Year-end accounts are a legal document produced for the tax authority, arriving months after the period they describe. Running a company on them is like driving using the rear-view mirror, at a delay.
Not which has the highest turnover. Which is left with something after the time, the rework and the customer who takes four calls to satisfy have been counted against it.
Cash in and cash out, projected far enough ahead to still have options. Finding out in the last week is not a forecast, it is an emergency.
Including the parts nobody bills for. Companies routinely discover that a service they keep because “clients expect it” has been subsidised by the rest of the business for years.
Few enough to look at in ten minutes. A report nobody opens is worse than no report, because it creates the impression of control.
By product, by client, by site — whichever unit your decisions are actually made in. Company-wide margin hides everything worth knowing.
A fixed monthly review with someone who asks about the figures that moved. Numbers nobody discusses do not change behaviour.
Your accountant does statutory work and does it properly. That work answers to the tax authority and has to be exact, which is why it is slow and why it is backwards-looking.
Financial control answers to you, and it can be approximate and fast rather than exact and late. A margin figure that is roughly right, this month, beats one that is precisely right in nine months when the decision has already been taken.
Most owners answer confidently, and a third of them turn out to be wrong. It is a good ninety minutes to spend.
