The numbers behind my ✨almost✨ $50k quarter as an Accounting Agency CEO
Almost $50k in a single quarter and I'm about to make it significantly less exciting 😏
Jk jk jk what I mean to say is that your total revenue is actually so boring when it’s paired with the more interesting numbers that actually tell the story of your month/quarter/year and if I can de-influence you from going all starry-eyed when someone says “$50k quarter” with no context, then I’ve done my job here.
You may have questions about my numbers and I welcome them! Shoot me a DM on Instagram and reference this blog post when you ask!
I'm a Profit First girlie to my core, so the second a revenue number shows up in my head, it immediately gets the "okay but what's actually left" treatment, which is a very specific way to live but it'll save you from a lot of expensive surprises. After enough years of watching beautiful top line income numbers evaporate into P&Ls that look like crime scenes, you learn to stop leading with the pretty number.
HERE ARE THE NUMBERS
After top line revenue of $49,155.51, here's the rest of the story…
Cost of Services: $12,297.83
The software running on behalf of clients, the payment processing fees that take their little percentage off every transaction without saying thank you, the direct labor that makes delivery actually happen. This is the layer between what I charged and what I made, and for a service business it's the number that tells me whether my pricing has margin in it or whether I’vee been accidentally subsidizing your clients' operations with my own labor and calling it revenue.
Total Expenses: $29,837.56
Some choice expenses:
🖥️ Software: $1,091.32
💳 Interest: $1,377.18
💼 Contract Labor: $11,352.60
🍀 Advertising: $1,167
🔥 Business Coaching: $3,660.33
Contract labor is high and I knew it was going to be high because I have seasonal projects in development that front-load the people costs before the revenue catches up. That's what a build phase looks like inside a spreadsheet and every dollar was a decision I made on purpose.
Net Profit: $7,020.12
Seven thousand on almost fifty and I can see the face you're making right now 😭 I'm going to keep an eye on it and I'm also not going to spiral about it, and here's why: this is only Q1.
One quarter is a genuinely small piece of what a year actually looks like and the projects I started building in January and the investments I made in people and infrastructure will effect the wave of Q2, Q3, and Q4.
The margin will vary. It always does.
For the rest of the year, I’ll be watching:
Whether contract labor costs normalize as the seasonal projects complete and those revenue streams activate
Whether the advertising spend I front-loaded in Q1 starts converting in Q2
Whether the overall margin trend moves in the direction I planned for
It's also worth knowing: as an LLC taxed as a sole prop, my owner's draws are an equity reduction on the balance sheet, not a P&L expense. My take-home pay doesn't touch net profit the way a salary would, which is one of those entity structure details that makes the next number look like a glitch.
Take-Home Pay: $10,183.74
Higher than net profit?? The books are correct, I promise.
Owner's draws are reported on the balance sheet as an equity event, not on the P&L as an expense, and I had Profit First cash reserves from prior months sitting exactly where I put them. I paid myself well this quarter because I planned for it in advance.
The top line is where the screenshots happen, the middle of the P&L is where the actual information is, and one quarter of it is never the whole story.
Love ya ✌🏼✌🏼
