You sit down at your desk with a plan for the day. You know what needs to get done. You've got your coffee, your to-do list, and every intention of being productive. Then the phone rings. Or somebody needs something. Or you open your email to answer one message and suddenly realize you've spent forty-five minutes in your inbox. Before you know it, half the morning is gone and you haven't touched the thing you actually planned to work on. I'm curious what tends to eat up everyone's time.

I think sending an invoice is much easier than following up when it has not been paid. Even when the payment is clearly past due, I still find myself wondering how long to wait and how to word the reminder without sounding impatient. Does anyone else feel a little uncomfortable following up on an unpaid invoice, or have you done it enough that it no longer bothers you?

You're looking at your financial reports and notice that one expense category is quite a bit higher than usual. Your first thought might be that something was entered incorrectly. And sometimes that's exactly what happened. But maybe you paid an annual insurance premium this month. Maybe you had an unexpected repair. Or perhaps several expenses ended up in a category where they don't belong. Before you start changing transactions, take a look at what's actually behind that number. I've seen plenty of situations where a number that looked completely wrong made perfect sense once we looked at the details. And I've seen some where the details raised even more questions! The report is where you notice something. Figuring out what happened is where things get interesting.

Have you ever opened a financial report, noticed a number that didn't look right, and immediately assumed something was wrong? Maybe an expense category has a negative balance. Maybe an account shows more money than you expected. Or perhaps something looks completely different from last month. Sometimes there's an error. Other times there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. The important thing is not to start changing transactions just to make the number look better. Find out what's behind it first. And if you're not sure what you're looking at, ask! That's one of the reasons we have this community.