Hi there,

I remember opening a set of year end accounts and watching the profit figure come in lower than I had expected. Not catastrophically lower, just lower, in the way that makes you go back and reread the page to be sure you have not misunderstood it.

I want to be fair to accountants here, because we are one. This is not a story about competence. It is a story about timing, and saying that plainly earns more trust than a complaint would.

Here is the lag, explained simply. The work in those accounts covers April through to March. The accounts themselves get prepared over the summer. They land with you, finished and signed off, some time later in the year. By the point you are actually reading them, the decisions those numbers should have informed are already history. You cannot go back and change what you charged an associate in June using information that only reaches you in November.

We saw a sharp version of this ourselves. Costs across the sector moved by 89% in a fairly short window (you can read that post here), and most owners we spoke to found out well after the fact, once the movement was already sitting in the accounts rather than something they could still act on.

Here is what that actually costs, in concrete terms. An associate split that stayed the same for another year when it should have been renegotiated. A hygienist's hours left unchanged when the numbers no longer supported them. A recall gap that sat open for a full quarter because nobody flagged it in time to close it.

I am not asking anything of you in terms of a next step this week. I am asking something simpler. Reply and tell me what you found out too late in your own practice. Replies to this list are the strongest signal you can give me, and they shape what I write about here more than anything else does.

Speak soon,

Arun

Also worth knowing: Owner, Not Operator is on 14 October in Central London, an evening with Smita and me on the structure behind a practice that runs without you. Details here.