What January Looks Like From November

Why this is a November job

December does not allow planning. Whatever is not decided by the end of this month gets decided in January, when it is already happening.

January is also the month with the least income and a concentration of costs, which is a combination worth seeing in advance.

Most of what makes January difficult was committed to in the autumn: stock ordered, subscriptions renewed, advertising scheduled, staff hours agreed.

So the useful exercise now is not a plan for January, it is a short list of decisions that cannot wait.

What actually lands in January

• Returns from December.
• Annual renewals clustered in the first quarter.
• Card bills for the stock you bought.
• Quiet demand in most sectors.
• Staff hours agreed for a busier period.
• Tax and filing deadlines.

The concentration is the problem rather than any individual item, since each is manageable alone and they arrive together in a month with the lowest income of the year.

Do the cash arithmetic now

The single most useful hour available this month.

List what is due to leave the account in January and February, with dates: renewals, supplier invoices, card payments, wages, rent, tax.

Then estimate what comes in, using last January rather than an optimistic figure, and remember that December's card takings may not settle until January and may be partly reserved.

Subtract, and look at the worst week rather than the monthly total, since a month that balances can still have a fortnight that does not.

Where the answer is uncomfortable, you now have six weeks to act, which is a completely different position from finding out on the tenth of January.

Most businesses have never done this and are surprised by a month they have had every year.

Find the renewals before they find you

Since these cluster and are individually forgettable.

Domains, hosting, software subscriptions, insurance, memberships, and licences frequently renew in the first quarter because that is when they were first bought.

List them with dates and amounts, from the card statement rather than from memory, since the forgotten ones are the ones not in anybody's memory.

Then decide now which ones you are keeping, since a renewal that arrives unexamined renews.

Cancel the ones you are not using while there is time, because most require notice and a cancellation attempted on the renewal date is a payment.

That list is worth keeping permanently, since it will be needed again next year and reconstructing it is the tedious part.

A worked example

A business did this exercise in late November for the first time.

They found eleven renewals in January and February totalling more than they expected, including three subscriptions nobody had used since spring.

December's card settlement was due to arrive in two instalments, the second in mid-January, which they had assumed would be available at the start.

The worst week showed a shortfall they could cover by delaying one stock order and cancelling the three unused subscriptions.

Both decisions took ten minutes in November and would have been a difficult fortnight in January.

They also moved two renewal dates to spread them, which most providers allow on request.

Decide the three things now

Rather than arriving in January with a list of twenty.

What you will stop doing, which is easier to decide when you are busy enough to see what is not earning its place.

What your prices are next year, since deciding that in November means it is settled before the first January quote.

And the one improvement January is for, chosen now while the reasons are fresh rather than in the first week when everything looks equally urgent.

Write those three down and nothing else, since a longer list is the thing that produces no action.

Turn things off before you close

Because things left running are the avoidable part of January's cost.

Advertising scheduled through a period when nobody is buying spends real money for nothing.

Decide the dates it pauses and resumes now, and set them, since nobody will do it on the twenty-third of December.

The same applies to anything scheduled to publish, send, or renew over the break, which should be reviewed while there is attention to give it.

And check what happens automatically in your absence, since the answer occasionally surprises people.

Book the quiet time deliberately

Since it is the only period most small businesses get and it disappears if unclaimed.

Put the actual dates in the diary now: when you are closed, when you are working but not available, and when the one improvement happens.

Tell customers the closed dates, which has to happen early enough to be seen.

And decide what you will not start, since January enthusiasm produces commitments that February resents.

A quiet month with three decisions already made is worth considerably more than one spent working out what to do with it.

Write down what December actually taught you

While it is happening rather than afterwards, since none of it survives the break.

Keep one page open and add a line whenever something goes wrong or works unexpectedly well: what broke, what customers asked, what you ran out of, what took longest.

By the end of the month that page is the most valuable planning document the business has, and it costs a few seconds at a time.

Read it in the second week of January, when there is attention available and the events are still recent enough to act on.

Without it, next November begins with everybody remembering that December was hard and nobody able to say precisely why.

The counter-case

Not every business has a quiet January.

Some trades are busiest then, and for those this is the wrong month to plan around entirely.

Planning can also become the activity, and a business that spends November forecasting rather than selling in its best month has the balance wrong.

And a genuinely tight cash position is not solved by a spreadsheet, though it is considerably better to see it in November than in January.

Do the cash arithmetic, list the renewals, decide three things, and set the advertising dates.

This week

1. List January and February outgoings with dates.
2. Use last January for income, not a guess.
3. Look at the worst week, not the month.
4. Find every renewal from the card statement.
5. Cancel what you are not using, now.
6. Set advertising pause dates.
7. Write down three decisions, not twenty.

Step three is the one that changes the answer, since a month that balances overall can still contain a fortnight that does not, and the fortnight is what actually causes the problem.

What to do with the time itself is covered in the quiet fortnight and what to do with it.

Frequently asked questions

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