Do this in 15 minutes: the 5-number health check for your books

You don't need a full audit to know if your books are in trouble. You need five numbers.

Open your QuickBooks (or whatever you use) and check these right now:

1. Bank balance in your system vs. your actual bank statement. Do they match? If not, you have unreconciled transactions.

2. Open your Profit & Loss for the last completed month. Is there anything in 'Uncategorized' or 'Ask My Accountant'? If yes, those are blind spots.

3. Check your Miscellaneous Expense account. If it's more than 5% of total expenses, someone is dumping transactions there instead of categorizing them.

4. Pull a balance sheet. Do your loan balances match your most recent statements? If they're off by more than a few dollars, your debt tracking is broken.

5. Try to pull a profit report for a specific property or project. Can you do it? If your system can't show you profit by deal, you don't have job costing set up.

Score yourself:

5/5 = Your books are solid. Keep going.

3-4 = You have some cleanup to do but it's fixable.

0-2 = Your books need serious attention. Don't panic. Just know that the longer you wait, the harder it gets.

Drop your score below. No judgment. I've seen every number.

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