Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!: 4 Keys to Unlock Your Business Potential
by Greg Crabtree, Beverly Blair Harzog · Greenleaf Book Group Press
Crabtree sets four operating benchmarks for owner-run businesses: pay yourself a market-rate salary, target ten to fifteen percent pretax profit, measure labor efficiency ratio against gross margin, and allocate the four uses of capital. Worked client examples throughout.
This link may earn us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Affiliate disclosure
More resources on Budgeting & Cost Control
The Great Game of Business, Expanded and Updated: The Only Sensible Way to Run a Company
Stack describes open-book management at SRC Holdings: sharing the income statement with every employee, running weekly huddles where line owners revise their own forecast numbers, and tying bonuses to a short list of critical cost and cash targets. Answers the part of cost control the accounting texts do not: how a budget actually gets enforced day to day when the owner is not the person spending the money.
Principles of Accounting, Volume 2: Managerial Accounting
Free peer-reviewed college textbook covering cost behavior, cost-volume-profit analysis, job and activity-based costing, the master budget and its components, flexible budgets, standard costs, and variance analysis, with worked problems and answer keys throughout. Chapter 7 (Budgeting) and Chapter 8 (Standard Costs and Variances) map directly onto forecasting and expense-tracking goals.