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When you own a business, keeping a close eye on your finances and performance is crucial.
If you know how you’re going, you can make smart decisions that drive success. For example, if profits are dropping, you can take action to attempt to reverse the situation with operational or marketing shifts.
The best way to keep track of your business finances is through financial management reports.
You probably already receive or produce financial management reports, but do you know what areas and key performance indicators you need to look at to get the most value from them?
Here’s an in-depth breakdown to help you analyse things more effectively.
Financial management reporting involves generating financial information to provide a clear and accurate view of your business’s health, performance and prospects.
Not all information generated needs to be put into a financial management report. Reports simply provide an overview of your business’s financial performance and status.
The two key financial management reports you need to produce are:
What to do: Compare your business's actual revenue and expenses to the budgeted or planned revenue and expenses (for the specific period).
Results: If your revenue is higher than your budget, this is a good sign. If your expenses are higher than your budget generally, this is a bad sign. If revenue is higher and expenses are lower, you may be performing better than expected.
What to do: Compare your current year’s actual revenue and expenses with the revenue and expenses of the previous year (see your previous year’s P&L). This is to help identify any changes or trends in your financial performance.
Results: If your actual revenue is higher than the previous year's, this is a positive sign and vice versa. If your expenses from the current year are higher, it may indicate problems. Lower expenses are what you want to be aiming for.
What to do: Compare your business's actual revenue and expenses for the current year-to-date (YTD) to the budgeted revenue and expenses for the same period.
Results: If the YTD's actual revenue is higher than budgeted and/or your expenses are lower than budgeted, it indicates your business is performing better than expected. If the opposite applies, your business is likely doing worse than expected.
What to do: Take a look at the following key performance indicators:
Results: The higher the percentage, the better your business is doing financially. The only exception is the expense ratio. A low expense ratio shows that you’re managing your costs.
Once you’ve analysed all the key aspects of your financial management reports, you then need to look at any trends and go through each, considering what the trends are telling you and/or why the results are higher or lower than expected or budgeted for.
These could be factors such as more sales, greater efficiencies, expense variations or changes in market and economic conditions. Once you determine what they are, you can make adjustments to improve performance if needed.
What to do: Determine if you have enough cash to meet obligations and fund your business operations, including growth plans. Also, look at where your cash is coming in and project forward to confirm if/when it might run out.
Results/action: If there are problems with your cash flow, consider how to improve it. This could be simply by reducing costs or by more strategic action. If your cash flow looks good, you should be considering how to apply those extra reserves—perhaps reinvestment in your business, debt reduction or returns to the owners.
What to do: Closely related to cash balances and short-term cash flow, working capital also factors in your other current assets, such as accounts receivable and inventory. Review to ensure they're sufficient to cover your current liabilities.
Results/action: If your working capital is too low, you may need to take steps to rectify it. Increase trading performance to improve over time or look for opportunities to shift some current (short-term) liabilities to non-current liabilities.
What to do: Determine how many aged debtors (unpaid customer invoices) you have. They present a risk to your cash flow and can be a credit risk. Also, look at the average number of days your debtors take to pay you.
Results/action: If you have a high number of aged debtors or debt collection is slow, it may be necessary to review and revise your collections process to improve cash flow and reduce the risk of bad debt. You may also want to adjust your financial statements to reflect the potential loss from bad debt.
What to do: Look at how long you keep stock before it’s sold. Divide the cost of goods sold (COGS) by the average inventory value over a specific period. The result is your stock turnover ratio.
Results/action: A high stock turnover rate indicates that your business is efficiently managing its inventory, while a low stock turnover rate may indicate you’re holding onto excess inventory.
Several things you can do to improve stock turnover include reviewing your inventory management practices, analysing your inventory mix, adjusting your pricing strategy and liquidating excess inventory.
What to do: Make sure you understand both your historical unpaid tax liabilities and the tax liability you’re accruing through the current financial year. Are you recording the current provision in your accounts? And do you have the cash put aside to fund it?
Results/action: If your current tax liability is higher than your tax provision, you may need to adjust your provision to reflect the increased liability. You may also want to analyse the reasons for the differences.
What to do: Review your fixed asset inventory to assess the condition of each item and determine whether it’s still in good working order or requires dealing with.
Results/action: Equipment can be dealt with in several ways, including repairing and refurbishing, replacing, retiring or monitoring. If investment is needed, consider how this will be funded, and ideally, identify and budget for this well in advance.
What to do: Look at the balance of the employee leave provision on the balance sheet. If it’s not recorded on your balance sheet, consider adding it. At the very least, make sure you can monitor it through other payroll reporting.
Results/action: Record it as a liability as it represents the amount of money your business owes to your employees for accrued leave entitlements. By understanding your employee leave provisions, you can manage your obligations to your employees effectively while providing insight into your business’s financial performance and future cash flow.
We hope this has given you a good understanding of what to look for in your financial management reporting, what the results mean, and what actions to take. We recommend you report on a regular basis as follows:
The more you understand your financial management reports, the deeper insights you can gain and the more effective action you can take to make improvements in your business to boost your position and bottom line.
Do you have questions about your financial management reports? Contact us today for insights and personalised advice.
