What Reporting Can Tell You About Your Business

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By: Annja Louca

Clients always ask me for management accounts, and we try and provide these on a regular basis, but what I have noticed is that clients don’t just want to receive reports, they want to understand their reports. They want to know what is happening in their business and why and have someone to chat to while seeking guidance and support.

It is the coolest feeling in the world when you sit with a client and they go, ‘aha!’ and feel better after you have clarified things for them. Even if it isn’t a nice thing to find out like the business isn’t profitable or that cashflow is horrific.

So how can I improve the customer experience and help all my clients get that feeling of ‘aha!’?

I don’t really know the answer to that unless I know what a client needs to know about their business, what drives them and what makes them do what they do and how.  Once I understand that, I can help them do it even better.

So, a bit of reverse engineering is necessary to determine what the expected answer is and then try and work backwards. 😊  I mean I can write a blog about reports on employees and how their time is spent, but if your business doesn’t have staff that won’t have any value to you.

So I am going to write this blog the wrong way around.

I am going to give you a list of things you might be able to get from better reporting and I want to encourage you to ask me how to get this. I encourage you to find out what makes your business successful and see if I can identify any applications or specific software that can make the process better, quicker or even seamless.

Some examples of reports that can help your business are:

  • Late paying debtors

  • Upcoming supplier payments

  • Gross Profit or Net Profit percentage

  • Break Even point

  • Minimal cash flow required to pay creditors, salaries and taxes

  • Slow moving stock or items

  • GP % per stock item

  • Highest paying clients or location of highest paying client

  • Is your advertising and marketing efforts making a difference to your profits or sales?

  • Finding patterns in your transactions

  • Managing stock

  • Seeing the bigger picture for your business

  • ETC

There are numerous applications that link in with Xero, Quickbooks and Sage, all of which can be super helpful but only around 9% of businesses regularly use more than five applications to assist in running their business. 

Sadly, you can have the best applications and tools money can buy and still get no additional value from them if you don’t use them to their potential, or if they are the wrong tools for your business.

Be selective about which digital platform and applications you use and make sure they add value and are worth your time.  If in doubt, talk to me. I’m more than happy to help bring the right package and the right business together!

Things to consider when you are considering reporting applications to use:

Easy to use.
I have used programs before that have been hard to understand and navigate, and in plain English, were a right pain in the bum.

If it isn’t easy to use, you probably won’t use it. Compatibility with your current digital strategy

Ensure that it connects to your current reporting system. 
If you need to do anything manually, that’s where mistakes can be made and to be valuable and useful, reports need to be accurate.

It should be flexible and capable of being accessed from multiple platforms - laptops, mobile phone etc.

Do you need an overview or a detailed view?
Recently I have realised that Xero (Anlo’s preferred cloud accounting package) is more than just an accounting software. It is a digital strategy that a business can use to make their business better and more streamlined. 

If you have any questions, or would like to know more, please don’t hesitate to contact me.