This is an excerpt from Small Business School.

Jim: So we don’t know your trend whether you’re improving or not improving. Everything is trend and that’s all the same thing boils it down to day to day. If yesterday you sold a $100.00, is that good? Well it’s good if the day before you sold $50.00 right or it’s good if the same day the prior year you sold $50.00. So trend is everything in small business no matter whether you’re looking and trying to sell your business and then it’s particularly true.

Hattie: Right.

Jim: Or whether or not you’re trying to make assumptions on for budgeting purposes for forecasting purposes or whatever, so trend, frequency establishes trend and trend determines so much. If you just took one balance sheet, somebody like me can look at it and tell you how liquid the company is, but from your standpoint if you compare a balance sheet today to one yesterday you can see how your company is changing trend.

Hattie: How did you convince a banker to loan you the money to build this fabulous green house.

Chris: We had to build a business plan through all of our previous experienced it’s hard to get everything all.

Hattie: So did you have to go back to all financial statements, with your accountant coming to help you, how that happened?

Chris: Well, actually we did not have an accountant that time, so we just did it all it on our own and I guess it worked that okay.

Hattie: Because you’ve got the loan.

Chris: That’s right.

Hattie: Okay, now that you’re using an integrated accounting system. If you need another loan, is it going to be easier?

Chris: It was easier because we’ve already got a new loan under this new system.