Home topics finance finance-cash-flow Advice Cashflow News Advice Bring home Gold for your business: Three financial success factors Guest Author May 15, 2012 Winning Gold at the Olympics requires, among other things, strategy, a strong mindset and determination – much like succeeding in business. If you want your business to do better over the next financial year, here’s a guide to the key financial success factors you’ll need to focus on. 1. Income If your business sells more than one type of product or service, it pays to know how profitable each category is. The easiest way to achieve this is to set up your accounting system to break it down. Set up an account for each type of income as well as a cost of sales account, as you will then be able to see how much gross profit each contributes to the total and which needs to be focused on. 1 July is a great time to start doing this, as your profit and loss is cleared out at the end of year. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are another great way to get a detailed view of what’s happening. Have a think about what your business KPI’s are, and start measuring them: Income per salesperson Income per square meter of retail space Income per service person per hour A good place to get inspiration about KPIs is by looking at your industry benchmarks. Google “business-benchmarks” and you’ll find resources to help with this. The start of July is