Will We Last the Year?
A three-month diagnostic engagement.
The owner had one question: would they still be in business in twelve months?
Their own books couldn't tell them. Margins swung from 30% to 70% month over month. The income statement looked like a different business every period — not because the data was missing, but because nothing was being recorded when it actually happened.
What we found
Cost of goods sold was being booked the day inventory arrived, not the day it sold. A heavy buying month gutted the P&L. A quiet buying month made the business look like a software company. The owner had been making decisions off numbers that described stockroom activity, not retail activity.
The POS system held the real story — by transaction, by hour, by SKU. None of it was reaching the accounting books in usable form. Revenue showed up. Margin didn't.
What we built
- A twelve-month trailing trend analysis to expose the real rhythm underneath the noisy margins
- A six-month forward revenue forecast tied to historical seasonality and current trajectory
- A rebuilt COGS workflow that recognized cost when product sold, not when it arrived
- POS data flowing into accrual revenue and COGS on a repeatable cadence
- Customer traffic mapped by day-of-week and hour-of-day, feeding directly into staffing decisions
- Coordinated tax strategy with their CPA under the corrected numbers
- Industry labor and inventory benchmarks for context against peers
- Inventory controls and supplier-side negotiation guidance
What they walked away with
An income statement they could read. A six-month forward view of revenue to plan inventory and staffing against. Staffing decisions backed by their own customer data instead of guesses.
And the answer to the question they came in with — built on numbers that finally meant what they appeared to mean.
The engagement ran three months. Whether the next twelve months go their way is up to them. What they have now is the ability to see them coming.