A lot of small and medium-sized businesses aren’t aware that they can use reports to check on the health of their business, instead, they rely on their bank account balances to ‘guestimate’ their business’s financial position. Unlike a bank balance, reports tell you how, where and when you earn and spend your money and how you are tracking against your budget and or a previous year.
Want to manage your business financials better? Take heed of the following tips.
7 Tips on creating financial reports:
- Invest the time in reporting
Time is the number one reason SMEs don’t create financial reports when the fact is that reports actually increase efficiency because they give you accurate guidance.
- Get great software and get familiar with it
To run your business efficiently, you need the best accounting and reporting tools, and you need to make the most of their features and functions. When looking at the solution for you consider the whole product offering which includes the resources, training, and support not just the software alone.
Compare reporting tools available for small businesses.
- Create custom reports
Your business is unique, and so are its financial reporting requirements. Choose a reporting tool that will enable you to create and customise reports that suit your business.
- Decide on your reporting frequency
To easily spot trends, you need to decide how often you’ll create your reports and stick to it. I suggest weekly.
- Set up key reports once and re-run them
Decide what your key reports are, and get a reporting tool that will let you set these up once and re-run them as frequently as you need to.
Not sure what reports to run, learn about the three most important ones in our free e-book Financial Reporting For Small Business Made Easy
- Keep data up to date
Even with the best of software, this task often needs to be done manually. It’s not fun, but it will make your life, and reporting so much easier and definitely accurate.
- Create simple reports
The point of reporting on your financials is to see what’s going on in your business so you can make smart business decisions. So, your reports should be simple and easy to understand. My suggestion: use graphs and charts – they’re more visually appealing, making them easier to read.
Looking for a reporting tool? Sage Intelligence for Accounting Reporting Cloud is a good option for you. Check it out.
