I frequently interact with business owners around finance because I’m a bookkeeper. Since most small businesses don’t have a CFO, and business owners typically don’t know enough about predictive analytics and numbercrunching to adequately drive sales marketing and operations, I find myself filling in some of the gaps.

Regardless of the type of business you are in, there’s one thing you need to know for sure, and that is which piece of your business you should focus on growing. Presumably you should grow the piece that makes the largest profits, takes the least labor, and is the most scalable.

But which piece of your business is that? This is where bookkeeping starts to be an incredibly powerful tool instead of just a tedious, time-consuming task. But most people who have a bookkeeper still don’t get this information from their books. Like Stephen Covey said you have to begin with the end in mind. What is the report you want to see? Then you have to design the bookkeeping around that.