The Hidden Danger in Letting Invoices Slide - "It's not fair for you to spend all your money to deliver the product or service. And then the customer drags you out for 30 days, 90, 60, 120 a year, and you're not getting money on that." Glenn Harper

Glenn Harper and Julie Smith discuss a topic every business owner dreads but can’t afford to ignore: money leaks.

Have you ever wondered where your hard-earned profits are slipping away? Glenn and Julie break down the sneaky ways businesses lose money—from unnoticed subscriptions and mounting overtime to hidden high interest rates and lax customer payments. With candid stories and actionable advice, they reveal how to spot these financial drains and what steps you can take to plug the holes.

Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, this episode will leave you thinking twice about your financials—and might just save you enough for your next vacation!

This episode is brought to you by PureTax, LLC. Tax preparation services without the pressure. When all you need is to get your tax return done, take the stress out of tax season by working with a firm that has simplified the process and the pricing. Find out more about how we started.

3 Key Takeaways for Entrepreneurs:

• Review Automated Payments & Subscriptions: Those small, recurring charges on your business credit card can snowball over time. Make it a habit to audit subscriptions at least once a year—what you save could fund your next vacation!
• Keep a Close Watch on Labor Costs: Overtime and inaccurate job costing can secretly burn through your payroll budget. Set clear parameters and delegate time-tracking to managers who can monitor labor hours and catch inefficiencies before they escalate.
• Don’t Let Unpaid Invoices Slide: Failing to follow up on Accounts Receivable delays cash flow. Establish firm processes to ensure customers pay on time—those outstanding payments could be the difference between scrambling and scaling.

Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.

Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.

Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for success

Our clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.

Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.

Glenn Harper, CPA, is the Owner and Managing Partner of Harper & Company CPAs Plus, a top 10 Managing Partner in the country (Accounting Today's 2022 MP Elite). His firm won the 2021 Luca Award for Firm of the Year. 

An entrepreneur and speaker, Glenn transformed his firm into an advisory-focused practice, doubling revenue and profit in two years. He teaches entrepreneurs to build financial and operational excellence, speaks nationwide to CPA firm owners about running their businesses like entrepreneurs, and consults with firms across the country. Glenn enjoys golfing, fishing, hiking, cooking, and spending time with his family.

Julie Smith, MBA, is a serial entrepreneur in the public accounting space. She is the Founder of EmpowerCPA™, Founder of PureTax, LLC, COO for Harper & Company CPAs Plus, and Co-host of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. 

Named CPA.com's 2021 Innovative Practitioner of Year, Julie led Harper & Company's transition to an advisory-focused firm, doubling revenue and profit in two years. She now empowers other CPA firm owners nationwide through consulting and speaking, teaching them how to run their businesses like entrepreneurs. Julie lives in Columbus, OH with her family and enjoys travel, coaching basketball, sporting events, and the occasional shopping spree.

Copyright 2026 Glenn Harper

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to another special edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. I'm Glenn Harper.

Julie Smith.

What's going on, Julie?

I don't know. You got that down. You said put special edition in there. And somehow you were able to put empowering entrepreneurs together, unlike the last five episodes.

Bumbling and stumbling through the things. Yes, it happens sometimes. There's a lot. There's a lot of vocabulary, a lot of words, a lot of letters. It's hard to keep it all together.

Yeah, I get it.

I know. It's. What do we got on the docket today?

So we want to know why are we losing money? Like, who's we? What are those hidden things in businesses of why we're losing money? Now, before. I want to say, before this video started rolling, I tried to give all mine.

Yeah, well, this was an eventing session.

And no one wanted to listen to him. So I'm only allowed to ask the question today.

Gotcha. So we were talking basically money leaks. Like, if you have a business, like, where is. If you would just look at these few things, what would be a good way to kind of shore up some of your financials and the cash flow leaking? Right. I think that's where trying to talk about. I think one of the biggest ones that I find myself doing not only for myself, but also we end up doing this a lot for our clients is you get these automatic charges on your credit card. You sign up for something and it just keeps pinging you every month. And with a credit card, fraud is amazing.

And if you've got a credit card that you've got, you know, more than probably 40 transactions a month, nobody pays attention to that. But you are getting hammered every month by all these different charges that people. You don't even know what you're buying for or something that you don't even use anymore.

But I think that's business owners. And personally, I know there's been these apps that have come out that'll like, help manage that. But again, now you're paying a subscription to an app to manage your subscriptions to, Like, I mean, where's it at?

Yeah, like, you just have one that would just give me one password for everything, but that doesn't exist either. But that's a big one.

I use one password for everything, so don't talk about it. Oh, jeez. No, I'm just kidding.

No. The second thing is, you know, it's one of the biggest costs for most businesses are the employees and what you spend on there. And, you know, some People, you'll get lucky and you can pay salary and sometimes you have to pay hourly. But overtime is a big one that hits. And depending on the certain industries, overtime probably isn't needed as much as it's paid. But people will milk the clock until they hit overtime and then they're making, you know, the time and a half. So you just got to keep an eye on your labor costs every week. That's a really big one.

And also, well, wait, the big beautiful.

Bill, the overtime is going to be even more enticing to the employees now. Right?

Correct. And well, as a business owner, you guys might be thinking out there, well, heck, I'm going to lower everybody's salary and then pay or their wages and then pay overtime so I can skirt the issue. You've got to be real careful with that because I'm sure there's a lot of regulations on that that's in the bill. But that'll come to fruition here soon. You as the employer, it doesn't change anything. You're paying it anyway. It's just going to help the employee. But there's that.

And especially when you're in projects, when you have employees that you're working on projects, maybe a construction or some kind of construction management or something, when you are the job costing for that job, you might have budgeted 10 hours for this project and somebody might be in there for 15. And of those 15, five of them are overtime. You just doubled up your labor costs and you don't even know how it happened. So it's just something you really want to look at. Just review your time. Who's entering the time, is it accurate and are we supposed to be paying overtime or not? Because there's a fine line between paying enough overtime before you got to hire a new person or a new crew or whatever, you just got to find that sweet spot.

I think all of those though go to. Is that what the firm owner or the business owner should be doing? You know, so can you delegate some of those out to make sure they're managed in the most efficient and effective manner?

Right. I mean, you're going to have somebody that's going to be recording the time that's. I mean the business owner is probably not going to be dealing with that. But there's going to be a, you know, somebody that in HR that's.

And you got to set those parameters too, those expectations so that people understand like, okay, we're over budget or, or we don't want to see these, you know, what are these Subscription some way, shape or form to make sure there's some checks and balances with all of those to make sure that you don't get caught in these situations.

You know, it's funny, you end up, people think, well, I can't afford to hire a manager to manage my labor. But what you're paying and losing in overtime would pay for like four managers. So you got to look at the big picture, what that looks like throughout the year. You sometimes can't afford not to have somebody watching the hen house. That's probably one of the biggest things you gotta realize sometimes you gotta spend money to make money and you end up being ahead, which is a crazy concept, but it does work. Again that we talked about a little earlier, the subscriptions. You click on something and you're getting pinged for that every month or every year and you don't even know you're paying it. You don't even know you're involved in it.

When you do a once over, at least once a year, you should be looking at all those charges that come through on your, you know, in your financial statements and sort them by name and go, why am I even paying for that anymore? It's amazing what a little bit here and there adds up to. You're like, oh my gosh, that's all vacation for the year. I just paid for no reason. If I can just cancel it.

Well, my kids always sign up for that. Alexa, Amazon Music. Right. Unlimited. Like how easy is it? And so it's like, unless you're watching, you have no idea.

Yeah. The other thing too is sometimes we get in the habit of we pay things late, perhaps as a business owner, cash flow issues, and those late charges add up pretty quickly and it adds up and you don't even know you're paying it. And that's the same thing. If we have loans, if it's a low interest rate, you know, debt's not a bad thing, but it's sometimes not a good thing. If you have a high interest rate and you're on your line of credit or something, or a car or some piece of equipment, maybe you're leasing something, you thought you got a good rate. You really should look at those debt services that you have because sometimes they got buried in there some incredibly high interest rates that you don't even know you're paying. You know, you would think you'd be paying between 7 and 9%, but. But sometimes it's upwards of 18 to 22% and you even know because it's buried in there.

And the financing company don't even tell you what it is. You have to dig for it. So that's a big one. If you've got some line items where you're buying some equipment and things of that nature, definitely look into that. The biggest other one that really happens for most customers or businesses out there is you're billing your customers, whatever that product or service is. But for some reason you're not following up to have your customer actually pay you or they're paying you the wrong amount and you're like, ah, we'll just let it go. Like it's not fair for you to spend all your money to deliver the product or service. And then the customer drags you out for 30 days, 90, 60, 120 a year, and you're not getting money on that.

And they expect you to just do that. You have to have some hard limits and say, look, we either get paid or we suspend the service. So really try to manage that. AR and you probably would have somebody specific in your office doing that for you or your company. But that's one of the really biggest ones that you could think about.

Those are some. Those are a lot.

That's a lot there. But again, each one is not going to move the needle a ton. But you add all those up. Again, we're talking about you take a couple vacations, good vacations, not just going to the corner store there. We're talking about going out of town maybe. And that saves a lot of money. So hopefully that sounds helpful for all of you guys listening. I'm Glenn Harper.

Julie Smith.