When you think of New Year’s resolutions, you don’t often think of anything besides exercise, weight loss, and personal goals. Most people think in short-term goals, rather than establishing a long-term lifestyle shift. Oftentimes these changes can be drastic, and as a result, end up being rather short-lived.

It’s time to redefine New Year’s resolutions.

Instead of setting short-term goals that are destined to fail, consider choosing one area of your life in which you can improve. For instance, for the small business owners of the world, consider taking practical steps to improve your business.

One great way to improve your business is by adding the right people to its infrastructure. Nothing is more expensive than finances, and if no one on your team is specifically handling finances, it may be time to address this. Not only will you be ringing in the new year with reduced stress, your business will have a better chance to flourish with the right personnel in place.

Here are three reasons why you should bring in help with your financial plan:

1) Vision
A good CPA or CFO will not only tell you what the numbers are, they will help you see a clear path towards improving them. There are very few things in business as important as casting a vision that your team can get behind, so bringing in a CPA to help with this will pay for itself in value in a very short amount of time.

2) Taxes
Yes, we all hate taxes. Yes, we all still have to pay them. When you have a business, your taxes are under more scrutiny, and nothing can slow you down quicker than an audit or a faulty tax filing. Bringing in an outside financial expert will significantly lessen the chance of a financial meltdown happening in your business.

3) Strength in Numbers
We have spent a lot of time talking about how a financial expert can improve their field, but we are missing one key point. Not only can bringing in a CPA help with finances, it means that you can have your other team members focus on their own tasks. Whoever was trying to piece together a financial plan can now go back to their department and turn out excellent work, having peace about the future of the company.