1. Bookkeeping and Business Records Records for business data beyond financial entries

2. Business Plan and Record Keeping You spent a lot of effort on the business plan, now you need a record keeping system to track all the details necessary to evaluate operational results with the plan Does your record keeping system allow you to make the evaluation beyond financial results?

3. Business Plan and Record Keeping The assumptions behind the business plan were developed with a lot of thought. Does your record keeping systems enable you to track results? Where surveys were used to support or create assumptions, does the tracking system allow for data to be collected to evaluate the results?

4. Volume and staffing Do you know your cycles/surges in sales? Pay day Fridays every second week 15 th and month end pay days Last week of the month – pensioners –Long weekends –Weather – do sunny days bring more customers? –Seasons

5. Volume and Staffing Do you have surges at coffee break and lunch time? Do your customers like to come in early before they work on on the way home? Do evening and weekend hours attract customers? Does your record keeping system help you identify sales patterns?

6. Member Assessment and Development Do you track sales/production by member? Some members are better at their jobs than others, can you use your records to place people where their talents are best suited? Do your records enable you to provide appropriate skill development to your members?

7. Marketing Where do your customers come from? Are you a destination or enroute? Are there demographics that will enable you to target advertising? –Geographically/neighbourhoods –Age or gender –Common interests or needs

8. Marketing Do you know the time from when you make orders until the suppliers deliver? Do you know how long it takes from when suppliers deliver until products are ready for sale? Are these times posted where all members can retrieve them easily?

9. Other records Contact information for –Members –Suppliers –Customers –Regulators –Custom brokers –Shippers/delivery –Maintenance