrepreneurs to look at the estimated year-end profits and determine whether it is adequate or if you should lower your costs, reduce debt or increase your sales targets. Moreover, make sure to analyze your potential tax burden, consider tax strategies, calculating the effects of any tax laws in order to help you in reducing your burden.

Discuss Expansion

Once you are done with the detailed analysis of how your business might perform next year, the next thing that you need to do is to discuss your financial and operational ability in order to expand your business.

So, it is always better to consider opening businesses in a new location, adding distribution channels such as online selling, and diversifying into new markets or increasing your market presence.

After that, determine the costs to do each option, analyze the risk reward tradeoff, and then decide what you can afford to do. Use the amount of money you can afford to lose without severely damaging your business entity as your low-end benchmark and your profit potential as your high-end target.

Preparing Your Financial Documents

After you have reviewed your past performance, create your projections, built a budget and discuss expansion options for your business development, you need to prepare your financial documents for next year’s planning. Verifying all the bank statements and tax filings are essential for running a business successfully.

It’s time to prepare your financial documents for tax time. These documents will not only provide you with a perfect data set to analyze business and financial processes, create projections and budgets, generate custom reports to promote growth, but it would also assist you in determining your goals.

Enjoy the Holidays, Completely Prepared

The holiday seasons are one of the most exciting, fun-loving and stress free times of the year on all ends, including your business. Although you might end up investing much of your money on your financial team’s paychecks, and accounting rather than purchasing gifts for your relatives and loved ones, it can be a exciting time when you plan for the new year. Hence remember, you can set yourself up for success and enjoy some gifts in the form of tax-season peace of mind and high-quality financial and strategic development for your business.

Conclusion

By now, you must have some ideas about setting up a business in the competitive business world of Hong Kong and how to run it successfully in 2019. So, what’s your next step? Well, don’t waste much time sitting ideally by, it’s high time to take your resolutions and create a plan for putting them into action. However, make sure that your resolutions stick by transforming them into goals, and make 2019 the year you finally bring all of your resolutions to fruition.

If you are looking for more information about setting up a business, and for incorporating and registering in Hong Kong, then look no other than Startupr. Our services are not only limited to our offices; they go beyond our offices. Our prompt and professional services leave you more time for your own business.

More importantly, Startupr wishes you a fabulous Christmas and New Years. May the lights of Christmas be your guide, and the Christmas carols fill you with cheer. May you have an excellent and successful year. May the stars shine on you this season and all the year throughout. Have a wonderful Christmas and Holidays!