A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Takeaways from The Odyssey

Okay, I saw The Odyssey and have some takeaways: Odysseus made it home through persistence and agility, not brute force. The same applies in retail. Progress comes one step at a time, every day. Standing still is not an option.

Watch for siren songs. Many fads are irrelevant to a bright future. And be wary of anyone selling a potion or a promise to fix everything. There are no shortcuts in retail.

Accept small, calculated costs where they serve the bigger goal. A good return policy or an introductory discount can cost a little today and build customer trust that pays for years.

Protect what matters most: cash flow, inventory shrinkage and customer feedback. Strict oversight of these three keeps your journey on course.

Keep moving. Stay nimble. Get home.

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Newsagency management

In closing this series: the exit you get is the one you build

Over the last fifteen posts there is one key message. What happens when you leave your newsagency is decided long before the day you walk out the door.

My goal here is to encourage you to think about this. and work on it long before you need to.

The series opened with a hard truth. Goodwill has collapsed for businesses that stayed tied to declining print and lottery, and no buyer will pay for a shop with no defensible profit. But it collapsed selectively. The newsagencies that shifted to high-margin gift and specialty categories, that became destinations rather than conveniences, and that learned to run without the owner, still attract buyers and still sell well.

From there, the path forked into choices. Know what the business is really worth. Spend the years before you list making it saleable and getting the numbers exit-ready. Understand that the lease and, for owner-occupiers, the property can matter more than the price. Where a buyer cannot fund the full amount, vendor finance can bridge the gap.

Then there is the question of who takes over. It may be a staff member who already knows the business. It may be family, if they genuinely want it and the fairness is handled openly. It may be nobody, in which case running under management keeps the income without a sale. And where none of that works, closing well, on your terms and with your head up, is a good ending in itself.

Through all of it runs one thread that owners underestimate: the human side. Succession is a joint decision when you run the shop with a partner. Co-owners rarely reach the exit at the same time. And whatever route you take, the shop eventually ends, leaving a life to be rebuilt on the other side.

The common lesson is the same one the best owners in this series lived out. Start early. Be open, inside the business and out. Get proper advice. And accept that the exit you get is, in the end, the exit you built.

The shop closes either way. What people remember is how you closed it.

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Newsagency management

Life after the shop

The final post in the succession and exit series. Whichever path you took, sale, handover or close, the shop eventually ends. This post is about what comes next: the identity change, and building a life to move towards.

The hardest part of leaving a newsagency is not the sale, the lease or the lottery paperwork. It is the Monday morning after, when the shop is gone and the day is empty.

Owners plan the exit in detail and plan the life that follows it not at all. Then they wonder why leaving feels like loss rather than freedom. This post is about the part no accountant will raise: what happens to you.

The shop was more than income

For most owners the newsagency was not just a way to make money. It was identity, routine and community rolled into one.

You opened before dawn. You knew the regulars by name. You were the local, the constant, the one who kept the paper aside and remembered the card. That role gave shape to your days and a place in your town. When it ends, all of that ends at once, and the quiet can be louder than you expect.

Naming this in advance takes some of its sting away. The flatness many owners feel after leaving is not regret about the decision. It is the ordinary grief of losing a role that mattered.

Plan the life, not just the exit

You spent years learning to run the shop. Give some thought to running the next phase.

What will fill the hours the shop used to fill? What gives you purpose when you are no longer needed behind the counter? These sound like soft questions. They are the ones that decide whether retirement feels good or hollow. Owners who thrive after the shop tend to have something to move towards, not just something to leave.

It does not have to be grand. Part-time work, a long-postponed interest, more time with family, a role in a community group. The point is to have a shape to your days before the old shape disappears.

Leave well, for your own sake

How you close matters to how you feel afterwards. A rushed, secretive, ashamed exit leaves a wound. A calm, open, dignified one leaves something to be proud of.

Tell your customers properly. Let them thank you. A proper goodbye, a note in the window, a last conversation with the regulars, is not sentimentality. It gives you closure and reminds you that the work meant something. Owners who let their community mark the ending carry it far better than those who slip out quietly.

Stay connected to what you valued

You do not have to sever everything. Many former owners keep a thread to the parts they loved: the people, the trade, the community.

That might be staying in touch with old customers, mentoring another retailer, or keeping a hand in the industry in some small way. Connection on your own terms, without the pressure of the counter, can give you the good parts of the old life without the grind.

The point

You will spend real effort getting the exit right. Spend some on getting the aftermath right too.

Expect the loss and name it, plan a life to move towards, leave well so you have closure, and keep a connection to what you valued. Do that, and the Monday after the shop closes has a shape of its own.

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Newsagency management

When there is no buyer: closing your newsagency well

Fourteenth in the succession and exit series. When every other path has been weighed and there is still no buyer, this post is about closing well: winding down with care, handling the practicalities, and facing the emotional side.

I get asked about buying and selling newsagencies often. There is a harder conversation we do not have enough: what to do when there is no buyer at all.

It is more common than most owners admit. When a newsagent cannot sell their business, they will often just close it. I said as much to Mumbrella late last year, and the rate of closures lifted again through 2025. The pattern is consistent. A business built on newspapers, magazines, stationery and lotteries, with little change over the years, has no goodwill a buyer will pay for.

This post is for the owner facing that reality. Not to sell you a turnaround. To help you leave well.

The no-buyer reality

Frank and Moya Livingstone paid around $600,000 for the Mansfield newsagency two decades ago. They listed it, waited two years, and got no takers. In the end they closed the doors and walked away. “Unfortunately, it’s an industry nobody wants to take on anymore,” Frank told the ABC.

Their story is not rare. Around 300 newsagents in net terms left the industry over five years. McGills, once the largest newsagency in Victoria and a Melbourne CBD landmark, closed because no-one offered to buy it. Whole towns have lost their last news service.

If your business is one of these, the absence of a buyer is not a personal failure. It is a market telling you the goodwill is gone. Accepting that early is the first step to a good exit.

I know one regional owner who did exactly that. They put the business on the market, wanted to retire, and set themselves a deadline. Two years passed with no sale. When the deadline arrived, they closed in a calm and structured way, sold the building, and retired happy. There was no drama and no shame. They had decided how their exit would look, and they held to it.

Winding down well

A closure is still a project. Run it like one. The owners who manage it well start the work twelve months out, not twelve days.

Read your lease first. Your exit date is set by your lease more than anything else. Know when it ends, what your make-good obligations are, and whether you can hand back early. This shapes every other decision.

Wind down the lottery separately. Your lottery licence sits with the operator, not with you to sell freely. You cannot simply pass it to whoever you like. Speak to the Lottery Corporation early about surrendering or transferring the licence, as the process and timing are theirs to control (). Do not leave this to the last week.

Clear stock deliberately. Resist the urge to strip the shop overnight. Wind supply down category by category. Stop reordering slow lines now. Discount in stages so you protect cash rather than dump everything at a loss. Magazines and returns need a clean final reconciliation with each distributor.

Talk to your suppliers. Give card, gift and stationery suppliers notice. Settle accounts. Return what you can. A tidy close protects your name and any future dealings.

Plan the staff conversation. Your people will know something is coming. Tell them early and honestly. Work out entitlements, final pays and references. This is often the part owners dread most, and handling it with care matters.

Get your own advice. Talk to your accountant well before you close, not after. There are tax outcomes to a wind-down, and a clean set of final accounts protects you. Two to three years of lead time is ideal, but even a few months helps.

The part no-one prepares you for

The practical steps are the easy part. The hard part is what closing does to you.

For many owners the newsagency is not just income. It is identity. You have opened the door before dawn for twenty or thirty years. Customers know your name. You have been the local, the constant, the one who kept the paper aside and remembered the birthday card. When that ends, the loss is real.

Frank Livingstone put it plainly. “You just close the doors, walk away, and lick your wounds” (). There is grief in that line. Do not pretend it is only a transaction.

The regional owner I mentioned earlier had one clear reason for retiring happy: they were open about their plan, inside the business and out. Staff knew. Customers knew. Suppliers knew. There was no awkward secrecy, no pretending. That openness turned a closure into a shared, dignified ending rather than a quiet retreat. It is the single lesson I would take from their exit.

A few things help. Give yourself time before you decide what comes next. Tell your customers properly, with a note in the window and a proper goodbye, rather than a locked door one Monday. Let them thank you. It matters to them and it will matter to you. Keep a connection to the people and the work you valued, even in a small way. And be honest with your family about how you are feeling, because they carry it with you.

Closing a business you built is not defeat. Doing it badly, in a rush, ashamed and alone, is the thing to avoid. Doing it well, on your terms, with your accounts clean and your head up, is something to be proud of.

The point

If you cannot sell, you still have choices about how you leave. Plan the wind-down. Protect your cash, your name and your staff. Handle the lottery and the lease properly. And give yourself the same care you have given your customers all these years.

The shop closes either way. What people remember is how you closed it.

Note: this is a version of a post I published a couple of weeks ago. Then, I thought about it and decided to build a bigger series of posts on the topic.

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Newsagency management

The alternative to closing: make the business run without you

Thirteenth in the succession and exit series. If no buyer appears and no insider takes over, there is still an option short of closing: keep the business and step back from running it. This post sits just before the two on closing and life after.

Closing because there is no buyer is one path. It is not the only one.

There is an alternative that owners rarely consider seriously. Instead of selling or closing, you work on the business until it runs profitably without you at the counter. You step back to owning it, not running it. You keep the income and hand over the daily grind.

This is not a soft option. It is harder than selling in some ways. But for the right owner, it beats walking away with nothing.

A different mindset

Most newsagents own a job, not a business. They are the first in and the last out. Take them out of the shop for a month and the numbers slide. That is the trap. A business that depends on you cannot be sold, and it cannot be left to run.

Building a business that runs under management demands a different mindset. You stop asking “how do I get through today?” and start asking “how does this shop make money whether I am here or not?” That shift changes everything you do.

It forces a tighter focus on profit. When you pay a manager to do what you did for free, every soft line and lazy margin shows up. You cannot afford to carry dead stock or a category that only breaks even. The wage bill makes you honest about what actually earns its place.

For some owners, this is the most rewarding phase of ownership. The shop finally becomes a business.

What it takes

Know your numbers cold. You cannot manage from a distance on gut feel. Departmental sales, margin by category, wage-to-sales ratio, stock turn. If you do not have these to hand from your POS, that is the first job.

Systemise the work. Everything you carry in your head has to come out and go onto paper or into the system. Opening and closing routines, ordering rules, returns process, banking, rosters. A manager cannot run what only lives in your memory.

Hire and trust a manager. This is the hard part. The right manager is worth more than any promotion or new range. Pay properly, hand over real authority, and resist the urge to undercut them by countermanding decisions in front of staff.

Fix the margin before you step back. A business that only works because you take no wage is not a business. Rework the range for profit, lift the average sale, cut the dead weight. The shop has to fund a manager and still pay you.

Step back in stages. Do not vanish overnight. Drop to four days, then three, then oversight only. Watch the numbers as you go. If they hold, keep going. If they slide, you have found a gap to fix.

The honest catch

This does not suit every shop. A marginal business in a declining location will not carry a manager’s wage no matter how well you run it. If the numbers cannot fund your replacement and still pay you, closing may still be the answer.

But many owners never test the idea. They assume they are irreplaceable, so they stay chained to the counter until they close. Some of those businesses could have run under management for years, throwing off income while the owner did something else.

The point

Before you accept that there is no buyer, ask a different question. Not “who will take this off my hands?” but “could this run without my hands on it every day?”

If the answer is yes, you may not need a buyer at all. You need a manager and the discipline to build a business worth managing.

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Newsagency management

When co-owners can’t agree on the exit

Twelfth in the succession and exit series. Following the post on couples, this one tackles the harder case: co-owners, partners or siblings who reach the exit at different times and cannot agree on the way out.

Two people own the shop. One wants out. The other wants to keep going. Now what?

This is one of the most common and least discussed problems in newsagency succession. Business partners, siblings who inherited together, a couple, two mates who bought in years ago. The moment their plans diverge, the business can freeze, and the relationship can sour. Getting through it takes structure, not just goodwill.

Why it happens

Co-owners rarely reach the same point at the same time. Life sees to that.

One partner hits retirement age, or ill health, or simply runs out of appetite for the early mornings. The other is younger, or more attached, or not ready financially. One wants to sell now at whatever the market offers. The other wants to hold on, or hold out for a better number. Both positions are reasonable from where each person stands. That is what makes it hard.

The mistake that makes it worse

The common mistake is to leave it unspoken. One partner quietly disengages, or drags their feet, while the other stews. Resentment builds, decisions stall, and the business drifts while the owners avoid the conversation.

A drifting business loses value. Every month of deadlock is a month the shop is not being driven forward, and buyers can smell a stalled partnership. Avoidance is the most expensive option of all.

Ways through

Buy-out. The partner who wants to stay buys out the one who wants to leave. This is often the cleanest answer. The challenge is funding and a fair price, and vendor finance between partners can bridge the gap where a bank will not.

Sell the whole thing. If neither can buy the other out, selling the business to a third party resolves it, and both walk away. This suits partners who are close enough in view that a clean break beats a strained continuation.

Agree a timeline. Sometimes the disagreement is about when, not whether. A partner who is not ready today may be ready in two years. Agreeing a firm exit date can hold the partnership together long enough for both to be ready.

Bring in a third party. Where emotion is running the negotiation, a neutral adviser or your shared accountant can value the business fairly and broker terms without it becoming personal.

Put it in writing before you need to

The best time to solve this is before it arises. A written agreement between co-owners, setting out what happens when one wants to exit, saves enormous grief.

How is the business valued? How is a buy-out funded and timed? What if the partners cannot agree? A partnership or shareholder agreement that answers these in advance turns a potential war into a process. If you own with someone and have no such agreement, drawing one up now is the most useful thing you can do.

The point

Co-owners will not always want to leave at the same time. That is normal, not a betrayal.

Get the disagreement into the open before it festers. Choose a path: buy-out, sale, or an agreed timeline. Use a neutral party when emotion takes over. And if you can, put the rules in writing before you ever need them. The business, and the relationship, both depend on it.

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Selling your newsagency

Succession when you run the shop as a couple

Eleventh in the succession and exit series. Most newsagencies are run by two people, so any exit is a joint decision. This post looks at succession when the owners share a life as well as a business.

Most newsagencies are run by two people who share a bed as well as a business. Husband and wife, partners, a couple who bought the shop together and have run it for decades.

That shapes succession in a way the textbooks ignore. You are not one owner making a plan. You are two people who must agree on when to leave, how to leave, and what comes next. When they do not agree, the exit stalls, and the relationship can strain along with it.

Two owners, one decision

An exit plan only works if both partners genuinely own it. It is easy for one to drive the decision while the other goes quietly along, unconvinced. That unspoken disagreement surfaces later, usually at the worst moment.

One partner may be ready to retire while the other cannot picture life without the shop. One may want to sell at any price to be free; the other may want to hold out for a number that is not coming. Neither is wrong. But the gap has to be talked through, not papered over.

The couples who exit well do the same thing the best owners do with staff and family: they get it into the open early and honestly.

The identity question hits differently

When a couple leaves the shop, they do not just lose a business. They lose the shared structure of their days.

For decades the shop has organised their time, their conversations, their sense of purpose. Retirement can leave a couple in the house together with none of that scaffolding, and that is a bigger adjustment than either expects. Talking about what you will do with your time, together and apart, is as important as talking about the sale price.

Divide the exit tasks

A couple has an advantage here if they use it. There is a lot to manage in a wind-down or sale, and two people can share the load.

Play to strengths. One partner may be better with the numbers, the accountant and the buyer negotiation. The other may be better with staff, customers and the emotional close. Agreeing who handles what reduces friction and stops both of you carrying the whole weight.

Protect the relationship

The exit is temporary. The relationship is not. Do not let the stress of leaving the business damage the partnership that will outlast it.

Disagreements about money and timing are normal. Handle them as a couple making a joint decision. Where you cannot agree, a neutral third party, your accountant or an adviser, can help you find a path without it becoming personal. The goal is to walk out of the shop still on the same side.

The point

If you run the shop as a couple, succession is a joint decision, and it needs both of you fully in it.

Agree on the timing and the terms out loud, not by assumption. Face the identity change together. Share the tasks. And protect the relationship through the stress, because that is the thing you are really retiring into.

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Selling your newsagency

Keeping it in the family: planning succession without the fallout

Tenth in the succession and exit series. Following the post on selling to a staff member, this one looks at the other insider option, passing the business to family, and the fairness and preparation problems that come with it.

Passing the newsagency to a son or daughter sounds like the happy ending. Sometimes it is. Just as often it turns into the hardest thing a family ever does.

Family succession fails not because the business is weak, but because the plan is unspoken. Assumptions sit unaddressed for years, then surface at the worst moment. Getting this right takes as much planning as any sale to a stranger, and more honesty.

Start with an honest question

Does the next generation actually want it?

Too many owners assume a child will take over because it would please them, or because the child once said something encouraging a decade ago. The child, meanwhile, may feel trapped by duty and quietly dread it.

Ask the question directly and early. Give them room to say no without guilt – this is critical. A newsagency handed to an unwilling successor helps no-one. It burdens the child and puts the business you built into hands that do not want it.

If they do want it, the real work begins.

The fairness problem

The hardest part of family succession is rarely the business. It is the other children.

If one child takes the shop, what do the others get? The business is often the largest asset a family owns. Handing it to one and leaving the rest to split the remainder can breed resentment that outlasts you.

There is no single answer, but there are principles. Be transparent with everyone, not just the successor. Separate the idea of equal from the idea of fair, because they are not always the same. A child who works in the business for years has earned something a sibling who never set foot there has not. Get these conversations into the open while you are alive to have them, rather than leaving a will to detonate later.

Prepare the successor properly

A child who grew up in the shop knows the counter. That is not the same as knowing the business.

Bring them through the parts owners hide. The banking, the supplier accounts, the tax, the wage bill, the lease. Let them make ordering decisions and live with the results. Hand over real authority in stages, and step back as they grow into it. The goal is a successor who can run the shop without you before you leave, not the day after.

Resist the urge to hover. Nothing undermines a successor faster than a parent who hands over the keys but keeps making every decision.

Get the structure right

Family transfers carry tax and legal consequences that catch people out. Capital gains, stamp duty, the treatment of the trading entity and any property all matter. The rules are not simple and they change.

Involve your accountant and solicitor early, and treat the transfer as a proper transaction even though it is family. A clear agreement, in writing, protects the relationship. Handshake deals between parent and child are where families come undone.

The point

Keeping it in the family can be a fine outcome. It is not automatic and it is not easy.

Ask whether they truly want it. Be fair and open with the children who are not taking over. Prepare your successor as you would any new owner. And get the structure advised properly. Do that, and you protect two things at once: the business, and the family.

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Selling your newsagency

Your next owner might already work for you

Ninth in the succession and exit series, and the first of the posts on who the buyer might be. When no outside buyer appears, the answer may already be on your payroll. It builds directly on the vendor finance post, since internal buyers usually need those terms.

When owners think about selling, they look outward. They list the business, run an ad, wait for a stranger to make an offer. Often no stranger comes.

They miss the person who might already be standing behind the counter. The best buyer for a newsagency is sometimes the manager or long-serving staff member who already knows the business, the customers and the takings.

Selling from within is worth taking seriously. It rarely happens by accident, though. It happens because an owner planned for it.

Why it can work

An internal buyer starts with advantages no outsider has. They know the trade. They know the quiet Tuesdays and the Christmas rush. They know the regulars by name. There is no handover cliff, because they are already across the business.

Customers barely notice the change. The person who served them last week serves them next week, only now they own the place. That continuity protects the goodwill that a sudden sale to a stranger can destroy.

And you get an exit where there might otherwise be none. A trusted staff member who wants their own business is a buyer sitting in front of you.

The obstacles, honestly

The catch is usually money. Your staff member wants the business but cannot raise the price in cash. A young manager will not walk into a bank and secure the full amount against a newsagency.

That is where creative terms matter. Vendor finance, where you carry part of the price and they pay you out over time from the trading profit, is common in these deals. So is a staged handover, where they buy in gradually and lift their share as they go. You take on some risk, but you also keep an income stream and a motivated buyer with skin in the game.

The other obstacle is capability. Being a good employee is not the same as being a good owner. An employee follows the system. An owner has to build and defend it, carry the cash-flow worry, and make the hard calls. Not every good manager wants that, and not every willing manager can do it. Be honest about the difference before you go down this road.

How to set it up

Spot the potential early. Watch who takes ownership without being asked. Who reorders before you notice the gap. Who treats the shop like it is theirs. That instinct cannot be trained easily.

Grow them into it. Give a promising staff member real responsibility well before any talk of sale. Let them run ordering for a category, manage a roster, see the sales figures. You are testing them and training them at once.

Be open about your plans. If you would sell to the right internal buyer, say so. It gives an ambitious employee a reason to stay and to lift their game. Secrecy helps no-one here.

Get the deal advised properly. Vendor finance and staged buy-ins have real tax and legal consequences for both sides. Involve your accountant and a solicitor before you shake hands. A clear, written agreement protects the relationship as much as the money.

The point

Your next owner may not answer an advertisement. They may already clock on each morning.

If you have someone with the instinct and the appetite, grow them, be open with them, and structure a deal they can afford. An internal sale can hand you an exit, protect your customers, and pass the shop to someone who already loves it.

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Selling your newsagency

Vendor finance: how to sell when the bank won’t lend

Eighth in the succession and exit series. Having covered what you are selling and for how much, this post turns to how a buyer pays for it when the bank won’t fund the full price. It also sets up the next posts on internal and family buyers, who most often need these terms.

You have a buyer. They want the shop. They cannot raise the full price. This is where many newsagency sales stall, because a bank will not lend a young buyer the full amount against a business the market sees as declining.

Vendor finance solves this. You, the seller, carry part of the price and the buyer pays you out over time from the trading profit. Used well, it turns a stalled sale into a completed one. Used carelessly, it turns you into an unpaid creditor of a business you no longer control. be careful. Only go down this path is it makes sense to you, and if you fully understand it.

Why it works

For the buyer, vendor finance bridges the gap the bank leaves. They put in what they can, and you finance the rest.

For the seller, it does two useful things. It widens your pool of buyers to include the capable people who lack full funding, often the very staff or managers who make the best owners. And it can lift the total price, because a buyer who can spread the cost will pay more than one writing a single cheque.

It also signals confidence. A seller willing to be paid from future profit is telling the buyer the business can generate that profit. That reassurance can be the thing that closes the deal.

Where it goes wrong

The risk is simple. If the business fails under the new owner, your remaining payments are at risk. You have handed over the shop and kept the exposure.

This is the trap to avoid. You are no longer running the business, so you cannot control whether it succeeds, yet your money depends on it. That is why the structure matters more than the goodwill.

Structuring it properly

Take a real deposit. A buyer with meaningful money down is committed and has something to lose. Avoid deals where the buyer risks almost nothing.

Secure the debt. The amount you finance should be secured, ideally over the business assets and, where possible, with personal guarantees. Unsecured seller finance is a gift you may not get back.

Keep the term short and the payments realistic. The payments must be serviceable from the actual trading profit, not from optimism. Model it on real numbers, not best-case ones.

Stay informed without interfering. Build in a right to see the trading figures during the finance period. You are not running the shop, but you are entitled to see that your security is sound.

Have an exit for the exit. Agree what happens if payments stop. Clear default terms, worked out calmly at the start, are far better than a dispute worked out in anger later.

Get it advised

Vendor finance has real tax and legal consequences for both sides, including how and when your capital gain is treated. Do not structure this on a handshake.

Involve your accountant and a solicitor before you agree terms. A properly drawn agreement protects the deal, the relationship and your money. The cost of advice is trivial against the amount you are carrying.

The point

Vendor finance is often the only way a good internal or first-time buyer can afford your business. That makes it a powerful tool, not a soft touch.

Take a deposit, secure the debt, keep the payments realistic, stay informed and get it advised properly. Do that and you convert a buyer who cannot quite afford you into a sale that actually completes.

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Selling your newsagency

When you own the building: selling the property, not the business

Seventh in the succession and exit series. For owners who hold the building, the exit changes shape entirely. This post follows the lease discussion by treating the property as a second asset, with options a tenant never has.

Some newsagents own the building they trade from. When it comes time to exit, that changes the whole picture, because you are not holding one asset. You are holding two.

The business is one thing. The property is another. Confusing them, or selling them as if they were the same, costs owners money. Separating them opens up options a tenant never has.

Two assets, two values

The business is worth its future profit. The building is worth what commercial property is worth in your town. These numbers move independently.

A business with no buyer can sit inside a building worth a great deal. A thriving business can trade from a modest, low-value site. When you own both, you must value each on its own terms and stop thinking of them as a single lump.

This is the insight that gives owner-occupiers more choices at exit than anyone else in the trade.

The paths open to you

Sell the business, keep the building. You sell the trading business to a buyer and become their landlord. You get a sale price for the business and an ongoing rental income from the property. For many retiring owners this is the sweet spot: some cash, a steady income, and an asset that keeps its value.

Sell both together. You sell the business and the building as a package to one buyer who wants both. Simpler, one transaction, but you give up the ongoing income and you narrow the pool of buyers who can afford the combined price.

Close the business, sell or keep the property. This is the path the regional owner in my earlier post took. When there was no buyer for the business, they closed it in an orderly way and sold the building, retiring on the proceeds. The business had no goodwill, but the real estate carried the retirement. Owning the building turned a no-buyer situation into a comfortable exit.

Close the business, lease the building to someone else. Wind down the newsagency, then lease the premises to a different tenant entirely. You keep the property and the income without the trade.

Why this matters most in the no-buyer case

The hardest situations in this series are the businesses no-one will buy. Owning the building softens that blow completely.

If your business has no goodwill but your building has value, the building is your exit. You are not walking away with nothing. You are closing a tired business and realising a real asset. That is a very different retirement from the tenant who closes with only stock to clear.

Get the tax right

Splitting the two assets has real tax consequences. Capital gains on the property, the treatment of the business sale, and how rental income is taxed if you keep the building all need proper advice.

Talk to your accountant before you decide the path, not after. The right structure can make a meaningful difference to what you keep.

The point

If you own your building, you hold two assets, not one. Value them separately and the options multiply.

Sell the business and keep the income. Sell both. Or close a business no-one wants and let the property fund your retirement. Owning the walls is often the best card a newsagent can hold at exit.

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Selling your newsagency

The lease that makes or breaks your sale

Sixth in the succession and exit series. With your value and numbers in order, the deal itself comes into view. This post covers the single factor that sinks more small-retail sales than price: the lease.

Owners obsess over price when they sell. Buyers often care more about the lease. In my experience, more small-retail sales fall over on the lease than on the money, and a newsagency is no exception.

Your lease is not paperwork in a drawer. It is one of the most valuable, or most dangerous, parts of what you are selling. Understand it early, or watch it sink your deal late.

Why buyers care so much

A buyer is not just buying your business. They are buying the right to keep trading from that location. If that right is short, uncertain or costly, the business is worth far less, no matter how good the profit looks.

Nobody wants to buy a shop that might lose its premises in eighteen months, or face a rent review that wipes out the margin. The lease is where a buyer’s confidence lives or dies.

The term is everything

A buyer wants a solid run of years ahead. A lease with a good term left, or firm options to renew, gives them the security to invest and, if needed, to on-sell later.

A short remaining term does the opposite. It caps how long the buyer can trade, frightens their own financier, and drags on the price. If your term is short, the single most valuable thing you can do before selling is negotiate a longer one with your landlord. This one step can lift a sale price more than any amount of shop-floor work.

Assignment is the gate

You cannot simply hand your lease to a buyer. Almost every lease requires the landlord’s consent to assign, and the landlord holds real power at that moment.

Understand your assignment clause before you list. Know what the landlord can demand, how long consent takes, and what conditions they may attach. A cooperative landlord smooths the sale. An awkward or slow one can stall it for months or kill it entirely. Sound them out early, so a surprise does not derail you at the finish line.

Make-good can cost you

Buried in most leases is a make-good clause, requiring you to return the premises to an agreed state at the end. For a shop fitted out over decades, that can be a serious, unexpected bill.

This matters most if you are closing rather than selling, but it shapes a sale too. Know your make-good obligation early. Factor it into your numbers. Do not let it ambush you after you thought you were done.

Permitted use is vital

The permitted use clause defines the business. If it is not made for today, the business will be harder to sell.

Property and business together

If you own the building, the lease question changes shape. You can sell the business and become the buyer’s landlord, keeping an income stream. Or sell both. Or sell the property and close the business. Each path has different tax and income consequences, and each deserves its own thought rather than a default assumption.

The point

Your lease can add value or destroy it, and buyers know this even when sellers forget it.

Secure a solid term before you list. Understand your assignment rights and warm up your landlord early. Know your make-good exposure. Handle the lease as carefully as the price, because the buyer certainly will.

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Newsagency management

Getting your financials exit-ready

Fifth in the succession and exit series, and the companion to the post on making your business saleable. Clean, honest numbers are the case for your price. This post covers add-backs, separating owner from business, and surviving due diligence.

A buyer values your business on its numbers, or they should at least, provable numbers, the truth of the business. If those numbers are unclear, tangled or flattering, you lose money at the sale, or you lose the sale altogether.

Getting the financials exit-ready is unglamorous work. It is also some of the best-paid work an owner can do, because clean numbers directly lift what a buyer will pay.

Show the real profit

The profit in your tax return is usually not the profit a buyer should pay for. It has been minimised for tax and muddied by owner decisions. Your job before a sale is to reveal the true earning power of the business.

This is where add-backs matter. A buyer values maintainable profit, so you legitimately add back costs that are yours, not the business’s, and one-offs that will not recur.

Your own wage and perks. If you take no wage, the buyer must add a manager’s wage to see real profit. If you run a car, phone or other perks through the business, those come out. The aim is the profit a normal owner-operator would actually make.

One-off costs. A bad debt, a legal bill, a one-time repair. These are stripped out because they distort a single year and will not repeat.

Below-market or above-market rent. If you own the building and charge yourself an odd rent, normalise it to a market figure, so the buyer sees what they will really pay.

Done honestly, add-backs are not a trick. They are how you show a buyer the genuine profit. Done dishonestly, they destroy trust the moment due diligence begins.

Separate owner from business

Years of running personal costs through the shop feels normal until you try to sell. Then every blurred line becomes a question a buyer uses to push the price down.

Well before you list, untangle it. Business costs on one side, owner perks on the other, clearly documented. A buyer who can see exactly what the business spends, and what you spend through it, trusts the numbers. Trust holds the price.

Three clean years

One good year proves nothing. A buyer wants to see a trend they can rely on.

Aim to present two to three years of clean, consistent financials. Same categories, same treatment, no unexplained swings. Consistency signals a business under control, and control is what a buyer pays for. Erratic books have the opposite effect.

Be ready for due diligence

A serious buyer will look under the bonnet. They will want to see the POS reports, the supplier accounts, the lease, the lottery and agency arrangements, the wage records.

Have it ready. A seller who produces clean, organised information quickly builds confidence and keeps momentum. A seller who fumbles for records, or whose numbers do not match when checked, plants doubt at the worst possible moment. Deals die in due diligence more often than in negotiation.

The point

Your financials are the case for your price. Make that case clear, honest and consistent.

Show the real profit through legitimate add-backs, separate what the business spends from what you spend, present three clean years and be ready for scrutiny. Numbers a buyer can trust are numbers a buyer will pay for.

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Newsagency management

Making your newsagency worth buying

Fourth in the succession and exit series. Having faced your valuation, this post is the practical how-to: the multi-year project of lifting value before you list, so you sell the business you built rather than the one you happened to have.

From what I have seen, most owners decide to sell, then list the business as it is. That is backwards. The work that makes a business saleable happens in the two or three years before it goes on the market, not the week after.

A saleable business is not the same as a business that trades. Plenty of shops trade day to day but would never attract a buyer. Closing that gap is the most valuable project an owner nearing exit can take on.

Start early

You cannot fix a business on the way out the door. Value is built slowly, in the years before you sell.

The owners who exit well start preparing early, often three years out. That runway lets you lift profit, clean up the accounts and reduce how much the business leans on you. Leave it to the last minute and you sell whatever you happen to have, which is usually worth less than it could be.

Reduce the dependence on you

The single biggest thing that kills value is a business that only works because you are in it.

A buyer looking at a shop run entirely out of the owner’s head sees risk. They know the goodwill walks out the door with you. Every routine you carry in your memory, every supplier relationship only you hold, every decision only you can make lowers the price.

The fix is the same discipline as running under management. Document the systems. Train staff to run departments. Build relationships that survive your departure. A business that can run without you is a business someone else can imagine owning.

Lift the profit that counts

Buyers pay a multiple of sustainable profit, so every dollar of real profit you add is worth several dollars of sale price.

Rework the range for margin. Cut the dead stock that ties up cash and shelf space. Grow the gift, card and stationery lines that a buyer values, rather than leaning on thin-margin agency income. Lift the average sale. These are good things to do anyway, and near an exit they pay twice.

Sort the lease

A short or uncertain lease frightens buyers more than almost anything. Nobody wants to buy a business that might lose its premises in eighteen months.

Well before you list, talk to your landlord about the term. A solid lease with a decent run left, and clear assignment rights, makes the business far easier to sell. This is often the quiet difference between a deal that closes and one that falls over.

Clean up the accounts

A buyer cannot value what they cannot see. Messy books, cash that never quite reconciles, and personal expenses tangled through the business all create doubt, and doubt lowers offers.

Get two to three years of clean, clear financials together with your accountant. Separate your genuine business costs from owner perks. A buyer who can see the real profit at a glance will pay for it. One who has to guess will discount for the risk.

The point

You do not sell the business you have. You sell the business you spend the last few years building into something worth buying.

Reduce how much it depends on you, lift the profit that counts, sort the lease and clean the books. Start early enough and you turn a shop that merely trades into one a buyer actually wants.

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Newsagency management

What is a newsagency actually worth?

Third in the succession and exit series, and the foundation for everything that follows. Before you can plan a sale, a handover or a graceful close, you need a realistic number. This post explains how a buyer values your business, and why that figure has fallen.

Every conversation about selling starts with the same question, and most owners answer it wrong. They value the business on what they paid, what they need for retirement, or what a neighbour sold for a decade ago. None of those is the value.

A business is worth what a buyer will pay today. This cliche is true. For newsagencies, that number has fallen hard, and understanding why is the first step to a realistic exit.

Goodwill has thinned

For years a newsagency sold on a multiple of profit. Strong businesses fetched good goodwill because the income was reliable and the buyers were there.

That has changed. Print has declined. Lotteries have gone digital. Foot traffic that once came for the paper now comes for nothing. The reliable income a buyer used to pay a premium for is no longer reliable. In many cases the goodwill a seller expects simply is not there, because the future earnings a buyer is paying for look uncertain.

This is the hard truth behind the no-buyer businesses. The value did not disappear because the owner did anything wrong. The market changed underneath them.

What a buyer is really buying

A buyer pays for future profit, not past effort. When you value your shop, look through their eyes.

Sustainable profit is the core. Not turnover, and not the profit that only exists because you take no wage. A buyer wants the profit that remains after paying someone to do your job. That is the number a multiple gets applied to.

Not all income is equal. Agency income tied to declining categories is valued cautiously. Gift, card and stationery margin that the owner has built is valued more highly because it is defensible and growing. Two shops with the same profit can be worth very different amounts depending on where that profit comes from.

Lottery and agency lines are treated carefully. They bring traffic but thin margin, and the licences are not freely transferable. A buyer discounts income they cannot control.

Land is a separate question

Many owners confuse the value of the business with the value of the building they happen to own.

They are two assets. The business is worth its future profit. The property is worth what property is worth in your town. A shop that cannot be sold as a business can still hold a valuable building, and the two should be valued and sold separately. Do not let a weak business drag down how you think about strong real estate, or the reverse.

Getting a real number

Do not guess, and do not rely on hope. Get your accountant to prepare a defensible profit figure with the owner add-backs stripped out. Look at what comparable businesses have actually sold for recently, not what they were listed at. If the business is your main asset, pay for a proper valuation.

A realistic number, even a disappointing one, is worth more than an inflated one that keeps the shop unsold for two years.

The point

Your newsagency is worth what a buyer will pay for its future profit, valued category by category, with the property counted separately.

Face that number early. It tells you whether to sell, to build value first, to run under management, or to plan a graceful close. Every other decision in this series flows from it.

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Newsagency management

The newsagencies that still sell

Second in the succession and exit series. Where the opening post explained why goodwill collapsed, this one is the counterpoint: the businesses that still attract buyers, and what they have in common. It sets the target the rest of the series helps you reach.

For all the talk of no buyers, some newsagencies do sell, and sell well. Understanding what they have in common is the most useful thing an owner planning an exit can learn. And I should also note for clarity there are some excellent businesses that do not sell, because of location, timing or some other factor that is likely outside the control of the owner.

The businesses that attract buyers are not luckier or better located. They are different in kind. They stopped being newsagencies in the old sense and became something a buyer can see a future in.

They earn from the right categories

The single clearest marker is the revenue mix. A saleable modern newsagency makes less than 10% of turnover from print, around 30% from lottery commission, and 60% from gifts, homewares, books, toys and similar lines, categories delivering 50% and more gross profit ().

That mix is what a buyer pays for. High-margin, owner-built categories are defensible and growing, unlike thin agency income. When most of your profit comes from gift and specialty retail rather than papers, a buyer sees a retail business with a future.

They are a destination, not a convenience

The shops that sell give customers a reason to come that a phone cannot replace.

They are places people choose to visit for the range, the discovery, the experience of browsing good product. That is very different from the old model, where customers came only for the paper or the lottery ticket and bought nothing else. A destination shop owns its traffic. A convenience shop borrows it from products that are now available everywhere. Buyers pay for owned traffic.

They do not depend on the owner

A saleable business runs on systems, not on one person’s memory and goodwill.

The shops that sell have documented processes, trained staff who run departments, and supplier relationships that survive a change of owner. A buyer can step in and keep it running. The goodwill stays because it lives in the business, not in the departing owner. This is the same discipline that lets a business run under management, and it is no coincidence that the same businesses can do both.

They have clean numbers and a sound lease

The unglamorous foundations matter as much as the shop floor.

The businesses that sell present clean, consistent financials that show real profit, and they trade on a solid lease with a decent term and workable assignment. A buyer can see what they are buying and knows they can keep the premises. Remove the doubt, and the business becomes something a bank will fund and a buyer will commit to.

The lesson for anyone planning to exit

The models that sell are not a separate species. They are the businesses that made the shift the market demanded, and made it early.

If you are years from exit, this is your blueprint. Move your revenue towards high-margin categories. Become a destination. Build systems so the shop does not depend on you. Sort the numbers and the lease. Do that work, and you move your business from the no-buyer column into the one that attracts offers.

The point

Newsagencies still sell when they have earned the right to. Strong margin from gift and specialty categories, owned traffic, independence from the owner, clean books and a sound lease.

None of it is luck. It comes from decisions made years before the sale. The exit you get is largely the exit you built.

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Newsagency management

Why newsagency goodwill is not what it used to be

This is the first post in a  series on newsagency succession and exit. It sets the scene: why so many businesses now struggle to find a buyer. The posts that follow move from this hard diagnosis through valuation, preparing to sell, deal structures, family and partner succession, and finally closing and life after the shop.

The no-buyer businesses in this series share a root cause. The goodwill that once made a newsagency saleable has largely gone. Understanding why matters, because the reason is not the one most people reach for.

The easy explanation is that print died. It is not that simple, and the simple version leads owners to the wrong conclusions.

The numbers are real

The decline is not imagined. Newspaper unit sales in the businesses I track fell around 13% year on year in 2025, an acceleration on prior years. Magazine unit sales dropped roughly 10% across the board in the same period. Industry revenue has fallen at an annualised 5.2% over five years, and IBISWorld expects the decline to continue.

Lotteries, long the reliable traffic driver, are shifting too. More than 40% of lottery sales now move online, bypassing the shopfront entirely. The traffic a buyer used to bank on is thinning.

But print decline is not the real killer

Here is the part owners get wrong. The collapse in goodwill is not mainly about print falling. It is about businesses that stayed dependent on print while it fell.

The margin on print was always poor. A medium newsagency selling 50 copies a day of a major daily makes under $7,000 a year gross from it, and many newsagencies actually lose money on magazines once labour, space and theft are counted (). A business closing because print fell was, in my view, a business rooted in the past. The print wasn’t paying the bills anyway.

So the goodwill did not collapse because paper sales fell. It collapsed because too many owners built nothing to replace print, and a buyer will not pay goodwill for a shop with no defensible profit.

What a buyer sees

A buyer values future profit they can rely on. Look at the legacy newsagency through their eyes and the problem is obvious.

Declining, low-margin print. Lottery commission leaking online. Foot traffic that came for products now available elsewhere or on a phone. No strong, owner-built category throwing off real margin. There is nothing there to pay a premium for. The goodwill is gone because the future earnings are uncertain and thin.

That is the honest anatomy of a no-buyer business.

The lesson in the collapse

The healthy businesses tell the counter-story. A well-run modern newsagency should make less than 10% of turnover from print, around 30% from lottery commission, and 60% from gifts, homewares, books, toys and the like, categories delivering 50% and more gross profit ().

Those businesses have goodwill because they have defensible, growing profit. The ones with no buyer are, overwhelmingly, the ones that never made that shift.

The point

Goodwill collapsed in the businesses that stayed tied to print and lottery while both thinned, and that built nothing profitable in their place.

That is a hard message, but it is also a hopeful one. The businesses that did diversify still hold value and still sell. Which is the subject of the next post.

Footnote: it’s never to late to start diversifying.

Second footnote: I am seeing too many who think they have diversified and while they have changed, they have not change enough.

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newsagency of the future

When there is no buyer: closing your newsagency well

I get asked about buying and selling newsagencies often. There is a harder conversation we do not have enough: what to do when there is no buyer at all.

It is more common than most owners admit. When a newsagent cannot sell, they often just close. I said as much to Mumbrella late last year, and the rate of closures lifted again through 2025. A business built on newspapers, magazines, stationery and lotteries, with little change over the years, has no goodwill a buyer will pay for.

This post is for the owner facing that reality. I am not selling you a turnaround. I want to help you leave well.

The no-buyer reality

Frank and Moya Livingstone paid around $600,000 for the Mansfield newsagency two decades ago. They listed it, waited two years, and got no takers. In the end they closed the doors and walked away. “Unfortunately, it’s an industry nobody wants to take on anymore,” Frank told the ABC.

Their story is not rare. McGills, once the largest newsagency in Victoria and a Melbourne CBD landmark, closed because no-one offered to buy it. Whole towns have lost their last news service.

If this is your business, the absence of a buyer is not a personal failure. It is the market telling you the goodwill is gone. The sooner you accept that, the better your exit will be.

I know one regional owner who did exactly that. They put the business on the market, wanted to retire, and set themselves a deadline. Theirs was a transformed business by then. It did not look or feel like a traditional newsagency and it was terrifically profitable. Even so, two years passed with no sale. When the deadline arrived, they closed in a calm, structured way, sold the building and retired happy. There was no drama and no shame in it.

They had decided how their exit would look, and they held to it.

Winding down well

A closure is still a project, and it deserves to be run like one. The owners who manage it well start twelve months out, not twelve days.

Start with the lease. Your exit date is set by your lease more than anything else. Know when it ends, what your make-good obligations are and whether you can hand back early. This shapes every other decision.

The lottery licence needs its own plan. It sits with the operator, not with you to sell freely. Speak to the Lottery Corporation early about surrendering or transferring it, as the process and timing are theirs to control. Do not leave this to the last week.

Stock takes patience. Resist the urge to strip the shop overnight. Wind supply down category by category, stop reordering slow lines now, and discount in stages so you protect cash rather than dump everything at a loss. Magazines and returns need a clean final reconciliation with each distributor.

Give your card, gift and stationery suppliers notice, settle accounts, and return what you can. A tidy close protects your name and any future dealings.

Your people will know something is coming, so tell them early and honestly. Work out entitlements, final pays and references. This is often the part owners dread most, and handling it with care matters.

And talk to your accountant well before you close, not after. There are tax outcomes to a wind-down, and a clean set of final accounts protects you. Two to three years of lead time is ideal, but even a few months helps.

The part no-one prepares you for

The practical steps are the easy part. The hard part is what closing does to you.

For many owners the newsagency is not just income. It is identity. You have opened the door before dawn for twenty or thirty years. Customers know your name. You have been the one who kept the paper aside and remembered the birthday card. When that ends, the loss is real.

Frank Livingstone put it plainly: “You just close the doors, walk away, and lick your wounds.” There is grief in that line. Do not pretend it is only a transaction.

The regional owner I mentioned had one clear reason for retiring happy: they were open about the plan, inside the business and out. Staff knew, and so did customers and suppliers. There was no awkward secrecy. That openness turned a closure into a dignified ending rather than a quiet retreat, and it is the single lesson I would take from their exit.

A few things help. Give yourself time before deciding what comes next. Tell your customers properly, with a note in the window and a proper goodbye, rather than a locked door one Monday. Let them thank you, because it matters to them and it will matter to you. Keep some connection to the people and the work you valued. And be honest with your family about how you are feeling, because they carry it with you.

Closing a business you built is not defeat. What hurts owners is doing it badly, rushed and alone. Done on your terms, with clean accounts and your head up, it is something to be proud of.

The point

If you cannot sell, you still have choices about how you leave. Plan the wind-down properly, look after your cash and your staff, and sort the lottery and the lease early. Give yourself the same care you have given your customers all these years.
The shop closes either way. What people remember is how you closed it.

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Newsagency management

Reading your P&L and balance sheet: a plain-English guide for newsagents

Most newsagents I know don’t enjoy looking at their financials. The reports often arrive from the accountant. They get a glance. Then they go in a drawer.

That’s a missed opportunity I think.

Your profit and loss statement and your balance sheet are two useful management tools. They cost nothing extra. You already pay to produce them. Yet few retailers read them well, and fewer still act on what they show.

This is a plain-English guide. No jargon for its own sake. Just what the numbers mean, and the handful that actually matter in a newsagency.

The two reports, in one sentence each

The profit and loss statement shows whether the business made money over a period. A month, a quarter, a year.

The balance sheet shows what the business owns and owes at a single point in time. Think of it as a photograph taken on the last day of the period.

One is a video of the trading period. The other is a snapshot at the end of it. You need both.

The profit and loss, top to bottom

A P&L reads from the top down, and it narrows as it goes.

At the top is revenue, sometimes called sales or turnover. This is everything the business sold. In a newsagency it blends very different things: lottery commission, magazines, papers, cards, gifts, stationery, and whatever newer categories you have added.

A word of caution here. Total revenue can flatter you. A big lottery number lifts the top line but adds little profit. More on that shortly.

Next comes cost of goods sold, usually shortened to COGS. This is what the stock cost you to buy. Revenue minus COGS gives you gross profit.

Gross profit is the number that matters most in retail. It is the money left after paying for the stock, and it is what pays for everything else.

Below gross profit sit the operating expenses. Wages. Rent. Power. Insurance. Bank and card fees. Accounting. These are the costs of keeping the doors open, whether you sell much or little.

Take operating expenses away from gross profit and you reach the bottom line: net profit. This is what the business actually earned.

Why gross profit beats revenue every time

Here is the trap. Two newsagencies can report the same revenue and be worlds apart in health.

Imagine both turn over one million dollars. The first leans heavily on lottery and papers, low-margin lines. The second has shifted space to cards, gifts, and collectables. The second business keeps far more of every dollar. Same top line. Very different result at the bottom.

This is why a rising revenue figure is not, on its own, good news. What you want to see is gross profit rising, and rising as a share of sales.

Watch the gross profit margin. It is gross profit divided by revenue, shown as a percentage. Track it month on month and year on year. A margin that is drifting down is an early warning, often long before the bank balance shows it.

The handful of numbers that actually matter

You do not need to read every line. A small set of numbers tells the real story.

Gross profit margin. Covered above. The single most important percentage in the business. If it is falling, find out why before anything else.

Wages as a percentage of sales. Total wages divided by revenue. This is usually the largest controllable cost in a shop. Roster to sales, not to habit. The % should be 11% or less.

Occupancy cost as a percentage of sales. Rent, outgoings, and any centre levies, divided by revenue. It shows whether the site is earning its keep. The % should be 11% or less.

Stock turn. How many times a year you sell and replace your stock. Slow turn means cash tied up on shelves. It is the quiet killer of small retail.

Net profit, and the wage you pay yourself. Read these together. A business that shows a profit only because the owner takes nothing is not really profitable.

Get comfortable with those five. Ignore the rest until you have.

A note on the owner’s wage

Many newsagents do not pay themselves a proper wage. The profit then looks better than it is.

This matters most when you come to sell. A buyer, and a broker, will add a market wage back into the accounts to see the true earnings. Better to run the business that way now. It gives you an honest picture, and it protects the value of the business.

The balance sheet, without the fog

The balance sheet has three parts. Assets, liabilities, and equity.

Assets are what the business owns. Cash in the bank. Stock on the shelves. Money owed to you. Fittings and equipment.

Liabilities are what the business owes. Suppliers. The tax office. Any loans or finance.

Equity is what is left for the owner once you subtract liabilities from assets. It is the true worth of the business on that day.

The whole thing balances by design. Assets always equal liabilities plus equity. Hence the name.

What to look for on the balance sheet

Two things matter most for a small retailer.

Can the business pay its bills? Compare what it owns that is easily turned to cash, mainly bank and stock, against what falls due soon, mainly suppliers and tax. If the short-term debts are creeping up on the short-term assets, tighten up before it bites.

Is cash trapped in stock? A large stock figure is not a sign of strength. It is often a sign of dead lines and over-ordering. Stock does not pay wages. Cash does.

Read the balance sheet alongside the P&L. A shop can post a profit and still run short of cash, because the profit is sitting on the shelves as unsold stock.

Build the habit

Set aside 10 minutes at the end of each month.

Open the P&L. Check the gross profit margin against last month and the same month last year. Glance at wages and occupancy as a share of sales.

Open the balance sheet. Check the bank, the stock figure, and what is owed to suppliers and the tax office.

Write down one thing you will act on. Just one. Do that every month and the numbers stop being a mystery. They become a guide.

The bottom line

Good retailers are not those who avoid the reports. They are the ones who read them, calmly, on a regular schedule, and let the numbers shape the next decision.

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Newsagency management
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