7 best small business financial books for beginners

Are you new to small business and financial management? If so, you might want to read a few books to get you started.

The best financial books for beginners make the information digestible and offer practical solutions for your business. They’ll also offer unique approaches and a comprehensive understanding of financial management. 

But with so many options on the shelves, it can hard to find the best picks. Luckily, we can help. 

This guide lists the seven best financial books for beginners, including:

• Bookkeeping and Accounting All In One For Dummies by Jane Kelly
• Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman
• Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies by Tim Koller and Marc Goedhart
• Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
• The Economist Guide to Cash Management by John Tennent
• Found Money by Steve Wilkinghoff
• The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

Accounting and bookkeeping is a legal requirement for small businesses. But it’s also a critical way of tracking your financial progress and performance. Jane Kelly can show you how to do just that in Bookkeeping and Accounting All In One For Dummies. 

This book offers the information of six books in one, acting as the ultimate reference guide to financial accounting, particularly for small businesses. 

It offers essential definitions and shows you how to create an effective bookkeeping system that seamlessly tracks your finances. Plus, it’s the UK edition, so you can learn about relevant accounting and tax regulations. 

Financial literacy, or the ability to comprehend and analyse financial data, is valuable for small business finances. To grow these skills, consider reading Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman. 

This book teaches the essentials of understanding numbers to stay on top of your financial information. Beyond understanding what the numbers mean, you’ll also learn why they’re essential. 

Ultimately, this book is an excellent resource for the analytical side of financial management. 

With Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies by Tim Koller and Marc Goedhart, you can go beyond the basics of financial management. 

Koller and Goedhart offer a guide to assessing the financial value of your business. Though the book leans towards corporations or larger companies, it provides essential decision-making skills. 

Overall, the book will help you build your financial strategy skills and look at the bigger picture. It’s also a great pick if you expect to merge or sell your business in the long run.  

See also: How do you put value on a small business?

With Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, you can focus on retaining your business earnings and reducing wasteful spending. The book focuses on how to improve your profitability and take control of your finances. 

Profit First is a great guide for increasing profits, but its valuable advice can also help promote your confidence as a small business owner.   

See also: How to cut costs in small business.

It’s important to juggle the cash coming in and out of your business. If you fail to maintain a positive cash flow, you could struggle to meet regular expenses. 

Thankfully, The Economist Guide to Cash Management by John Tennent can show you how to organise and manage your cash flow. This book covers more than just daily cash management. It also discusses:

• Cash flow forecasting
• Planning for funding and investment 
• Tracking profitability
• Future planning with excess cash 

As successful as your business is, you can’t maintain operations without cash and plan for what to do with it. This book can help with that. 

Found Money by Steve Wilkinghoff focuses on financial management for small businesses already up and running. 

Wilkinghoff explains what to do with your money beyond setting up your financial organisation. He can help you determine if you’re on target with your goals. If not, he offers tips to alter your methods for success. 
This book ultimately teaches you to maximise your profit, improve and analyse your cash flow, and reach your business’s total capacity. 

For many people, the topic of money is stressful and awkward. But, if you conquer the thoughts behind money, you can manage it better for your business. 

That’s why The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel is another of the best financial books for beginners. It leans away from the mathematical side of finances to look at the behaviours that motivate financial decisions. 

In this book, Housel helps you build a solid psychological foundation around money for better decision making. As a result, you’ll be better prepared to handle your business’s finances. 

As you dive into these reads, they’ll strengthen your toolkit for organised business finances and more informed financial decisions. 

The books can help you with everything from accounting and cash flow management to decision making and strategy. Plus, they’re great to have on hand whenever you have a financial question. 

If you’d like to find more useful books, consider checking out our article on the six best bookkeeping books for small businesses next. 

Books aren’t the only things that can support your small business finances. Countingup can too. 

Countingup is the business current account and accounting software in one app. It automates time-consuming bookkeeping admin for thousands of self-employed people across the UK. 

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