When You Need to Know...
Sunday, July 31, 2011 at 11:12AM In line with the "having to make tough choices" theme of recent events, I asked myself what key reports in QuickBooks tell you the main things one needs to know about the business. While financial statements have their uses, sometimes what you need to know goes one level deeper. Here are my nominees for reports that can spur direct action or will serve as a reminder that you can afford to treat yourself to some time off.
- Receivables Aging. (File : Reports : A/R Aging Summary)
- Don’t kid yourself if it turns out you’re working for free. If this report is going in the wrong direction, take the time now to set up a collections action plan. Build it into your billing rate for slow payers.
o Bonus tip: Bill at the time of sale or service, rather than a set interval. It sets a tone and starts the payment cycle ASAP.
2. Sales by Customer (File : Reports : Sales by Customer Summary)
- If anything strikes you as unexpected, check it out. Your intuition about your business is a valuable resource. This is a quick way to make sure your vision of where you stand with your customers matches theirs. The sooner you find out the differences the sooner they get fixed.
- Company Snapshot. Set it for this month and again see if anything catches your eye as not what you expected.
- If this one takes too much time, consider how to break it into pieces that limit you to 15 minutes a day. You should be conversant with the numbers around how your business is operating.
Make sure you do other monthly tasks, especially bank reconciliation and inventory. Even if you don’t have a problem with fraud or error, tax season will be even worse than necessary if your books are not an accurate reflection of your business.