What Smart Business Owners Do Mid-Year
Authored by: Brett Leibfried — Partner, CPA | Date Published: June 25, 2026
Mid-year financial planning is one of the most valuable habits a business owner can build, and most skip it entirely. By the time December arrives, many owners are scrambling to make last-minute decisions with almost no room to maneuver. June and July are different. You have six months of real financial data in hand, and six months remaining to act on what you find. That window is where proactive owners set themselves apart. Here’s what smart business owners are doing right now, and why it matters before year-end closes in.
Are Your Year-to-Date Financials Telling the Full Story?
A true mid-year review goes beyond a quick look at the numbers. Start by pulling your profit and loss statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. Compare current results to your original goals and projections. Then compare performance to the same period last year. What do you see? What do you wish was different? This is valuable information to discuss with your tax advisor, as you are meeting throughout the year.
For example, a construction company planned for $1.2 million in revenue by June. When the owner pulls the P&L, she sees $890,000 and realizes two large contracts were pushed to Q3. Without that review, she would have kept spending at her original pace, leading to tight cash flow. With it, she adjusts her hiring timeline and vendor payments before the pressure builds.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Are revenues ahead of or behind projections, and do you know why?
- Are expenses creeping up without a corresponding increase in revenue?
- Are there line items on the P&L that have grown without a clear reason?
- Does your balance sheet reflect a business that’s building strength or absorbing losses?
Confident business growth comes from knowing your numbers well enough to act on them. If you haven’t sat down with your financials yet this year, our team is glad to walk you through them.
Updating your Personal Financial Statement
Most business owners stop at their business financials, if they review their numbers at all. Take it a step further and update your Personal Financial Statement (PFS) twice a year. This ensures that you are always ready to provide a copy to your bank for quicker turnaround times on lending requests. But more importantly, the PFS is the true measure of your wealth building. Of course, your business may be a large piece of your nest egg, but it likely isn’t the entire picture. This forces you to consider all assets. And helps you identify which assets are appreciating and depreciating. This helps make better investment decisions into the future.
Most don’t play golf without keeping score, why would we handle something as important as our personal finances without a scorecard?
Are Your Biggest Expenses Still Worth It?
Every growing business has expenses that made sense at one point and never got questioned again. Mid-year is the right time to review your largest spending categories and ask whether each is still earning its place.
Start with payroll, contractor costs, software subscriptions, rent, and cost of goods sold. Then look at what each category is producing for the business.
Look closely at three specific areas:
- Contractor classification: Misclassifying employees as independent contractors is one of the more common mistakes that draws IRS scrutiny. It can result in back taxes, penalties, and interest. If you’re regularly directing how and when someone works, they may meet the legal definition of an employee, not a contractor. It’s worth reviewing before year-end, not after.
- Software and subscriptions: Businesses frequently accumulate tools that go unused. A mid-year pass through recurring charges often surfaces hundreds in monthly spend with nothing to show for it.
- Missing deductions: You can only claim deductions that you can back up. Many owners lose write-offs because their documentation is missing at the time of filing. Set up a simple system now with a dedicated folder, a mileage log, and a habit of noting business purposes on receipts.
This review isn’t about cutting for the sake of cutting. It’s about making sure every dollar in the business is working.
Is Your Cash Flow Keeping Up with Your Profit?
One of the most important things we regularly remind clients is that a profitable business can still run out of cash. Profit is an accounting figure. Cash is what keeps the lights on, payroll funded, and vendors paid. They’re not the same thing, and treating them as if they are is one of the more costly assumptions a business owner can make.
A mid-year cash flow review should include:
- Accounts receivable (AR) aging: Who owes you money, and how long has the invoice been open? The longer receivables sit, the more pressure they put on your working capital. If clients are routinely paying late, now is the time to tighten your follow-up process or revisit your payment terms.
- Accounts payable (AP): Are you managing vendor payment terms well, or leaving cash on the table by paying early when you don’t need to?
- Upcoming large expenses: Equipment purchases, estimated tax payments, and payroll increases should already be on your radar. Build toward them intentionally rather than absorbing the hit when they arrive.
- A 90-day cash flow forecast: Most businesses that struggle with cash flow aren’t struggling because they’re unprofitable. They’re struggling because they’re reacting instead of planning. A short-term forecast gives you visibility to make decisions ahead of the curve.
Clean, current books are the foundation of any reliable forecast. If your bookkeeping is behind, getting it up to date is the first step.
Are Your Original Business Goals Still on Track?
At the start of the year, most business owners set goals: a revenue target, a new hire, a market expansion, a product launch. Mid-year is the point where those goals either build momentum or quietly fade.
Take time to ask:
- Which goals are on track and what’s driving that progress?
- Which have fallen behind, and is it a temporary delay or a reason to reprioritize?
- Are there goals that no longer make sense given what’s changed in the business or market?
A staffing firm that planned to open a second location in Q3, for example, may look at its mid-year numbers and realize the first location still has untapped capacity. Pivoting that capital toward retention rather than expansion could yield better results. Mid-year is the right time to make that call, with half a year remaining to execute. Making it in November, under pressure, rarely ends well.
Is Your Business Protected as It Grows?
Growth changes things. As your revenue, headcount, or operations expand, the risks your business carries often expand right along with them. Mid-year is a good time to make sure your protective structure is keeping pace.
Review these specific areas:
- Insurance coverage: Has your business grown this year? Your coverage limits may need to be updated to reflect your current revenue, payroll, or physical assets.
- Separation of finances: Business and personal finances should be clearly separated. Commingling them complicates your books and creates problems if you’re ever audited.
- Bookkeeping condition: Organized, detailed financial records are your strongest defense in an audit. If your books aren’t clean enough to hand over today, that’s worth addressing before year-end.
- Succession and buy-sell agreements: If you have a business partner, are your agreements still current and reflective of the business’s current value? These documents are easy to let drift, and the cost of that drift shows up at the worst possible time.
Taking an hour now to review these items is far less painful than addressing gaps under pressure.
Ready to Take Control of Your Second Half?
Smart business planning doesn’t happen in December. Finishing the year strong requires looking at the numbers in June, while you still have the runway to make actionable decisions.
From my perspective as a partner here at MBE CPAs, a mid-year review is the most underutilized tool for growth. At MBE CPAs, we work directly alongside you to read what your financials are telling you and help you act on it. Let’s sit down for a mid-year review to get a clear picture of where you stand and map out a practical path forward.