Webinar Recap: Your 2021 Financial Plan & How to Come Back Strong

Wow! We’re over halfway through the year. How did that happen?

Since we’ve passed that important milestone, we thought it would be a good time to check in and see how diesel repair shops of all stripes were doing with their yearly financial goals, if they had any. So we decided to host a webinar about shop finances and how a shop that isn’t meeting their goals can make a correction—hence the title, Righting the Ship.

For this webinar, Jacob and Chris brought in the expertise of Robby Gilbert, Fullbay’s Director of Finance and general accounting guru. It’s an awesome deep dive into shop finances featuring lots of charts and information about regional labor rates, and we recommend you watch the entire thing. But if you’re browsing on your coffee break or want to make sure this webinar is right for you, keep reading for our high-level recap.

The webinar covered the following:

REVIEWING YOUR 2021 FINANCIAL PLAN

Here’s a key tip: How detailed your plan is, and how often you review it, is up to you—but you should review it. Otherwise, Chris wonders, “How do you improve? It’s like trying to hit a goal without a goalpost.”

Accounting is the language of business, and reviewing budgets is part of that. “As soon as you start looking at something consistently,” Robby says, “you can see what did happen or didn’t happen, and make a better decision.”

What should you look for in your review? While the webinar goes into more detail, you should always be keeping an eye on the below:

• Revenue targets
• Gross margins
• Operating expenses
• Curveballs

These all may seem pretty complicated if you haven’t done much financial planning. But we’ve got you! In the next segment of the webinar, the guys broke it all down for those who aren’t quite sure where to start.

BACK TO THE BASICS…OF FINANCE

If you haven’t already checked out the financial plan we offered in our previous webinar, that’s okay! You can check it out here and then follow along as the guys provide some basic financial advice.

“To run a business,” Jacob says, “you have to have basic financial discipline.”

To help you build that discipline, the guys discussed the following:

• What does the perfect Profit & Loss (P&L) statement look like for your shop
• Reviewing fixed vs. variable costs
• Calculating your ideal labor rate
• Reviewing where you’re generating revenue and fixing your leaky buckets
• Recouping shipping costs (correctly!)

Whew! That’s a lot of basic financial information in one section. If you’ve absorbed all of it and are ready to charge on ahead, well, the next section is for you.

HOW TO MAKE ADJUSTMENTS FOR A STRONGER SECOND HALF

So, you’d like to finish up the year stronger than you started. To do that, you’ve got to understand some of the unique issues shops are facing in 2021:

• Supply chain issues
• Unprofitable customers
• Hiring and retaining technicians
• Absorbing price increases

The guys go into detail about how you can meet each of these issues head-on, and what adjustments you can make to ensure you still turn a profit despite them.

HOW CAN FULLBAY HELP YOU OUT?

The crew at Fullbay is always looking for new ways to help shop owners.

That’s why we’re launching the Fullbay Marketplace, an integrated marketplace inside Fullbay that gives you a pipeline to vendors—allowing you to source parts within the app. It’ll go live in mid-August, and everyone who uses Fullbay can put it to work for them.

We’re also trying to help heavy-duty shops gain more customers. How? By building you a place on the internet. Dieselmatic will create a home on the internet for your shop, complete with SEO optimization and maintenance, plus they can run all of your advertising needs for you as well.

And hey, if you like our webinars and our blogs, and you’re ready to start improving your shop operations, why not try our free demo? We can’t wait to show you what we can do!