Entrepreneurs CFOOctober can still move

Your own pay can still be set to match what you actually did, if the payroll provider can still run it cleanly. A purchase you were going to make in January can move forward or back once you see cash. An estimate can be paid because the closed months support it, instead of because a percentage from last year felt familiar.

A hire can wait until the ninety-day line has room, or it can start because the line surprised you by having room. Pricing for the last quarter can change because the margin line has been thin since spring and you can finally see it. None of these require a new identity for the company. They require a month that is finished and a person willing to read it.

What cannot change is history. A month that did not tie does not become true because the calendar says October. We close it, or we leave the decision unmade. An unmade decision is more honest than a confident one standing on fog.

We open the closed months, the ninety-day line, and the list of choices you already know you are avoiding. We pick one. We say what the file implies. You decide. If the file implies nothing, we say that in the first ten minutes and we use the rest to name the missing document.

Estimates get a date on the cash line. If you have been skipping them, the line will look worse and more useful. We would rather you see the worse version in October than meet it as a notice. The practice does not invent a safe number. The closed months are the number.

If you want a longer list, we will not turn October into a retreat. One or two moves, written down, beat a page of intentions. The note from the call should fit on the same three pages you already read. If it needs a fourth page, we have wandered.

November and December are for doing the thing you chose, and for closing those months the same way. They are not a second chance to discover the year. The return, when it is prepared, should read like those choices. You should be able to point from a line on the return back to a month, and from the month back to the call.

If you find us in January, we still help. The help is more reconstruction and less choice. We will say which is which. Reconstruction is honorable work. It is just not the same feeling as an October decision, and we will not advertise it as if it were.

Bring the choice you have been postponing. Pay, a purchase, an estimate, a hire, or the election question. One is enough. We will tell you whether October still has room for it.