Don’t let financial blind spots hold back your business
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Running a business can sometimes feel like driving through fog. You’ve got your hands firmly on the wheel, but you can’t see clearly enough what is ahead. You sense there could be hazards looming into view at any moment, things that can derail your journey if you’re not careful. This inevitably leads to a tense drive which is mentally draining and exhausting.
Your business is no different. These hazards and lack of clarity are your financial blind spots. And just like on the road, if you don’t have the right tools and guidance to see them, they can seriously impact your business’s long-term success.
Whilst most business owners quite rightly focus on delivering to customer needs, managing their team, and growing the business, financial blind spots often go unnoticed. The problem? What you can’t see can hurt you. And these overlooked financial areas—whether it’s poor cash flow management, hidden costs, or underperforming assets—can escalate quickly and stall your progress.
Enter the outsourced CFO: a strategic partner who’s able to spot these blind spots before they become bigger problems. Let’s break down how they do it and why ignoring financial blind spots is not an option for any business looking to grow.
What are financial blind spots?
Financial blind spots are areas in your business’s finances that are often overlooked, misunderstood, or mismanaged. These are the gaps that, when ignored, can lead to poor decision-making, reduced profitability, or even financial disaster. Common financial blind spots include:
Poor Cash Flow: Your sales are steady, you think your margins are set correctly, and yet somehow you are always worrying about cash and whether there will be enough for when you need it.
Hidden Costs: From subscriptions that are no longer used to inefficiencies in supply chains, costs that aren’t closely tracked can quietly drain your bank balance.
Underutilized Resources: Assets or employees that aren’t being used to their full potential can become a significant drag on profitability.
Overleveraging: Piling on too much debt can look like a short-term solution, but it creates financial vulnerability in the long run and repayment commitments become another cash flow drain to be managed closely.
Ignoring Planning: Your annual budget is gathering dust in a drawer, and you are making decisions without up-to-date financial information.
These blind spots can be sneaky, and it’s easy to miss them when you’re in the day-to-day grind. But when left unchecked, they can cause major damage—like having a slow leak in your car’s tyre that eventually leaves you stranded.
The problem with DIY financial management
Most business owners wear many hats, and often, financial management gets squeezed in somewhere between everything else. That’s where the trouble begins. Sure, you might have a bookkeeper keeping track of the basics, paying the bills and ensuring you are tax compliant, but that doesn’t mean you have a clear, strategic view of your company’s financial health.
DIY financial management can certainly work when your business is small and cash flow is tight, but as your company grows, so does the complexity of your finances. There are just too many things going on to be able to manage your finances from an Excel spreadsheet. Before you know it, those minor blind spots - like growing receivables or unchecked operational costs - turn into major issues.
These issues are what will keep you awake at night. Without the peace of mind from knowing you have a dedicated financial expert on your team, your business will struggle along in a low gear, with your energies focused on the wrong areas.
How an outsourced CFO brings clarity
An outsourced CFO acts like a financial navigator, helping you see clearly through the fog of your day-to-day operations. They have the skills and tools to uncover financial blind spots and transform them into opportunities for improvement.
Here’s how they do it:
Ensuring Strong Financial Foundations: The first thing your outsourced CFO will do is ensure that your accounting records are accurate and up to date. Poor or incomplete data coming into the business will lead to poor business performance reporting and more blind spots.
Providing Performance Visibility: Your business should have an annual budget and timely financial reports that allows you to make informed decisions.
Planning With Clarity: Cash flow is the life blood of any business, an outsourced CFO will build a bespoke business planning model with cash flow forecasting and key profitability drivers to ensure you always have the tools and visibility to plan your operations, growth, or change of direction.
Business Partnering: Outsourced CFOs are experts at identifying financial risks—whether it's overleveraged debt, volatile market conditions, or other threats. They provide commercial business advice to help you avoid financial pitfalls.
Improving Financial Performance: Your outsourced CFO will understand the key drivers of business performance and the levers to pull to make improvements. Whether it is ensuring your resources - such as employees, assets, or investments -are being used to their full potential, or whether blind spots in your gross margin are leaving money on the table, they will guide you in reallocating or optimizing them for better outcomes.
By providing visibility and proactively managing these aspects of your business, an outsourced CFO can keep your financial health on track and prevent small blind spots from snowballing into major issues.
Real world example: Catching a cash flow crisis before it hits
Let’s look at a common scenario. A small services company was experiencing excellent growth, which led to them increasing the size of their team, investing in sales and marketing, and winning some sizeable blue-chip contracts. Whilst sales were up and cash flow was sufficient to cover operating costs, they found themselves scrambling to find the cash flow to pay an ever-increasing BAS each quarter. As a result, the CEO decided to pause their ambitious growth plans as he was worried that his decisions with adversely impacting the business.
The CEO hired an outsourced CFO who stepped in, built a business planning model with integrated cash flow forecasting, and gave the CEO the tools and scenario modelling to allow him to understand how his growth plans were impacting cash flow. In addition, the outsourced CFO noticed a worrying build-up of debtors based on current practices which was impacting cash inflows.
By advising that additional administrative resources were required to manage the prompt invoicing and chasing of overdue debts, and analysing how the cost of this would be more than covered by improved liquidity, they stabilized cash flow. What could have been a cash flow crisis and a handbrake on business growth, was averted with visibility over planning and some commercial foresight.
Practical tip: Know your numbers
As a growing business, you may already be receiving monthly financial reports from your bookkeeper or accountant. To keep your financial blind spots in check, make sure you fully understand these valuable insights. Don’t just glance at them before casting them aside, look for trends, inconsistencies, and potential risks. Also, consider whether they are giving you sufficient visibility across all aspects of business performance.
If you don’t have the bandwidth to do this yourself (and many business owners don’t), or you are not clear about what information you should be monitoring, consider working with an outsourced CFO who can look after these areas for you.
Key takeaway: Avoiding financial blind spots is key to growth
Every business, no matter how successful, has blind spots. The difference between thriving and merely surviving is how well you can identify and address them. Financial management is not something a business owner should manage on their own. As your business grows, if you are starting to notice cash flow issues, increasing costs, or you just need peace of mind that you are on the right track, it’s time to bring in an expert.
An outsourced CFO doesn’t just report on your business problems - they help you avoid them entirely. By having visibility over business performance and clarity over future planning, they will reduce your financial blind spots and ensure that your business continues moving forward without a handbrake on growth.
So, the next time you’re feeling unsure about cash flow and the impact of making certain business decisions, remember, just because you don’t see the blind spots doesn’t mean they’re not there. And there’s no need to go it alone. Partner with an outsourced CFO who can build your financial foundations for growth, letting you focus on what you do best - running your business.
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