Monitoring profit. "I guess the main thing there is just looking at what is the bottom line in comparison to where were the revenues for that and understanding what were the things that drove all the expenses in the middle and really looking at it from a standpoint of pricing... if our pricing is not at point where it's producing the margin and profit to keep us operational then it's not going to work. we don't have a standing in Excel spreadsheet, we would just open Excel and kind of build the formula out there so you have a column for sales, a column for cost of goods sold. If I am factoring in payroll or any other expenses or anything we could add those in and then just quickly run the math of revenue minus all that equals our bottom line. Instead of looking at revenue over that month period we would look at the bottom line and kind of work backwards from there."

Analysis of ups and downs. "To see what's driving our business and what services and products are moving the best right now. So we would use that and look back, 2018 over 2017 to see has our screen printing grown, has our embroidery grown as signs. Looking to see where we've seen any falls or where we’ve seen dips or increases in business and then really kind of digging a little further to try and understand why. As well we can keep a constant eye on margins to be able to say we know what our cost of goods sold is because all that's going in as well. When we're looking at the expenses, we're really looking at what's going up and is it relative to what it should be doing.We just basically look at our expenses report and then just drill it down by month and we start going from there and we kind of would dig into certain areas that might look higher or certain areas that might look low. But we would just go to like vendors expenses and then look at month and start going through that and kind of seeing the categories that are represented there."

Planning expenses. "One spreadshhet is just that big all-encompassing pulling every big expense that we could think about as well as kind of planning for emergencies and just saying what should our hourly rate be. That's really the starting with like a blank document and create a couple columns and rows and plug it in what we need to again... We do that same thing from time to time with any data where we would pop it in and quickly take a look at well. For instance, they might be like hey we're going to take on this extra work at the beginning of June, we know it's going to drive ours up for that first week in June - what's our overtime expense going to be. At one point a couple years ago we did this exercise and we just did it in Excel, we took every expense we have, we took all of our payroll, we took all of our... we can't even built in over a year and then broke it down over month stuff like maintenance, stuff like emergency, stuff like that and we knew that hey when were operational we need to be at this amount per hour."

Pricing. "It might go back to what that hourly rate is and then I built a spreadsheet, this is actually one that is just sustained a standalone that I built. And I can plug in then the number of shirts, the number of screen printing. But the amount of setup and everything that's going to be there for a job and then I can say at the top as it shows we need to be clearing 175 bucks an hour on this job and it would kick out a price for me."

Tracking inventory. I actually use Excel for tracking our inventory. So that I know whether we need to place orders or if we're okay.There's a list in one column of all of the different produce that we use and supplies that we use and then there's a place for the employee to tell you how much we have on-hand. And then there is also a place where I know how much we should always have.

Cash flow analysis and Monitoring profit. ..tracking money in or projected and minus whatever our costs of operating, minus whatever our overhead is, minus whatever our debts are. And sort of tracking that as we go along. I try to do that weekly. I list all of the income and outgo and track it by week and then to enter the information I reference our checking account. So I pull up my bank account and just match whatever transactions have actually cleared, cash in cash out... to just get a sense of what cash we can count on and what cash were expecting to go out so that we're never running at a deficit. The cash flow really helps when I can go in and say: all right I've written that check I wrote it on this date I'm going to take it out of my cash flow on this date even if it's not cashed for another two weeks so that I don't count on that cash since I've written that check. So cash flow really enables you to account very accurately for the cash that you actually have to spend versus the cash that's in your bank account.
One of the helpful things that I track is the percentage profitability over time. So even though we're maybe having a higher gross revenue month because maybe even though that's happening, our produce cost and the fact that we then had to pay more people more time to work actually decreases our profitability. And so I'm able to input formulas that relay that information and that's I guess kind of a pain. I do at the end of every month to determine the percentage of profitability over time.

Planning expenses. Typically what I'll do is look at the upcoming week and try to project what might come out, for example, I know that my telephone bill, it comes out of our account on autopay every third week of the month. So I'll put that into the phone bill line-item over time so that I can expect when that transaction will clear, so I always know to have the proper cash on hand. ...being able to make a decision. For example if I get a call from a company and they're running a promotion and they say: hey we can help you increase sales, the cost is $100 a month or whatever. Then I can plug an expense like that into my cash flow and know whether I can afford it or not.

Pricing. There are ingredients listed in a column and pricing per pound for example and then they yield per pound for each ingredient. And then that pricing divided by the metric that we're using for the yield has a monetary component. And then we calculate the mix of those ingredients in each individual juice. If there was a way, if there was a prompt or a kind of software, if you entered either your cost or and then went up that way like here's your cost, here's how much of a margin you want to see, so here's how much you're gonna have to charge for I want to charge this much, here's what I want my margin to be, this is what my ingredients need to be like.

Revenue planning. Typically I do it based on historical data. So either the same month or same month in the last year and then calculate sort of... okay well sales are up about 25 percent, so whatever it was last year, let's say it was this month we did $10,000, ok great, sales are up about 25 percent. I'm gonna project that this month we can do $12,500 for example. So it's based on something concrete but also it's kind of a shot in the dark.

You can track sales and look at statistics. So for example, you know over certain periods of time or if you're curious if there are certain parts of the day that are more busy than other days

Sales analysis. I go over sales figures from yesterday and the previous day before that as far as margins... A lot of times we want to keep our margins good and we allow our staff to take control of allowing discounts. But we want to keep our numbers at a certain level so that profitability is good. So we'll go over that as well as what we want to push for product based upon our levels in the store so if we look a little heavy in certain areas we'll push more shirts and ties a certain week. The partner has a sheet, she's going to record the paid-outs against the sales and then there'll be margins. So what were our margins of $4,000 for the sales. Margins for the day. So we will track margins on the sales, mainly, so if we sold $4,000 for the product but we paid $2,000 for that product then of course that's difference is our margin at 50 percent. We will track those numbers and compare them to last year's figures, last year's month figures and we'll record kind of who's selling the most and what not. And then again the margins are a big thing so it's great to be able to sell something but if you're giving it away that's not good either.

Planning expenses. We will track the paid-outs on product, we don't count the paid-outs as it's part of our marketing so it's just a separate category we'll put it into a marketing budget If it's the paid-outs or something that. We track those on a separate spreadsheet that we have and kind of break it down into marketing and other employee expenses, supplies, cleaners. So that kind of individually categorize those. Our system does not have that which would be nice but it just has one category of paid outs and then we have to break it down further.

Monitoring Profit. We would consider that important in looking at that every month and a monthly basis taking whatever gross sales for the month minus all the paid-outs that we already have our margin kind of figured out with what our difference of paid-outs were, everything else.

Pricing. I will use my Excel spreadsheet to figure out the ingredients that I need, how much they cost and then I can kind of figure out how much to charge based of how much the ingredients are going to cost me to make it. It would be great if I could plug in what I'm making, the average cost of each ingredient, what I'm charging and it could tell me what my margin would be that would be great.

Generating invoices. So really just I was thinking all inclusive kind of business tool...something possibly with a tool to build invoicing so I don't have to do them manually every time. Because right now I just used a Word document and manually do my invoices and email them.

Keeping track of the clients. Sometimes I have customers who will order things for a birthday so if I know that events coming up soon I can reach out to them to see if they need something this year. It usually just says the name, maybe contact information, what they ordered and when they ordered. It would be great having something where I could also keep track of my customers and what they ordered, how much I've charged them as well as dates that way linked with my calendar and send me reminders to reach out to customer a last year they ordered cupcakes, check with them to see if they need them again.

Tracking expenses. I could keep track of tools and supplies. So for baking I use a lot of pastry bags, pans, different types of tools which would be good. I could probably also keep track of things that I buy pretty consistently. I could do this setup for tax purposes to have everything summed up so where I could put in like I said what I brought in, what I put out. I do like this this setup but to have something on top of that which would help me like break down my actual costs like what asking to make assistant.

Margin analysis (for pricing). If I could have something where I could put it in what I spent to make it, how much time it took to make it and what I got for making it. If that could let me know okay this was your profit, this was the margin. And then that way I can use that to figure out am I charging enough for these or do I need to change my pricing for the baking. If I can figure out maybe not even on a monthly basis but on a general basis.. it can help me figure out what my cost should be, if I'm charging too much or charging too little. So if I could put in under expenses and then instead of being broken out by the month it can say like cupcakes and I can put everything into everything that goes into a cupcake I'm in this category and then break it out by how much. So I can standardize it, for instance a dozen cupcakes - this is how much flour is needed, this is how much it costs, and try to figure out so if a bag of flour costs me 3$ but I'm only using and it has this many cups in the bag and I'm only using a cup and a half for a dozen cupcakes how much is it actually costing me to make the cupcakes that would be really beneficial.

Revenue and expenses planning. I want to make sure that I make two thousand. So then I would need to figure out how I'm gonna do that, how many cakes do I need to sell, are there any festivals that I can attend. And then instead of the income for me it would be like if I know something's coming up in February I can put what that is going to cost them. So let's say I have someone's wedding in February and I'm going to charge them five hundred dollars. So then I need to figure out where the other fifteen hundred that I want to increase my business is going to come from. If I have things like that where I have to pay for a rent or something then I can put that in there and take into consideration those costs. So I started January with a thousand, by June I want to be up to five or six thousand but I have these expenses like this festival rent that's going to come up that I can input that and figure out how much I'll need to make from this event to make it worth it.

Monitoring profit. I can see okay, overall am I charging enough because if my income is less than my expenses then I probably need to evaluate what I'm charging for some of my products because they're not charging enough because I'm not making any money. So I think looking at it on an over summarized standpoint will give me a better picture of how I'm doing as far as a business.

Following up the clients. And then as well as options to look at who were the big spenders, client was over the past.. so let's say that March of last year we had these ten people that were your biggest clients a year ago. Okay, well, it's been a year now it pops up to them like here your top ten clients of last year's month, maybe you should reach out to them and tell them hey it's been a year, hope your stuff is going well but we have this cool product then you should come see us.

Sumall tracks your website data analytics for you so it lets you know how many people are interacting with your like posts and things like that. I'm moving over to being mostly on Facebook so Sumall will still be useful for me for that. I didn't really like their cash flow area so I'm only using it for data analytics right now.

I have one tab where I keep track of what I've spent on ingredients or like products, like stickers and jars and boxes, all of those things and then I have a tab where I keep track of what my inflows are.

And there's another tab that compares to you so I can see if I'm working at a profit or a loss on how to get out of there.

I have another tab with people's names but I'm terrible at that because some of them are in the sheet, some of them are not, some of them are just contacts in my phone and so I need to work on that.