A question I often get asked from my business owner clients is "what reports should I be asking for so that I can keep my finger on the pulse on my business".


WHY I NEED TO READ REPORTS!
Financial reports must be read on time before it is too late and the reports are read to know how the business is doing and how to take the business to the next level. The sources factors and failure factors must be identified by business owners from the reports

REPORT FREQUENCY
The first thing to decide is how frequently you need to see reports. I suggest a minimum of monthly, if not weekly. Your accounts reports must be done in such a way that you know your performance at the end of each month and compare the performance at the end of each month within and outside the organization in the same industry.

TOP TIP: DO A YEAR END EACH MONTH
To help you know what's going on in your business, one of the first things to implement into your business is a culture of having a yearend every month performance review.
With regards to reporting, if you have a full time person looking after your reports, you should be having a weekly meeting with them to review reports.
When you are meeting with your accounts person, you want to ensure that you have all the reports up front -before your meeting - so that you have time to go through them and highlight any discrepancies that you can then address during the meeting.

YOUR WEEKLY REPORT PACK
So what information do you need to know if your business is doing well or not? Well your weekly report pack should consist of the following five reports (by the way, a sample copy of each of these reports is also included in the workbook that I mentioned before):

1) Statement of Income, this should be provided weekly (if you're meeting weekly) as well as a Month to Date and a Year to Date report. So that's actually three reports in total!

2) Account Payable details and analysis. This report shows a list of all the people that you owe money to, and when it's due - or if its overdue. If there are any amounts that exceed your suppliers trading terms, loss of cash discount, you want to know why. If it's because of cash flow, you then look at your cash flow analysis report to see when they will be paid. To maintain a great relationship with your supplier, you then need to communicate this with them.

3) Account receivables details and analysis. This is where you can clearly see who owes you money and if they have any amounts outstanding to you. This allows you to follow up on collections way before it becomes overdue. As part of your financial management systems, you should have a standard follow up system. You must learn to issue statement of outstanding debts so that the amount due for collection will not be in dispute. You can call the debtors and send them mails from time to time.

4) Another strategic report is Cash flow statement and analysis. This report should be put together by your bookkeeper and outlines when money is coming in and when it is going out. You can then see if there are any shortfalls so that you can make plans in advance to get this covered. It may be that you need to transfer monies from another account - or it may be that you chase outstanding payments.

5) The other essential report to have is the Bank Reconciliation. Your bank statement and your cashbook must be reconciled at least on monthly basis` You must request for this report to know that all is well with your banking transactions.

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About the Author; Sunmola David is a chartered, founder of Inner Konsult Ltd who carries out tax preparation, tax calculation for various clients in Nigeria. He specializes in Accounting business outsource process, Back office outsourcing and Outsourced accounting. To know more about Accounting outsourcing and Accounting outsourcing services visit www.accountsreports.com