When profit starts sliding, the first reflex is to grab the scissors. The real fix, however, is somewhere else entirely.
Most business owners respond to a profit dip in one of two ways. Some freeze because the whole picture feels overwhelming. Others start cutting subscriptions at random and hope the number improves. Neither one is an actual strategy. So by the time the quarter closes, the P&L looks the same and the business still has no idea where its money went.
What Makes Expense Grading Different
Expense grading is not about cutting everything in sight. Instead, it's about sitting down with every dollar that leaves your business and asking three simple questions. What happened? Why did I spend this? And what am I going to do about it? When you have to articulate why something belongs in your business, you find out pretty quickly whether it actually does.
Before I started Kickstart Accounting, I spent years in corporate as a CFO. There was no walking into a board meeting saying "profits are down" without a plan. That same discipline turned into the tool I now use with every CFO client at Kickstart. It's called expense grading, and in this episode of CEO Numbers Network, I walk through exactly how it works.
You'll learn:
- How to audit every vendor your business has paid in the last 12 months
- The A/B/C grading rubric I learned in corporate boardrooms
- Why writing the explanation matters more than the cut itself
- How to decide whether to keep, swap, or cut each vendor
- Why a 90% profit margin can actually mean your business is in trouble
👉 Want our team to run this expense audit alongside you? Apply for CFO support here!
Key Takeaways:
00:00 The CFO Boardroom Standard
04:18 Step 1: List Every Vendor From the Last 12 Months
05:02 Step 2: Grade Every Expense A, B, or C
06:55 Step 3: Defend Every Expense to the Board
08:20 Step 4: Keep, Consider, or Cut
09:25 When 90% Profit Margins Are a Problem
If you're ready to bring this kind of boardroom-level discipline to your business spending, this is where we come in.
👉 Apply for CFO Support: https://kickstartaccountinginc.com/the-cfo-solution/
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✨ Book a Call | https://kickstartaccountinginc.com/book-a-call/
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