Mid-Year Financial Review: Are You on Track to Hit Your 2025 Goals?

It is the halftime of your business year. A very important question to ask is “Am I winning?” For small and mid-sized business (SMB) leaders, June isn’t just another month. It is a make-or-break moment. Goals were set in January. Budgets were built. But how close are you to the plan you created?

A mid-year financial review gives you the clarity to answer that question. It shows where your business is strong, where it’s off track, and how to be right on track before it’s too late. With 2025 business goals fast approaching and the economy still changing, now is the time to pause, reflect, and adjust. Let’s walk through why mid-year matters, what to review, and how you can make smart, fast decisions to course correct and finish strong.

Why Mid-Year Review Is a Must-Do for SMBs

A lot can change in six months such as price increases, market shifts, and change of goals. That’s why mid-year is a critical moment for small businesses to reassess where they stand.

Here are reasons why now matters:

Costs: Prices aren’t the same as they were in Q1. Price creeps are real. It could be payroll, raw materials, or even software.
Market conditions: Conditions in the market may have shifted. Maybe demand is slower, or maybe it’s higher and you’re unprepared.
Your goals: Your goals may no longer reflect reality. If you're using January’s plan to run a June business, you're already behind.

Many SMBs we’ve worked with treat June like a mini-Q4. It’s a strategic checkpoint, not a panic button. The ones that recalibrate now often outperform peers who wait until the end of the year.

5 Core Areas to Review Now

Here’s a quick checklist to help you assess how your business is tracking at the halfway mark. These are the areas that often signal whether a team is aligned or heading for trouble.

1. Revenue vs. Plan

Ask yourself if you are hitting your targets. Compare actual sales, service revenue, or recurring income to your budget. If you’re consistently below plan, ask:

Is it a market issue, a pricing issue, or a pipeline issue?
Are certain products or services dragging performance down?
Has seasonality shifted?

2. Cash Flow Health

Do you have enough cash to operate through the year-end? Check your current burn rate and expected runway. If you’re dipping into reserves earlier than expected or relying on short-term funding, now’s the time to rethink. This is also a good time to refresh your cash flow planning for your SMB, especially if new expenses or slow payments have caught you off guard.

3. Expense Creep

What is eating into your margins? Silent cost increases often go unnoticed: SaaS subscriptions, contractor hours, shipping fees. Go through your expenses and look for:

Duplicates or unused tools
Vendors with increased pricing
Projects that ballooned past scope

4. Headcount and Payroll

Is your team sized correctly for the second half? Payroll is often the biggest line item. Mid-year is a good time to ask the following questions:

Are we overstaffed in one area and stretched in another?
Have we hired too fast or too slow?
Are salary bands still aligned with the market?

5. Forecast and Goal Recalibration

Are your 2025 business goals still realistic? If Q1 and Q2 didn’t go as planned, now’s the moment to revisit your forecasts. You may not need to change the goal but you probably need to adjust how you get there.

This is where many SMBs benefit from fractional CFO advice to step back, analyze, and reset targets with a clear head. Not sure where to start? That’s where a fractional CFO can guide you.

Signs You Need a Course Correction

Not every business needs a change. But if any of the following sound familiar, it may be time to stop and reset:

You’ve missed revenue targets two or more months in a row
You’ve had to dip into emergency funds or seek outside cash
Your budget hasn’t been updated since January
You haven’t touched your forecast since Q1
Expenses are climbing, but results aren’t improving

Small issues become big ones if ignored. And waiting until Q4 to fix them often means it’s already too late to adjust.

How to Course Correct—Fast

When it’s clear something’s off, you don’t need a 6-week planning cycle to respond. You need a focused approach that realigns your strategy quickly. Here's an expert advice from Chris Ortega on how to do it:

1. Hold a Strategic Finance Sprint: Bring your leadership team together for a 90-minute session. Look at your current numbers and reset the conversation around where the business is now, not where you hoped it would be.

2. Recast Your Forecast: Create a fresh view of the next 3 to 6 months. Shorter-term forecasts let you move faster and catch changes early.

3. Revise Spending Plans: Push or pause any non-essential spending. Not everything budgeted in January is still a good idea in June.

4. Revisit 2025 Goal Viability: Your goals don’t need to shrink but the path to get there may need to change. Update your KPIs, not just your budget line items.

How Fresh FP&A Can Help

Fresh FP&A helps growing SMBs pause, assess, and adjust. It does not matter if you're ahead of plan, behind on targets, or just feeling unclear about the second half of the year, we can help you make sense of the numbers and move forward with confidence.

We offer mid-year financial review sessions to give you:

A clear look at how you're tracking vs. Plan
Expert insight into your forecast and cash flow
Strategic ideas for where to adjust or optimize

This isn't a full reforecast or financial audit. It’s a practical, focused review that helps you lead with clarity.

Conclusion

The year is not over. It’s only halftime. There’s still time to hit your 2025 business goals, but only if you act now. Smart SMB leaders don’t wait until December to fix what is broken. They optimize in June.

You don’t have to figure it out alone. Book a free 30-minute strategy call with Fresh FP&A and let’s get your business back on track.