5 Reports Successful Business Owners Review Each Month
To run a profitable business, you have to know what’s going on in your finances.
There are five key reports that will help you run your business more efficiently and make smarter decisions. From these reports, you should be able to answer some key questions about your financial state.
1. Profit and Loss by Month
When reviewing this report, look for patterns.
- What is off?
- What is increasing or decreasing, and why?
2. Profit and Loss by Percentage of Income
This report tells you where you spend your money.
- How much of the sales you’re making are going to payroll?
- How much is going to insurance?
3. Percentage of Profit by Client
- What client makes up the largest portion of your profit?
- Are you paying them enough attention? Can you spend more time with them and increase their overall value?
Remember, eighty percent of your income comes from your top 20 clients.
4. Balance Sheet This Year vs. Last Year
- Is your bank balance higher or lower compared to last year?
- Are your liabilities higher or lower?
- Do you need to consolidate loans so you’re paying less interest and increase your cash to pay other bills?
- Are your accounts receivable larger or smaller?
5. Budget vs. Actuals
- Are you on target?
- Do you need to adjust your sales goals?
- Is payroll in line with your budget?
- Do you need to hire and more importantly, can you hire?
What monthly reports are critical for your business? If you have questions about any of these reports or need help setting them up, reach out and we can help!
Our Latest Insight
Article 1 ended with a question. When does your COO actually talk to Accounting before a decision gets made? How long did it take you to answer? Immediately? Minutes? Maybe you could not think of a single example. Bills get paid, projects keep moving, and financial reports show up. Nothing feels obviously broken, so you conclude everything is fine. If that question made you uncomfortable, you are not alone. Here is the part that keeps this problem alive. You only know what good looks like based on what you have already lived through. Most owners have never worked inside a business where Operations and Accounting were intentionally built to function together. So they measure their company against their own status quo. This article gives you a different reference point. You will see what the relationship looks like day to day, what rhythm it runs on, and five things you can check this week. None of it requires scrapping what you have built. The people are already in the building. The data already exists. What changes is how the pieces are arranged, and how much leverage you get out of the company you have right now. Part 2 of a 5-part series on the COO-Accounting relationship
"Accounting is a stick in the mud." "I'm not really sure what a COO does all day." "The CFO just plays around with their little Excel sheets." You have probably heard one of those lines. You may have thought one yourself. They sound like harmless office humor. They actually point to something expensive. In most growing service businesses, nobody has ever defined how operations and accounting work together. The people who produce your financial reports sit outside the very decisions those reports are meant to inform. That gap costs you every single month, quietly, in profit that should have been there. Part 1 of a 5-part series on the COO and Accounting relationship
In modern business management, effective capacity planning requires far more than matching supply with demand—it demands a rigorous financial framework. Every unit of unused capacity represents sunk cost and margin erosion, while every unit of insufficient capacity risks churn and missed revenue. By evaluating capacity planning as a financial exercise, organizations can translate labor hours, utilization rates, and operational throughput into clear financial metrics like cost of goods sold (COGS) and return on invested capital (ROIC). This guide explores how to integrate operational capacity into your financial planning and analysis (FP&A) cycle to drive sustainable, cash-efficient scale.
