Posted: 09 December 2020 # Every Question Should Lead to a Service Engagement #### Business Advisory Services Updates Now is the time for accountants to be having a cup of coffee with SME clients to help set the business’ strategic plan for 2021. Some of the questions that you could ask include: - What are your top 5 sales lines? - What mark-ups do you make from these products? - What are your bottom 5 sales lines? - What mark-ups do you make from these products? - Do your team members know the composition of your stock so that they could identify: - “Star Products” – these are the items that you sell a lot of and have a high mark-up? - “Cash Cows” – these are the items that you sell a lot of that have a low markup? - “Problem Lines” – low sales but reasonable mark-ups? - “Dogs” – low sales with low mark-ups? You probably should be avoiding purchasing these items in the first place. Do you know what your “lock-up” is? (The number of days from the time that you paid for the stock until you get paid for it). The engagement from these questions would relate to a retail analysis evaluating the product mix and targeted mark-ups – will these generate enough gross profit for the business to trade profitably? ![Every Question Should Lead to a Service Engagement](https://www.essbiztools.com/images/zoo/blogs/bas-updates/BASUP044.jpg) ### Recent Posts... 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