IT’S FALL-WHERE’S ALL THE GREEN GOING?

No, not the chlorophyll in the leaves, the green in your bottom line.

If you had a daily metric report in place, you would be able to answer that question.

What performance metrics do you want to monitor for your business unit on a continuous basis that are the most important and are very volatile for the achievement of operational and sales success? Also ask yourself what kind of precise micromanagement report you want, to whom should this report go to, and when and how often should this report be viewed when determining your businesses function and achievement ability.

On no more than a couple of 8½x11-inch pieces of paper, have a “snapshot” of the top five to ten critical statistical metrics that determine your business unit’s success available with comparisons for your daily morning review. If you do not have this report, you cannot be proactive in management. With a daily statistical data sheet/”house count”, you have the ability to spot trends, and thus, small corrections in the operations or sales can be initiated to neutralize the adverse effect of any negative component.

When you have daily statistical sheets that are simple, to the point, and full of the “most critical” metrics that you need, you can guide your business unit daily, which will lead to greater achievements of the business unit’s budget and stretch goals. Focus on managing your business unit today, so that today will be tomorrow and tomorrow will be your everything.


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Your 2008-Year End Financial Statement’s, Statistical Review Checklist

Make sure that the following items below are contained in your statistical reports, including variances and percentage changes within those numbers, on the four major income statement components: top line (gross revenue); labor; controllable and non-controllable expenses, and bottom line (N.O.I. with Cash Flow), (all numbers are accumulated and may be partial quarters or years, but each are equal to one another in their respective time frames):

• Month to Date (MTD)
• Quarter to Date (QTD)
• Year to Date (YTD)
• Current Month (MTD) Year over last Year Month (Example: Oct. 08 to Oct. 07)
• Current Quarter (QTD) Year over last Year Quarter (Example: Q4 of 08 to Q4 of 07)
• Year (YTD) over last Year (Example: YTD-2008 to YTD-2007)
• Month over Month (Example: Oct. 08 to Sep. 08)
• Quarter over Quarter (Example: Q4 of 08 to Q3 of 08)
• MTD, QTD, and YTD to budget and stretch goals with remaining/declining balances to reach each of those goals
• Projected QTD and YTD numbers against budget and stretch goals
• Trailing three month average
• Trailing twelve month average
• Trailing eighteen month average
• Trailing three to five year average
• Annualized MTD and QTD numbers

Don’t forget, visually, graphs, charts, and color-coding all add to the accelerated ability to understand, pinpoint, and emphasize negative and positive trending within your statistical numbers. Another great tool is to set parameters around each line item, so an exception report can be generated and quickly identified when numbers exceed those boundaries.

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Was Your Friday Black This Year?

You would know if your company closed its’ books nightly!

Nightly closing of your accounting books allow for immediate reconciliation, so that you can identify and correct posting errors/miscoded items, generate net revenue/ledger balances, and create daily statistical performance metrics for a more accurate analysis.

Would you like to be able to go into your business unit and have some current gauge of the income statement’s profit position at a time frame when changes could be made to affect the final outcome, or would you rather wait for over two weeks after the month ends to find out that there was a negative bottom-line growth; after you were not able to do anything about it?

Although nightly closing of your business unit’s accounting books may not be as feasible for you as some other industries, the mind-set of it is not. Does your business unit have timely, up to date, and accurate accounting books for management to make critical business decisions when they need the information the most? If not, you need to.

Soft accounting closes are not that challenging. Just make sure that outputted numbers are taken into consideration and everyone is aware that there is some “flex” in the numbers. In my judgment, something of a current financial picture is better than none at all.

If daily conditions, factors, and circumstances are “change agents” that determine a business unit’s cash flow requirements and affect its bottom-line results, then would you not want to get some picture of how those “agents of change” are affecting the accounting statements in quicker time frames than the current ones in place now? Many of today’s accounting software programs can immediately generate some sort of preliminary statements with the push of a button, so why have you not added that to your weekly operational review checklist? Your views on how to use accounting statements must be parallel with the real world views, DAILY, because the change that is driving the supply-and-demand grid around your business unit can be viewed through these statements.

This is ground level thinking for “big picture” successful business building. You can make a difference in your business unit’s financial success by having the mind-set that your books close nightly.


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