The day you opened your doors, you had an inkling of how much paperwork doing business would entail—from signing building leases to tracking customer receipts. But unless you were already familiar with bookkeeping basics, you might not have known just how important drawing up the right financial documents (and doing so frequently—at least once a month) would matter to your success.
How so? Because the right financial information helps you check your business’s temperature. Are you running too hot, burning through cash too fast? Or is your business too cold, leaving you with fewer sales than you need to turn a net profit? The documents we list below will help you find out. Keep reading to learn what these documents are, how they work, and how they can help you keep your business in the black.