We are less than a month removed from tax season, which means that we have recently spent a lot of time talking about planning and how it can help you avoid surprises. This week, though, I wanted to write a little bit about the surprises that you can’t do much about, and how planning even helps with those.

These thoughts occurred to me when I saw a Forbes article musing on whether the increased amount of people working from home would hurt city budgets. I won’t get into the minutiae of what the article says here, for the premise is obviously sound enough to at least warrant thinking about (and dare I say some planning).

From there I started to think not only about the budgets of the city themselves, but what about various shops and restaurants located in (what were at least once) areas saturated with businesses. And simply, once there are less people frequenting the area, that is less potential business for those establishments.

That is one of those types of surprises that could not have been planned for. One would have to possess some mystical level of clairvoyance to have predicted the pandemic, the increase of work-from-home situations, and calculate numbers of how that would look for businesses.

If one had already been doing general planning, though, then your books would have been in good enough shape to be make some reasonable general estimates. And from there, you are in a better position to realize when such unforeseen circumstances start affecting your business and can combat it as early as possible.

I am not writing with any actual answers to such a situation here. I am not even saying that every situation like this would have potential answers. Surely there were businesses so affected by what happened over the last couple years that saving things was impossible. What I am saying, though, is that planning – and the state you must keep your books and knowledge of your business in to be able to do so – will at least give you an opportunity.

Because even now when things have achieved some sense of normalcy, the ideas we are imagining involve situations where its effects will continue to trickle into the future. So one must maintain some vigilance, never think that all storms have been weathered, and remain in a position to see problems while there is still time to react to them. And as always, if there is anything we can do to help you get to that space, let us know.