The 5Q Review System by Hannum Advisory
An owner-centric financial review system

Financial reviews that start with the owner, not the financial statements.

A monthly discipline for understanding your business and making decisions from the numbers. Five questions, in the same order, every month — measured against what you want from the business, not generic benchmarks.

Set at launch · reset annually
1
What do you want?
From the business, in plain terms.
2
What would prove it?
The few numbers that show you're getting it — your yardstick.
Asked every month
3
What happened?
This month, in those numbers.
4
Why?
The drivers behind the results — good and bad.
5
What now?
The decisions in front of you.
repeats monthly

Each question is unanswerable without the one before it. That's why a dashboard or a P&L alone fails — it drops you into question three with no yardstick.

Why this exists

You already get financial statements. This isn't that.

Financial statements tell you what happened. The 5Q Review connects what happened to what you actually want.

“Busy all year, nothing in the bank.”

The owner without question 4

“I find out about problems three months late.”

The owner without question 3

“My CPA tells me about last year — at tax time.”

The owner without question 5

If any of those sounds familiar, the problem isn't your bookkeeper or your CPA. It's that no one has installed a recurring decision-making process around the numbers they produce. That's the job of the 5Q Review System.

The 60-second version

Can you answer all five?

Five yes-or-no questions. If you hesitate on more than one, your financial statements aren't giving you a financial review system. No email — and the verdict is allowed to be no.

1 · What do you want?Could you clearly say what you want this business to give you over the next few years?
2 · What would prove it?Do you know the few numbers that would tell you whether you're getting it?
3 · What happened?Can you look at last month's results and tell whether you're moving toward or away from those outcomes?
4 · Why?Can you explain the handful of things that caused those results — not just recite the totals?
5 · What now?Do the numbers leave you clear about what deserves your attention or a decision now?
And one moreDo you know all of that while there's still time to do something about it?
How it runs

One system. Three engagements.

How it fits

Everything you have stays. This runs on top of it.

“Your bookkeeper keeps the books. I make sure you know what they're telling you.”

Keeps Your bookkeeper. Entry, reconciliation, and monthly financials stay exactly where they are.
Keeps Your CPA. Tax and compliance don't move. The review makes their work more useful to you.
Keeps Your systems. This is not new software, a dashboard, or an ERP project.
Adds A review system. A recurring decision-making process around the numbers — the piece nobody currently owns.
Who it's for

Four gates. All four have to hold.

The 5Q Review works when four gates hold — all four. If they don't yet, a first conversation will tell us what to fix and who should fix it.

Owner-led, roughly $1M+ in revenue

Built for owners who run the business day to day and carry the numbers in their head.

Monthly financials exist

A bookkeeper, controller, or CPA already produces a monthly P&L and balance sheet.

Books you can trust

Or books that are fixable within about 60 days — by someone whose job that is.

You feel the gap

Right now, you couldn't confidently answer what happened, why, and what now. That's the real filter — and the whole reason this exists.

Start here

Fifteen minutes. No pitch deck.

Bring your last three months of financials if you have them. We'll talk through what you're working with, whether the four gates hold, and whether a 5Q Launch makes sense. If it's not a fit, you'll hear that plainly too.

Josh Hannum
CPA · CGMA

Twenty-five years of financial leadership across owner-led businesses — sitting where the decisions get made, not just where the books get kept.

Book a 15-minute intro call