Driving your business with reporting

Anna Stubbs • November 1, 2023

Do you wait for your Annual Accounts to arrive before you look at your numbers for the year?

By the time your accounts have been finalised, the data is historical. Any changes you make, as a result of reading these, may not necessarily be helpful for your future.

Would you drive your car forward by looking in your rear-view mirror? Talk about dangerous!


If you want to take control of your business’s future, it’s essential that you set targets to achieve and regularly monitor your actual results against them. By producing a monthly Management Report, you’ll have access to up-to-date data that will enable you to quickly identify areas of concern, allowing you to implement strategies for improvement to ensure you remain on track to achieve your goals.


Monthly Management Reports enable you to make better decisions in your business, based on current data. Your report dashboard provides a snapshot of your numbers and means you can quickly interpret your results each month and identify important trends in your business.


However, receiving reports each month is only useful if you set aside time to review them and understand what the reports are showing you. It’s not enough to see that your gross profit has dropped this month compared to last month; you need to be able to understand the reasons why it has dropped so you know the actions you can take to improve.


Because we want you to develop the discipline to set aside time to review and truly understand your reports, our Management Reporting service involves a 15-minute phone call with a senior accountant each month to discuss your results.


This will ensure you receive the maximum value from your reports and can make the necessary changes to your business to ensure its success.

“The future depends on what we do in the present.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Grow your numbers – Increase leads generated

By Anna Stubbs • June 3, 2025
No one can deny that to grow your business, you must attract new potential customers (or leads). It’s how you generate these leads that’s important though. STEP is a lead generation acronym to help you generate quality leads without pointlessly blowing your marketing budget: S = Strategy T = Target E = Efficiency P = Process

Grow your numbers - Reporting and accountability

By Anna Stubbs • June 3, 2025
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are essential to measure the performance of your business in order to grow your numbers. Of course, the measures themselves are pointless unless there’s reflection and discussion to ensure they’re met. Here’s a simple and effective way to link KPIs to a reporting and accountability framework. Firstly, make sure there is ONE leader for each of the departments in your business: Director, Leadership, Product / Service Development, Operations, Marketing, Sales, Finance, HR, and Admin / IT. One person can lead more than one department, but two people can’t lead one department. You can also contract out departments to avoid needing a large head count of team memebrs (finance, marketing and IT can be outsourced relatively easily). Be clear on who reports to who . One person can only manage 5 or so people effectively. Consider establishing teams with team leaders to enable you to achieve a ratio under 6 to 1. Set up regular department meetings . This may be the CEO with each of the other department heads, the Operations Leader with the Operations team (if less than 5 in the Operations team) or with the Operations Team Leaders (if more than 5 in the Operations team).

Grow your numbers – Control overhead expenses

By Anna Stubbs • June 3, 2025
One of the simplest ways to grow your bottom line is to tighten your belt and spend less.