Eight Months of Numbers Will Tell You What April Looks Like
Ask most business owners how the year is going and you'll get an honest answer that isn't really an answer. "Pretty good." "Busier than last year." "Better than spring, anyway."
We're not being critical. That's how it feels from the inside. You judge the year by how the bank account feels on the 15th and the 30th, by whether payroll went out without you thinking about it, by whether you had to look at the credit card balance before saying yes to something. That's a real signal. It just isn't a number, and you can't plan around a feeling.
The good news is that by September you already have everything you need to turn the feeling into a number.
Two-thirds of the year is enough
A tax projection sounds like fortune telling. It isn't. It's arithmetic with a few reasonable assumptions in it.
By the end of August you have eight months of actual results. You know your seasonality better than anyone and you know if the fourth quarter is your best or your slowest, you know what November does. Add four months of informed estimate to eight months of fact and you get a full-year picture that is close enough to make decisions with. Not perfect. Close enough.
Close enough is a massive upgrade over not knowing.
What goes into it
Here's what we need in front of us:
Profit and loss for January through August
Balance sheet as of August 31
Payroll summary through your most recent check date, including what you've paid yourself
Last year's business and personal returns
Estimated payments made so far this year, and the dates
Depreciation that carries to the next tax return
Anything unusual — a sale, a settlement, a new loan, a new owner, a spouse's job change
That last one matters more than people expect. Your business return and your personal life meet on the same 1040. A spouse taking a higher-paying job, a child aging out of a credit, a house sale — these move your tax bill even though nothing changed inside the business.
The honest prerequisite: books you can trust
This is the part we have to be straight with you about, and we want to say it without any judgment in it, because we see it in good businesses run by smart people all the time.
A projection is only as good as the numbers underneath it. If the books are four months behind, if there's a pile of uncategorized transactions, if owner draws are sitting in "miscellaneous expense," if the checking account hasn't been reconciled since spring — then what we'd be projecting isn't your business. It's a rough sketch of your business.
You don't need perfect books. You need books that are current and reconciled, with the big categories in the right places. If yours aren't there, that is the actual first step, and it is usually a smaller job than people fear. Most catch-up work we do takes days, not months.
What comes out of it
A finished projection answers four questions:
What you're on track to owe for 2026, business and personal together
Whether your estimated payments are ahead, behind, or about right — and what to do about September 15 and January 15
How much to set aside per month between now and April so the bill is already funded when it arrives
Which planning moves are actually worth making in your situation, and which ones would just be busywork
That fourth one saves people the most money and gets the least attention. Half of good tax planning is knowing which advice doesn't apply to you.
What it changes day to day
In the business, you stop guessing. You can price a job in November knowing what the profit is really worth after tax. You can decide on the equipment, the hire, the December bonus, with the full cost in front of you instead of a hunch.
At home, it's simpler than that. You know the number. You set money aside in pieces you don't feel instead of finding a lump sum in April. You stop carrying a low-grade question around with you all fall. We have had clients tell us the projection was worth it just for that, even in years when the number wasn't good news.
What it takes to get started
Pull the reports listed above and in most accounting software that's a few minutes and send them over. If you're a bookkeeping client of ours, we already have them and you don't have to do anything. Then we sit down for about an hour, in person or on a call, and walk through it together.
If your books need attention first, say so up front. We'll scope that honestly before we start.
Who we are
For more than twenty years, Business Advisory Services LLC has handled accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, tax preparation, tax resolution, and business advisory work for small businesses, from our offices in Middleton and Eau Claire. Most of our clients are owner-operators. We speak plainly and we don't bill you for being confused.
Let's put a number on your year
Call the office at 608-831-4900, ext. 801. Or call us on our cell phone at 608-347-3010. Tell us what kind of year it's been and where your books stand, and we'll figure out what's realistic to do before December.
Next week: the one-time events that turn a good year into a bad April.
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