Streamlining Financial Reporting for Business Owners

Focus your attention on a point in time. This means pay attention to YTD results. The month just ended is history.

It is time to modernize the P&L analysis and help business owners start a forward-thinking process to address negative trends.

Want a copy of the P&L format we use for clients? Fill out the below form and we'll email you a copy. 

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3 Ways I Can Help You With Your Financial Reporting:

  1. Customized P&L Analysis.

  2. Balance Sheet & Cash Flow Analysis.

  3. Cleaning Up Financial Reporting.

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Financial Reporting Simplified:

This format captures all that is needed for the business owner to start formulating actions to be taken to address negative trends. There is no accounting software reporting package that provides this format. The information needed is in several different reports in the system and includes the following:

  1. YTD compared with prior year.
  2. YTD compared with budget.

This information has to be exported from the accounting system to Excel, and then keyed in to this format. Once you have the line items set up and the formulas to calculate variances and common size %’s, it does not take long to populate the format with YTD actuals compared with budget and prior YTD.

For next month, you save the above analysis to a new file, and update the numbers for the new YTD; formulas remain the same.

As an analyst, you should highlight those items you believe should be looked into, or at least make the owner aware of.

If you all insist on seeing monthly P&L results, then export the “Month to Month P&L’s” to your Excel analysis file for reference. The Analyst does that as a matter of record and will highlight certain items that may be pertinent to YTD variances.

Keep in mind your focus is on a point in time, i.e., YTD. The forward-thinking process addresses two things:

  1. If the budget variance is negative, what action could be taken between now and year-end to improve the trend?
  2. The same question applies to negative variances between this YTD and the prior year.