Archive for the Financial Intelligence Category
WikiCFO defines a flash report as “a periodic snapshot of key financial and operational data.” It’s another name for a financial dashboard. As a Contract CFO I teach my clients that a flash report measuring the right metrics is essential to a successful business.
How to Create a Flash Report
Often business owners and CEOs agonize over what to include in the flash report. It’s quite simple…the answers to the questions you ask over and over. Those answers are what determines what the correct key metrics are for you.
All flash reports should update you on:
- Liquidity:
- How much cash you have on hand.
- What you owe to vendors.
- Productiviy:
- How many widgets your plant has produced.
- How many hours your employees have worked that are billable.
- Profitability:
- Which products are selling and the gross profit they earn.
- Which employees are working efficiently (i.e. are they doing the work within budget hours or less) and at what billable rate.
All business owners have certain financial or operating data that is meaningful to them and them alone. It’s fine to include these metrics. Just make sure the overall flash report is useful to many.
Purpose & Frequency of Reviewing Flash Reports
Flash reports are the early warning indicators of a business. They tell you what’s working, what’s going better than expected and what you need to look at pronto! To be meaningful it is necessary to review several weeks in a row and look for developing trends.
It’s just as important to understand why operating performance is better than expected as to understand why it’s worse than expected. You can’t repeat the positive if you don’t understand why it happened.
While I recommend weekly flash reports, if certain metrics are only meaningful monthly then make the report for the last week of the month an expanded version.
All the CEOs I have supported gave me the information I needed to assemble the appropriate flash report within a week of our working together. Is your accounting staff listening to your questions?
The U.S. Small Business Administration is searching for participants in this year’s Emerging 200 Program.
The goal of the SBA Emerging 200 initiative is to identify 200 inner-city businesses across the country that show a high potential for growth—and to provide them the network, resources and motivation required to build a sustainable business of size and scale. The initiative will run executive training series in a number of urban areas and Native American communities during the 2010 cycle.
This initiative is a jobs and growth stimulation effort targeting promising inner-city small businesses. It focuses on small, poised-for-growth inner-city companies with potential for job creation. The six month intensive and comprehensive curriculum focuses on winning local strategies and attracting capital to fuel growth. In addition to 40 hours of class instruction, this includes 14 hours of mentoring.
The program is free of charge and will run from April, 2010 to November, 2010. All that is required on the part of the small business is a time commitment (60- 80 hours total) by the senior executive of the firm and a desire to take your business to the next level.
Small business owners interested in the E200 program are encouraged to contact their closest local office and/or the Emerging 200 Program at e200@sba.gov.
A recent Small Business Trends blog post provided a good analysis of Anita Campbell’s webinar “How Can You Secure Credit for Your Small Business in Today’s Market?”. To learn about some of the options click through and read the post.
