Finishing the Financial Year Strong
By Sarah Petty, Founder Olive Business Partners
The end of the financial year is one of the most predictable events on the business calendar. It arrives the same time every year, with the same deadlines and the same opportunities. Yet for most business owners, it still manages to feel rushed.
Tax obligations get the focus. The strategic moment gets missed.
The final weeks of June are not just an accounting exercise. They are one of the most useful decision-making windows of the year, a natural point to assess what the business actually delivered, close out the year with intention, and set the conditions for a stronger start to what comes next.
Review performance against what you planned
Start with an honest look at how the year unfolded against what you expected at the start of it.
Pull your goals or plan from July last year, or if a formal plan does not exist, reconstruct the key targets you were working toward. Revenue, profit, client numbers, margins, headcount, key projects. Then compare where you actually landed.
The point of this exercise is to understand the gap between intention and outcome, because that gap is where the most useful information lives.
Where did the business outperform, and why? Was it a deliberate strategy that worked, an external influence, or something that happened despite the plan rather than because of it? Understanding the real driver matters, because it determines whether the result is repeatable.
Where did it fall short? And more importantly, was the shortfall a execution problem, a planning problem, or a market problem? These have different implications for what you change going forward.
Be honest about both. Businesses that only examine their misses miss half the lesson.
Make the last 30 days count
The final month of the financial year is not a wind-down period. For a business that uses it well, it is one of the most productive months of the year.
On the revenue side, review your pipeline and outstanding proposals. Are there conversations that have stalled that are worth re-engaging? Clients who have flagged future work that could be confirmed or scoped now? End of financial year creates a genuine reason to have those conversations. Some businesses have budget to spend before 30 June and are receptive to moving decisions forward.
On the expense side, consider what legitimate business investment makes sense before year end. Equipment, software, professional development, tools you have been deferring. If the spend is justified and the timing works, June is a reasonable time to bring it forward. This is not about spending for the sake of a tax deduction. It is about being intentional rather than letting the opportunity pass by default.
On the cash side, run a clear view of where you will land at 30 June. Debtors, outstanding invoices, any large payments due in early July. Going into a new financial year with clarity on your opening cash position is a simple discipline that most businesses skip.
The leadership debrief most businesses don't do
Beyond the numbers, the end of the year is worth a more deliberate leadership reflection.
What decisions made this year had the biggest impact, positive or negative?Which ones were made with good information and good process, and which ones were made under pressure, with incomplete data, or by defaulting to what had always been done?
What did you learn about the business this year that you did not know at the start of it? About your team, your clients, your cost structure, your capacity?
What did you personally spend your time on, and does that reflect where you should be operating as the leader of this business? Time spent in the wrong place has a compounding cost that rarely shows up clearly in any report.
These are the questions that shape what kind of business you build next year.
Final decisions on investment and headcount
June is also the moment to make considered decisions on two areas that have the biggest structural impact on the year ahead: investment and people.
On investment, what does the business need in the next financial year to operate at the level you are planning for? Technology, infrastructure, capability, advisory support. Decisions made now, with a clear picture of this year's financial performance, are better informed than decisions made in August when the year has already started and momentum is already carrying you somewhere.
On headcount, be deliberate. Hiring decisions made under pressure because something broke, because a client demanded it, because the founder ran out of capacity, are almost always more expensive than hiring decisions made with a clear view of what the business needs and when. The end of the year is the right time to ask what the structure needs to look like in twelve months and work backwards from there.
This does not mean committing to hires you cannot yet afford. It means having a plan rather than being reactive.
Going into July with momentum
The businesses that start the new financial year well are almost always the ones that finished the previous one with intention.
They are clear on what the year delivered, honest about what it did not, and deliberate about what the next twelve months are going to look like and why.
July is not a restart. It is a continuation. The quality of that continuation depends largely on the work done in the weeks before it.
Sarah Petty is the Founder of Olive Business Partners and has worked with businesses at every stage of growth, from early-stage startups to multi-billion-dollar global organisations. She brings CFO-level thinking to small business owners who want clarity, control and a business that actually makes money. Sarah is known for making finance practical, commercial and also human.