F Your Reports! – Make all your reporting Fantastic with these four “ F ” Factors
As a manager or executive, you need the key facts right now so you can understand exactly how things are tracking – info at a glance, to dig down into key details about causes and timing etc. – to fix what needs fixing, and support what is going well: F your reports…
A perfect report will drive good decisions
Every Business manager needs the right financial details in the best possible shape for quick and easy review, interpretation, and action.
A useful business report answers three key questions:
- Identifying WHERE there are changes to what was expected
- Understanding WHY the change arose; is it permanent or simply due to some typo or timing anomaly
- Indicating WHAT needs to be done
Designing Perfect Reports takes these 4 ‘F’s into consideration:
FUNCTION – Useful Information
FORM – Useful Layout
FEATURES – Useful tools for Investigating
FEEL – Attractive to use
“F” for FUNCTION – Useful Information
Make whatever is most important most obvious!
Any number that is generally more than 5% – 15% of cost should be appearing on your Profit and Loss Report (Income Statement) as a separate line item; and items less than that get summarised into bundles…
For Example:
- Staff amenities, Training, Entertainment = STAFF CARE
- Postage and Couriers = DELIVERY
- Rates and Repairs = FACILITIES
Standardise your wording to make the report easily understood – Jargon is the biggest enemy of clarity.
“F” for FORM – Useful Layout
Express Business operations as clearly as possible!
The outcomes here will depend on the flexibility of your software, but wherever possible it is better to also group codes as like with like – it makes the details easier gloss through.
Start with Revenue some headings you may include are:
- Sales – Do you have a variety of brands, products, or services with each needing to be itemised?
- Outlets – Do you have a variety of Locations, Stores, and Customers to track, or will just one line be satisfactory?
Then move onto Expenses and consider if you simply want an alphabetical listing or a layout that more directly groups like costs such as Direct Expenses and Operating Expenses
“F” for FEATURES – Useful tools for Investigating
Add relevant summaries, comparisons and percentages
SUMMARIES
Ideally, you wont need to review all the details all the time. Getting to a point where you can have a quick look at a summary to pinpoint if anything needs further detail and investigation will focus your efforts where they are needed most.
COMPARISONS
There are two types of comparisons; Direct Comparisons and Proportional Comparisons.
Direct Comparisons: where one number is directly compared to another. This is most common when comparing different periods against each other.
e.g. ‘This year we made $100,500 in Sales versus only $85,200 last year’ – which translates to ‘we are selling quite a lot more this year’’.
Proportional Comparisons: a relationship of one number against another with respect to relative size – a percentage. This is a really effective way of gauging performance.
e.g. ‘Electricity costs equal 2% of Sales’ which translates to ‘for every $100 dollars sold $2 is spent on electricity’.
“F” for FEEL – make it look lovely
Ditch format that irks you!
Formatting is an often overlooked part of creating great reports – but can greatly add any users level of dis-inclination.
Spend a tiny bit of time making the fonts nicer, and the layout sexier!
Once you are confident that the information basis for the report is being entered accurately and in a timely manner, get on with making it somehting that you want to look at – use charts, go with info-graphics, or automate yourself some traffic lights there are many ways to get information to be easily digestible.
It is also important to “get active” with your reports – making a point to USE them rather than simply READ them which is detailed here – Harvard Business School – Beginner’s Guide to Reading and Understanding Financial Statements.
