Workshop · Transformation
Two pockets, one account
As long as personal spending and business spending run through the same place, nobody can say what the company earns or what you earn.
- Duration
- 2 hours
- Delivery
- On site · Virtual
- Participants
- From 6 to 18 participants
- Investment
- Request a quote
Investment depends on scope, number of participants and delivery mode. We prepare a proposal at no obligation.
The problem it solves
It was almost never decided. At the start there was one account, one card and one person answering for everything, and mixing was simply the practical thing. The company grew, employees and suppliers arrived, and that early convenience kept running without anyone looking at it again.
The cost shows up slowly, in places nobody connects back to the cause. The income statement carries expenses that are not the business's and hides others that are, so the margin being calculated is not the real margin. The owner cannot say what their own standard of living costs, because it has never appeared on a line. And when someone outside asks to see the numbers, a bank, a buyer or a new partner, the conversation stalls on movements that cannot be explained quickly.
There is a second loss, less visible. Someone who takes out what is there when it is there never learns whether the company can sustain that draw, and the company never learns whether it can sustain its owner. Neither question can be answered from a mixed account.
What it covers
The workshop covers one discipline and covers it completely, because it is short to explain and hard to sustain. It opens with the diagnosis: what is running through the company account today that does not belong to the business, and what the owner is paying for personally without anyone recording it.
Then the minimum structure goes in: separate accounts, separate means of payment, a defined mechanism for the owner to receive money regularly rather than by availability, and a rule for the genuinely mixed cases that always exist, the vehicle, the phone, the space at home. No general templates are handed out; the work is done on the expenses each participant brings.
The final block is consequences. Mixing has effects on the records, on how the company's credit is assessed and on any conversation with an outside party, and it also carries legal and tax implications that this workshop points at but does not resolve. That part belongs to your attorney and your accountant, and one of the things you leave with is knowing exactly what to take them.
What participants learn
- Identify which personal movements are running through the company today, and the reverse.
- Separate accounts and payment methods without jamming the daily operation.
- Define a regular mechanism for owner draws instead of drawing on availability.
- Set a written rule for the expenses that genuinely are mixed.
- Recognise which consequences of mixing need an attorney or an accountant.
Agenda
- How mixing starts and why nobody ever decides it
- What it distorts on the income statement and on the balance sheet
- Accounts, cards and payment methods: the minimum structure
- The owner's draw as a periodic decision rather than an availability
- Genuinely mixed expenses: vehicle, phone, space, travel
- Documentation: what evidence supports each movement
- What a bank, a buyer or a partner sees in a mixed account
- Where administrative practice ends and legal or tax advice begins
What the organisation leaves with
- An inventory of the mixed movements of recent months, sorted.
- A structure of separate accounts and payment methods, with a date to put it in place.
- A written rule for mixed expenses, with the evidence each one requires.
- A defined owner-draw mechanism, with a frequency, a criterion and a review point.
Programme details
- Format
- Workshop
- Also available as
- Executive talk
- Languages
- Español · English
- Includes
- Participant workbook
- Action plan
- Post-training resources
- Facilitation
- ALUD Consulting LLC — Global Business Transformation.
Who it is for
- Sole owners and partners operating from a single account
- Family businesses where household and business spending live side by side
- Businesses preparing to seek financing or take on a partner
- Founders who have just incorporated and still operate the way they did before
Frequently asked questions
- Is this legal or tax advice?
- No. ALUD provides no legal or tax services, and this workshop interprets no rule. It works on the administrative practice of separating money. The legal and tax consequences in your case are answered by your attorney and your accountant.
- What if I have been mixing everything for years?
- Then you start with the inventory, not the structure. Reconstructing the past has a practical limit, and at some point the honest answer is to draw a line, separate from a given date, and document properly from there forward.
- Can I separate the accounts without changing how I pay myself?
- You can, and it will not last. With no defined mechanism for you to receive money, the company account gets used again in the first tight week. Separation holds because of the mechanism, not because of discipline.
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Tell us the context and we will prepare a proposal tailored to your organisation. No obligation.
Working this inside the organisation
If this challenge will not be settled in one session, ALUD Consulting LLC works it as consulting: management consulting, human resources, strategy, organisational design, leadership development and business transformation.