Lessons learned by helping thousands of businesses achieve financial success

Each business faces its own challenges, and sometimes the most successful obstacles become in opportunities for improvement. A few years ago, I met a young founder that runs a small but fast-growing D2C brand. They did all the right things – a solid product, a growing customer base and a passionate team. Still, they were constantly caught up, struggling with missed payments, raised sellers calls and cash flow confusion every month. When he contacted us for a solution, we carefully looked at their financial visibility and we were surprised to say the least. They had an unorganized financing setup with multiple covenant tools, no reliable accounting software, no real-time reports, no structured detection of debtors, and certainly no system-driven cash flow monitoring. It wasn’t the first time we saw such a thing. At Busy, we helped ~ 4 Lac businesses in 20+ countries. Even after all these years, the gap between ambition and performance still comes to one thing: financial clarity and discipline. Of all my years in the business, I have seen that businesses that are sustainably scale are obsessed with knowing where every rupee is going. I can remember working with a distributor in Pune who had an RS. 48 crore turnover, but no real-time visibility in their real cash profitability. We have implemented a solution that enables cash flow detection, the visibility of funds and reporting at cost center level. Within two quarters, the company was hampering operational overhead with 14% and released Rs. 1.2 crore in working capital. This is what visibility does. It gives you control, and control drives the performance. Compliance is another area that considers too many businesses reactive. But fines do not come up with warnings and can cost your business lakhs due to a single missed gring or unmarked Gstin Wana adjustment. If you have a system that proactively maintains reconciliation gaps, detailed audit routes and can validate the entries, it can work on the scale as a tool for softening risks. And if you ask me, I will still make cash flow the king of financial success, no matter what your sector is. I have seen countless businesses falling, not because they were not profitable, but because they did not expect debtors or delays in the payment. The ability to link billing, outstanding detection and credit control dashboards can literally save a business. For the matter, it pays early in the right tools. One of the distribution companies we worked with cut off from 15 to just 5 days and reduced accounting errors by 60% by simply switching to our software, which helped them bring their entire accounting system into a proper structure. Automatic reconciliation, HSN/GST valids, inventory valuation about Godowns and production can save 40-60% of the hand effort and significantly reduce the error rates if implemented correctly. In a growing business, such numbers can be the difference between stagnation and scale. And sometimes it is the small adjustments that lead to transformative shifts. A fit adaptable reporting, historical trend analysis and projection instrument can help with the forecast and budget. A conditional warning for stock can occur too much purchase. A role -based access can bring liability. Incorporating these functions into daily activities, it forms a culture of financial discipline. I also saw business owners assume that financial reporting is only for the CFO or Finance Team. If you are a business owner, my advice is to use financial reporting to its full capacity. If used strategically, miss reports, aging analysis, fund flow summaries and profitable profitability reports can form the basis of your decision-making process. It helps to unlock revenue opportunities, emphasize the margin leaks and allow cost control in general. What is the difference between a business that responds and one that leads? Often it is who reads the reports and how often. The scaling down of a business without financial discipline is like building a tower without a blueprint. I saw businesses expanding to five branches in two years and collapsing under unpaid taxes, mismanaged debtors and unpaid expenses. Growth without structure is chaos. And trust me when I say that financial chaos is expensive. The essence of all these lessons is one truth: Your accounting platform is not just a ledger. It must be your growth car. At Busy, we spent decades to refine tools that do more than rail numbers-they unlock opportunities. Here is what I would suggest, from one business owner to another: Don’t wait for a crisis to check your financial systems. Ask yourself today – can your software warn you before things go wrong? Can it help you see around corners? Are they empowering decisions or does it just take on history? If you do not get clear answers, you know what that means. Because financial success is never a coincidence, it is designed! Brijesh Agrawal serves as CEO and Managing Director of Busy Infotech Private Limited, a leading business accounting software provider in India, acquired by Indiamart IntermeH Ltd. in 2022. He is also the co-founder and executive director of Indiamart Intermeh Ltd., India, the largest online B2B market, in 1996. Mint accepts no editorial involvement or responsibility for errors, omissions or accuracy of content. Do you want to story as displayed above? Click here!