Entrepreneurs like to keep moving and make decisions quickly.
This makes it hard to pin them down for a full on monthly management accounts meeting.
But to be successful, they need intel to make quick but well informed decisions.
How can they get that intel fast and when they need it?
They likely believe they have to wait for their accountant to prepare a set of financial statements and business metrics and explain it to them first.
Not so! Listen, when my son was small, he was far too busy to sit down and eat. I would prepare bite sized chunks of food and literally fire them into his mouth as he flashed past me during his busy day.
Try treating your client base of entrepreneurs the same way. Not with food 🙂 , but with business metrics and finance info. Here’s what they need to know, and when then need to know it, in bite sized chunks, preferably by text or email:
Every day:
Bank Balance
Sales Yesterday
No of new customers yesterday
No of new trials yesterday
Weekly:
Top 3 Quotes to follow up
Total and Top 3 Who we owe and how much
Total and Top 3 Who owes us and how much
No of new customers last week
Any customers lost last week
Monthly:
Profit figure and margin, up or down from last month, by how much
Number of new customers, up or down from last month
Number of lost customers, up or down from last month
Debtor Days, up or down
Sales for the month up or down
Vat time
Bank Balance
Vat we owe
Top 5 easiest collections if cash is short for VAT
A steady diet of information nuggets strengthens a business decision-making metabolism.
Most business owners pay for this information to be prepared, but many never receive it in manageable, timely chunks. A once-a-year summons to the accountant’s office to “call in and discuss my accounts” is not enough and is too much to digest in one meal.
But if a business has a great bookkeeper and cloud accounting software then a little process tweaking should get them at least some of what they need when they need it.
In a later post, I’ll share what you can do in your daily bookkeeping routine to ensure you feed your entrepreneurs quality, organic information rather than high fructose corn syrup.
Meanwhile, we would love to hear what key stats other businesses track either formally or informally.
Kind regards,
Aileen @ Professional Bookkeepers Academy
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