You’re good at what you do, but the financial part of the business can get you down.

Joanne Leasure, CEO of Day One Accounting and Patrick Best, a tax attorney at ARM Lawyers, gave some tips at a recent Pocono Mountains Chamber of Commerce seminar.

If you don’t put together a profit and loss or a balance sheet until it comes time to do a loan application or your tax returns every year, that could be an issue, Best said, and added it is a common issue he often has to deal with.

“You should be able to produce a profit and loss statement, and a balance sheet with a couple clicks. If you can’t, than you are not keeping your records up to date,” he said.

Probably the biggest problem, Best said, “When I talk clients and I tell them I need the current profit and loss and they tell me it going to take a couple weeks because they are a few months behind on it, that creates a problem.”

“That’s when you send them over to me and a lot of times what I notice is it’s going to take more than a couple weeks,” Leasure said.

The client’s estimate of how long it is actually going take to gather almost, if not more, a year’s worth of transactions. It takes a lot more time, a lot of planning, and interviewing with your clients, according to Leasure.

“I know that when I first start off talking to people, I definitely do a thorough interview process so I can just kind of understand how their business works, and how they get money, and how they spend money,” Leasure said.

Once that is done, she either tries to clean up the finances or tries to teach the client a workflow process.

“Meaning how do they gather their receipts, how do they gather their invoices, are they making sure all those things are getting into the system,” she said.

Leasure also warns that if a sales contract is signed with one of their clients it must be entered into the system so when they pay you, the payment must be recorded to the invoice that you created for them.

“Most of them don’t realize this is what work flow is, but these are the things that need to actually happen,” Leasure said.

Keeping all of your financial records current will make filing your taxes, applying for a loan, as well as letting you know how your business is doing, according to Leasure and Best.