Blanca Whalen Accountant & Bookkeeper

$49 here. $199 there. $89 for something you stopped using in March. 💸

Fixed cost creep is the most boring problem in small business and one of the most expensive, because it never announces itself. Nobody ever decides to overspend. It arrives $49 at a time, on autopay, from a card nobody reviews.

Now run the audit. Three questions per line:

❓ Did anyone use this in the last 30 days? ❓ Are we paying for more seats or a higher tier than we need? ❓ Is this duplicated by something else we already pay for?

The habit going forward: track total recurring cost as a percentage of revenue and look at it monthly.

When revenue grows, the percentage should hold or fall. If it's climbing while revenue is flat, you're not investing in tools — you're accumulating them.

Your Monday Numbers

Ten minutes every Monday morning. That's the whole system.

Most owners I meet check one number: the bank balance. And the bank balance is the least useful number you have, because it tells you about a moment that's already gone.

Here are the five I want in front of you every Monday:

1️⃣Cash — minus the money that isn't yours. Payroll taxes you've withheld. Sales tax you've collected. Customer deposits for work you haven't done. Subtract all of it. That's your real cash.

2️⃣ Who owes you money, sorted by how old it is. Not the total. The aging. $40K owed to you is a completely different situation depending on whether it's 20 days old or 95.

3️⃣ What you owe in the next 14 days. Rent, subs, insurance, the loan payment.

4️⃣ This week's revenue against your weekly target. Take your annual goal, divide by 50. That's your number. You either hit it or you didn't, and you know by Monday instead of by quarter-end.

5️⃣ Every open job, and where it stands against budget. More on this one later in the month — it's the one that saves builders the most money.

That's it. Five numbers, ten minutes, one coffee.

The owners who do this don't get surprised. Not because they're smarter — because they're looking. 👀

The single most useful report in small business, and almost nobody runs it.

It's called a 13-week cash forecast, and it does one thing: it tells you what your bank account will look like every week for the next three months.

Not your profit. Not last month. What's actually going to be in there, week by week, going forward. 📅

Do you know what your bank balance will be six weeks from now? Within a few thousand dollars? Most owners don't — and it's the most stressful not-knowing there is.

If my biggest customer left tomorrow, what happens to me?

Ask your accountant to run this. It takes them ten minutes and it's one of the more sobering ten minutes you'll spend. 😳

Do you know what percentage of your revenue comes from your single biggest customer? Ballpark it in your head, then go look. The gap between those two numbers is usually the interesting part.

September is the month most business owners find out their year was already decided.

Four months left. Whatever you do between now and December 31 is the last chance you get to change how this year ends — the tax bill, the cash you carry into January, all of it.

So, here's the one question to send your accountant this week:

Based on where I am right now, what's my projected profit for the year — and roughly what will I owe?

That's it. One sentence.

If the answer comes back in a few days with real numbers, you have an accountant.

If the answer is "we'll know in February," you don't have an accountant. You have a historian.

End of month?
Do these 5 things in your finances before you close the books.

2 bookkeeping mistakes I see constantly — and what they actually cost:

1. Commingling personal and business accounts. Beyond the tax headache, it makes it nearly impossible to see your real numbers. I've had clients spend hours (and pay me hours) untangling a year of mixed transactions.

2. Miscategorizing expenses. "Office supplies" becoming a catch-all bucket means you lose visibility into where money's actually going — and miss deductions you're entitled to.

None of these are dumb mistakes. They're what happens when you're running a business and bookkeeping isn't your job. It's just expensive to leave alone.

A client came to me with a business account that had personal groceries, a kid's soccer registration, and business software subscriptions all mixed together for a full year.

We untangled it — took about 6 hours. It happens to good business owners all the time, not because they're careless, but because nobody ever told them it mattered this much.

If your accounts are mixed right now, today's a fine day to open a separate business account. Future you will be relieved.