What was your total revenue in recent years? It's a simple question, but you'd be surprised how different the answers can be. Because this department in the magazine is concerned with measurement against standards, it's important that we're always comparing apples to apples — or at least red apples to green apples instead of some other fruit. That means agreeing on what we mean by terms like “revenue.”
And, by the way, we're talking here about revenue calculations for management purposes, not for tax preparation. There are perfectly legal tactics (and plenty of illegal ones as well) that you can use to manipulate revenue to reduce taxes, but they are counterproductive if they fool you into thinking that your business is healthier than it actually is.
CASHMost small businesses running out of a check-book use a cash system. This doesn't mean that you are literally getting paid in greenbacks; it means that revenue is recognized whenever money is deposited, whether it's cash, check, or money order. Annual revenue is simply the sum of all these deposits from the first to the last day of the fiscal year.
Easy, yes, but it can get sticky if there are other sources of revenue besides remodeling. These should be subtracted from the total to give a true picture of remodeling revenue.
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