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If Your Financials Were a Scoreboard, Would You Be Winning or Losing?

January 13th, 2025 | 5 min. read

By Matt Patrick

Who doesn’t love the rush of victory? You know, that moment when you beat your personal record, when your team pulls out the narrow victory, or when the underdog delivers the crushing blow to win the match. It’s the stuff that makes grown adults jump around like kids and bask in the glow of sweet, sweet victory.

Winning feels good. And as a business owner, you deserve to feel it too. But victory doesn’t come from sheer hustle—it takes more than brute force to put points on the board. If you want to win, you’ve got to keep score.

If you want to win—in sports or in business—you have to crunch the numbers.

Knowing how you’re doing is absolutely essential for the growth and sustainability of any business. In sports and in business, what separates the amateurs from the pros are the numbers. The stats, goals, and KPIs that show where you’ve been, where you’re headed, and how you’re stacking up. Sports teams have their analytics nerds, and businesses have accountants. (Yes, we’re the nerds—but we’re also the ones who help you win.)

We’re not saying that it’s easy. Many business owners avoid or procrastinate because It can be tedious, challenging, even grueling work. But each goal is like a step, even though it’s tough, it’s a step forward — higher and further than you’ve gone before. Each step makes you stronger and before you know it you’ll be outrunning the competition straight to the top.

Here are some ways we try and help our clients create a scoreboard and how to keep score (KPIs).

Decide the Value of the Players and the Points

Imagine for a moment that you’re in a heated competition, pursuing a goal with the intent to win, but you have no idea if you’re actually winning, losing, or if you’re even a threat to your opponent. It would be like playing Monopoly without knowing the value of homes vs. hotels or playing football without knowing the difference between a touchdown and a field goal. If you don’t know how to keep score how can you know if you’re winning or losing?

Now imagine running your business like that.

My guess is that you may not have to guess... Most business owners aren’t tracking their progress let alone any kind of proactive goal setting. You know it’s important but you’re already running hard and stopping now may seem like a setback.

What business owners must remember is that stepping back isn’t a setback — it’s a strategic step forward that shows you the numbers you need to win.

Determine the Scoring System

In business, your financials are the scoreboard. They tell you if you’re winning, losing, or falling somewhere in between. They’re your batting average, your field goal percentage, or your game-winning stats.

It also gives us something we can use to compare ourselves against others, like Wins Above Replacement (WAR for those baseball stat nerds). It can prove we are on the right track or it can alert us to potential problems that need to be addressed in the short-term and long-term.

Are you playing the game without a scoreboard?

The problem is that many business owners don’t know how to read their financials, don’t have their numbers up to date, and don’t have any clearly defined goals. 

If financials are the scoreboard, are you winning or losing? How does your business stack up where you want to be or against your competition? If you can't answer these questions, you will struggle to feel like you're winning, much less know that you're kicking your competitor's butt. 

Your numbers don’t have to be overwhelming. With the right tools and a clear system, you can figure out how your business stacks up and where to focus next.

Define the Right Goals

Most business owners treat goal-setting like a chore. They write down a few lofty ideas, stick them in a drawer, and forget about them until it’s time to do it again next year. That’s not a goal—it’s a box you’re checking off.

Good goals are what keep your business moving forward. But they need to be actionable, measurable, and tied to something that actually matters to you and your team. 

Goals and KPIs are the foundation of knowing how your business is doing and where it is going.

We suggest you pick one BIG goal (OK, no more than a couple). Then create small incremental action steps or focused measurements (KPIs) to help you stay on track.

The process of setting that BIG goal causes you to really look at where you want to go, formulate a plan, and then set that goal into motion. 

It’s also important to have a compelling reason behind the BIG goal. Aggressive sales numbers might motivate some people, but most need more. Tie your goals to your business’s vision and values, and show your team how achieving them benefits everyone. A team that feels invested will work harder to make it happen.

Focus on the Metrics that Matter

You (like many business owners) may feel overwhelmed by financial statements, KPIs, dashboards,  and spreadsheets with a lot of numbers. You ask yourself, “What numbers should I be looking at?”, and “What do the numbers tell me?”

A lot of the business owners we work with have a ton of questions and often don't even know where to start. They know that they should be looking at their numbers but often don’t have the time to try to figure it out on their own.

Some of the metrics you want to look at include:

  • Projected cash flow for the next 30, 60, and 90 days
  • Sales by product type
  • Sales forecast for the next 30, 60, and 90 days
  • Inventory turns over the course of a year
  • True labor burden as a cost-per-hour
  • Margins on your top 10 sales items and bottom 10 items

We help our clients determine the right scorecard for their business and then help them keep track of the score.

Discover Lead and Lag Indicators

Sports teams love stats, but not all stats are created equal. Some numbers—like shooting percentages—are lead indicators. They help coaches predict future performance. Others, like the number of wins, are lag indicators. They show what already happened.

Your business is no different. Lead indicators tell you if you’re heading in the right direction. Think: number of sales appointments, website visitors, or tables served at lunch. Lag indicators show whether you’ve achieved the results you were aiming for, like revenue growth or profit margins.

Both are important, but lead indicators are where the magic happens. They give you the chance to course-correct before you hit a wall.

Track the Metrics

Once your goals are set and you have an idea of what metrics you need to track, the next thing to tackle is how to get the information so that it doesn’t take the gazillion hours to read and the data is meaningful and actionable.

You should have a sound set of financials such as your P&L, balance sheet, cash flow reports, and possibly a scorecard so that you can make great decisions. Your scoreboard may also have metrics you’re looking at in your sales and marketing program, or customer service scores to let you know how you’re doing.

We help our clients keep score and work with them to make sure the scoreboard is tracking the right things. We recommend using tools like Fathom and Klipfolio that can help you pull everything into one place so you can see your progress at a glance.

Run Your Business Like You’re in It to Win

Running a business is hard, especially when you’re having to do it in the dark.

When you know your numbers, you’re in control. You can see what’s working, what’s not, and where to focus next. A good scoreboard won’t just make your business more efficient—it’ll make it more fun.

If you need help figuring out how to keep score, track KPIs, or build a dashboard that actually works, we’d love to help. 

Why Every Business Needs an Accounting Team in Their Corner PATS Blog Thumbnails (63)explains how having the right experts on your side can help you win faster, smarter, and with less stress.

Because every business owner deserves to win—and we’re here to help make it happen.