It was four years ago. I had a table promoting my business at an event and I decorated it with gold confetti in the shape of dollar signs. Brilliant, right?

It was great for that day. The table looked exactly as I imagined and it was an extra, little personal touch.

After the event, I packed up and went home, not thinking much more about the confetti until they started to reappear. This confetti has been showing up in my life to this day, four years later!! I just found some last week in an old briefcase.

This confetti is a lot like your financials. One day it’s set-up perfectly and everything looks grand and another day, a little piece comes back to haunt you or taunt you or maybe surprise you.

One of those pieces of confetti might have fallen off my table onto the floor and someone stepped on it, attaching to the bottom of their shoe, deeming it no longer in my control and out of sight, out of mind.

In your financials, that piece of confetti could represent an account you didn’t reconcile, a security deposit you forgot to expense, a client task you delegated to a team member. Our financials aren’t always right in front of us. It’s easy to lose track.

Think about each area of your business when you do your quarterly reviews and catch any pesky confetti pieces before they are too far gone.

One of those pieces of confetti might pop up at the right moment to remind you of something. This could be an email saying it’s time to pay your estimated taxes (due in June by the way) or a reminder that a customer is late on an invoice. If the confetti pops up, recognize it and take care of it.

If a customer isn’t paying you, it might be time to toss some confetti at that relationship and say farewell.

Confetti tends to stick to you, just like financials. You are very close to your own numbers and it can be tough getting it off your plate. But once you do, you can free yourself. Numbers are emotional and by hiring an independent and objective source (like PTCFOs) to work with those numbers, you can stop pulling unexpected confetti out of your hair.

Sometimes we see the confetti on the floor and keep saying to ourselves we need to pick it up, but we forget or we avoid it, so it stays there. This happens in financial situations, too. If you have a financial piece that needs to be picked up, get on the phone and have a conversation to get it resolved. The more you wait, the more that confetti inserts itself into the carpet or the cracks of the floor and the harder it will be to get it out without damage.

Lastly, nobody’s perfect. Confetti does unexpected things and can even affect other people, by attaching to them. If you make a mistake, own up to it and display integrity over all. Tackle it head on.

If tedious tasks and heaps of confetti are interfering with your daily business party, reach out and let’s chat. And if you see a dollar sign confetti piece in Philadelphia, it may have just been the inspiration for this newsletter.