Thanksgiving – So Much to Be Thankful For!

Moving a bit away from the usual postings about the benefits of marketing and how much fun it is to read and understand financial statements and all the other joys of owning and running a veterinary practice, we do want to take the opportunity to reflect on all that we have to be Thankful for.

Yes, times they are a-changing.  In the good ole days, clients always said “yes” to our recommendations, we hung out our shingle and they beat a path to our door.  We didn’t have to worry about the internet, or vaccine clinics, or spay/neuter clinics or any of the myriad of other problems/challenges that consume us.

However, as we have all heard so many times, with every challenge comes an opportunity.  We are handed a lemon, lets figure out how to make lemonade.  We have had to sharpen our skill when it comes to running our businesses.  But deep down, can’t we admit that it is a good thing?  Understanding how our business runs will help us to make better decisions which will lead to better outcomes.  It costs more to run our practices today, but look at the wonderful outcomes we are achieving!  My Jack Russell is 18 years old!  By Jack Russell standards that is a long life.  When I first bought my first horse, more years ago than I care to remember, I can remember thinking that if a horse lived to be 20 that was a long time.  Today, we have many horses that are living well past twenty, and even well past thirty.  I like to think that the advances that have been made in veterinary medicine plays a small part in contributing to that longevity.

Employees were so much easier to work with back then.  They worshipped the ground we walked on, were willing to work for nothing, and knew to keep their mouths shut and just do what they were told.  But isn’t it secretly nice to have well trained employees who can help lighten our load of caring for all of our patients?  Doesn’t it help us sleep better at night knowing that if we do start to do something crazy, one of our team members will speak up and ask us, politely, hopefully, if we really do intend to spay the male cat?  I know, it never happens in your practice, but every once in a while, the best of us, fall asleep at the switch, get over tired, or distracted, and we start to do something that we will regret.  Sometimes asking our team members for help on an issue that we are struggling with, can actually lead to a better solution than we could come up with.   Yes, it does happen.

As we are coming to the end of 2011, we do want to let each and every one of our clients know how thankful we are for the opportunity to interact with them, and hopefully bring help to them as they deal with their business issues each and every day.  We want to thank the people with whom we work each day on coming up with solutions to our client’s problems.  We want to say how grateful we are for those individuals with whom we  interact with on committees and programs.  While some of these committees may be time consuming they are always a learning experience in many ways.

Taking the time to reflect on all the many people and things for which we are truly grateful can help us put our lives into perspective.  I have frequently encouraged clients who are dealing with overwhelming issues to keep a gratitude journal and it is amazing how that has helped.  I do encourage any of you who are looking for new ways to deal with your many challenges to start to keep a Gratitude Journal.  That simply means that at the end of each day, before you leave work, take a few minutes and reflect back on your day.  See if you can’t list three things for which you are truly grateful.  Once you start, I think you will like it!

Your Electronic Safety Net

I recently got a call from one of our clients whose computer system crashed and they had to bring in their IT person to restore as much data as possible. Unfortunately, the person who had originally set up their company’s computer system had not included QuickBooks in the data that was backed up each night and so there was no backup in their system for their financial data. Luckily, they had just sent us a backup file not long before, which we were able to restore on their end, and they were back up and running with only a short period to re-create. It was a narrowly averted disaster, but brought to mind the importance of having a system in place for your backups.

Ideally, there should be two sets of backups for your system– one on site and one off-site. The off-site backup is hopefully one you will never have to use, but is there in case anything terrible happened to your entire system or to the building. With the advent of “cloud computing”, offsite backups are easier than ever to set up and your IT person should be able to set you up with one. Your monthly backup file to Strategic also serves as an off-site backup for your financial data at, so you have one thing checked off your list! The on-site backup can be saved to an existing computer in the clinic or else to an external hard drive. Since each clinic is set up differently, your local IT person is the best person to help you set up the specifics for your clinic.

For your financial data, whether you use Quickbooks or Peachtree, don’t just rely on the system being backed up, but instead, make a backup of your data periodically. How often should you do it? Often enough that if you ever lost your financial information and had to restore a backup to get back up and running, you wouldn’t have to re-enter volumes of information. If that means a weekly backup or a daily one is up to you, but be realistic about how much you want to sit down and re-enter. It takes 20 seconds to make a backup before you close the program and hours to re-enter, so more backups are better than less. You don’t have to keep a computer full of old backups- delete the old ones periodically to make room for the current ones

What is most important is that no matter what kind of backup system you have in place, you check it periodically.

Are there error messages on it?

Are the backups successful each night?

Some of the practice management softwares don’t backup properly at night unless a particular computer in the clinic is left on with the software running. An accidental shut-off of that computer can mean your backups that you think are running, aren’t.

So check your system to be sure you have an electronic safety net in place. For more help on setting up your backup system, please contact us at Strategic, we’re here to for you!

What is SEO anyway?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and while many people are eager to talk about SEO, not many understand it, much less know how to use it.  Simply put, SEO is what helps your website show up when clients are searching for you on the internet.  Each search engine has their own method and algorithm that ranks sites; however, Google is king of search so we’ll talk specifically about them.

So, how does Google decide who goes where?

Google has bots.  Don’t worry, they don’t bite.  Instead, they crawl the internet searching and analyzing web pages.  (Michelle pictures them to be like her Roomba, just following the pattern until the work is done and that happens to be great way to look at it.)  When the google bot arrives at your web page, it’s going to evaluate the information listed there.   Now, Google keeps their algorithm under tight security, so no one knows the exact method.   BE AWARE – because the algorithm is a secret, it’s left a ton of gray area.  Unfortunately, that gray area creates an opportunity for less than honest business in SEO.  It’s important you have some knowledge to know what’s real and what’s a real bad idea!

Let’s keep it basic and break it down to 4 major categories:

1.  Keywords and content

You must anticipate what your clients will be searching.  Make sure you are using terms in their language and using them appropriately.  You must have content.  Lists of services are not enough to climb those ranks.  (email Marci at marci@strategicveterinaryconsulting.com for TWO BONUS hints on how to improve your keywords and content)

2.  Usability

Make sure your site is navigated easily.  If there is not a button linking to a page on your website, the bot can’t find it.  So make sure users and bots can see all the information you’ve created.

3.  Linking

DO NOT pay a company for links.  If you haven’t seen the spam saying “want to get your site to #1” then you will.  These companies can create linking for you; however, it will do more to harm your site than help in the long run.  Google bots are clever and will know whether a link is good and relevant or fluff!  Instead, partner with local business or contacts in your profession.

4.  Social Media

Social media, just months ago, was a bit of a wild card; however, your social media profiles do affect your Google results.  If you’re not using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. then you need to start TODAY.

Please remember, there are many people using the term SEO and some using it for their benefit, not yours!  For help understanding and tuning into these 4 categories, contact Strategic and find out how we can help you take your website from a big bill to big bucks!

Nine Ways Savvy Practice Owners Use Accounting

Are YOU using Accounting to your Advantage?

1. Managing a practice implies that you must understand how to make a profit.  You must understand a good profit model so you can clearly see what is going on in your practice finances and analyze what is happening when any of the key factors changes.  Cost of Goods Sold goes up, Profit goes down.
2. Understand operating leverage.  Not all revenue is created equal.  We typically say that for every dollar in revenue a certain percentage goes to Cost of Goods Sold, a certain percent to salaries, a certain percent to fixed costs and, hopefully, a certain percent to net profit.  But in all reality, once your fixed costs, and I am going to include staff salaries in this number, a larger percent falls to the bottom line.  That means more profit!
3. Profit is not cash flow.  Revenue does not always mean cash coming in and expenditures do not equal cash going out.  Critical to understand that difference.
4. If you are in the black (profitable), know where the green (cash) is. While some believe that Cash is King, it is critical to manage both profit and cash flow.
5. Understand the various accounting methods and which one is appropriate for what you are trying to accomplish.  Don’t leave your accounting method choice up to your accountant.  The cash method may be “easier” but doesn’t help much with managing.  Managing your practice is important, but retiring the national debt single handedly may not be in your best financial interest.
6. Some budgeting is better than none.  You don’t have to spend your entire year and all of your team’s efforts on developing a budget for your practice.  You aren’t General Motors, or the US Government (And we all know how well the government budgets!).  You can do your budget yourself on a single piece of paper for a limited purpose (having enough money to pay the real estate taxes and insurance bills, for example) can pay handsome dividends.
7. Develop Better Financial Controls.  Murphy’s Law applies to veterinary practices!  If things can go wrong at the worst possible time, they will.  If something is wrong, you need to know it as soon as possible, so you can do something about it when hopefully it is still a small problem.  Monitoring results against  your budget, against published veterinary practice benchmarks, and probably most importantly, monitoring against your own practice’s benchmarks allows you to spot issues early on.  You can then focus your attention on these variances when there is time to do something about the problem.  Cash flow from your veterinary practice’s operational results is something that you monitor like a hawk.
8. Be aware of where you stand on your tax situation.  If you don’t understand your entity classification – what does it mean to be a Limited Liability Company, LLC, a partnership, an S corporation, a sole proprietorship, make an appointment with your accountant, and learn.  There are significant differences to the type of entity you are and your business decisions will be different depending on what kind of legal entity you are.  Not all veterinary practices are S corporations.  It makes sense for some of them to be C corporations, or LLCs or even in some cases sole proprietorships.  But just like with your clients, an educated client is generally a better client.
9. Share your financial operating results with your key players.  You expect your team to think like an owner, but you don’t give them the training or information to do so.  Open Book Management can provide huge benefits to the successful outcome of your veterinary practice.  You may not want to put your entire financial statements on an overhead for them to see, buy sharing Key Performance numbers with them is important.

Your financial statements are not something you do just to prepare your tax return once a year.  They will provide you with important information to assist you in achieving the goals you have for your Practice.