What’s in Your Wallet?

I think it was Oprah who always said to keep a close eye on your money. If you don’t have time to take care of the checkbook yourself, at least be very involved. This is excellent advice. I don’t know how many musicians, actors, and artists have found themselves bankrupt due to bad managers/agents, but there have been a lot.

I looked at the cafe bank account everyday. Not a single transaction went through without my knowledge. If I didn’t know what it was, I found out. To this day, I feel this is very important. Don’t wait for the monthly bank statements or accounting reports to figure out where your money is, or isn’t.

When Pierre told the CPA he didn’t need to send us a report every month, I didn’t say anything. The financial report was hard for me to look at. It included all the depreciation and made the numbers look really bad. I kept my own spreadsheet, which was similar to the CPA’s report as we both used the checking account to build our reports. The big difference was, I didn’t include the depreciation so I could see the straight numbers – how much money went into the account and how much went out. I also added a few lines with numbers from the POS system.

Since Pierre was looking at buying me out, he got a financial report from the CPA. Pierre brought the report to me and wanted me to explain all the figures. I have no idea why he didn’t ask the CPA, the creator of the report. I couldn’t explain the report as I didn’t know how things were categorized. Since then, Pierre has expressed anger and accused me of misappropriating funds. I’m not sure why, all the numbers were readily available. All along, he had access to the CPA’s financial reports, the bank account, and the POS terminals and financials. You’d think he had actually put money into the business, which we all know he didn’t. And not only that, but every year he was able to write off a third of our losses when he hadn’t put in any cash at all, let alone a third of the money, or effort.

Admittedly, I should have gotten intimate with the CPA’s financial reports. That was a mistake on my part, even though I kept track of my own financial reports. Pierre has no one to blame but himself; he chose to be ignorant of the cafe’s finances. I can’t help but wonder if his vibrato is all a facade to cover his true intentions of wiping me out before taking the business for himself.

Not a Friendship Membership

When we opened the cafe, Pierre went to Sam’s to buy a membership but they made him mad so he got a membership at Costco. It was handy and cheaper than Sysco for items like candy and water bottles. We got a business account that was enabled for tax exempt purchases since we were buying most things for resale. Pierre was good about making Costco runs for us when we were getting low on water, but he always bought sanitary wipes while he was there. I told him we didn’t need them because we already had sanitizer in squirt bottles for cleaning counters and equipment. He continued to waste our money buying the wipes, which tells me he didn’t watch the Food Handler videos or just didn’t care. Like I told you earlier, it wasn’t his money so I guess it was easy to waste.

I went to Costco and got my membership card. For the account we got, 2 people get membership cards and you have to pay extra if you want to add more people. Pierre wanted to add Nick to our account. I didn’t like the idea, because Nick wasn’t part of the cafe. Nick was a former student of Pierre and now a skating coach. I love Nick, but he’s not part of the business and really didn’t even support us much. He hardly ever bought anything from the cafe. Mainly though, Nick wasn’t qualified for tax exempt purchases and I didn’t want to be involved in any kind of sales tax fraud.

So one day, I went to Costco and when I got to the checkout they told me my membership was no good. Turns out, Pierre had put Nick on our membership even though I wasn’t in favor and when Nick was added Costco took me off. What the Heck! This is a business, not a friendship membership. I don’t know if Pierre and Nick are more than friends, but I sure don’t see any reason to have Nick on our account. It’s cheaper for him to have his own account anyway since personal accounts are cheaper. I had Nick taken off the account and got everything straightened out. I did find out later that Pierre paid the extra money for Nick to be put back on the account as a third member. I told Pierre he better make sure Nick was paying sales tax on his purchases.

This is the kind of crap you shouldn’t have to deal with when trying to build a business. I don’t know where Pierre’s brain was, but it wasn’t on building a restaurant. It’s a bad sign when your partner goes behind your back on business actions. I should have run away as fast as possible.