When you get your month end figures and they’re not as you thought, or you have a cashflow problem, do you wonder why no-one told you sooner, so you could have done something about it?
The weekly flash report is one of the most simple, and yet powerful of things. And it works in any size of business.
It gives you hindsight. It tells you what you need to know, as it’s happening rather than in several weeks’ time when you get your accounts, or when the latest crisis hits.
It gives you the chance to change how things turn out.
So what is the weekly flash report?
It’s a simple report, quick and easy to prepare, and gives you a weekly snapshot of the most important things in your business. It tells you how the month is looking, and also lets you see several months’ ahead.
And if you can see 3 months ahead, you’ve got control of your business.
What do you need in the flash report?
1) Whatever really matters to you. Whatever will tell you if things are on track or not. Things you’d have a chance of changing if you’d known about them.
2) So these are the things you’d usually find on a flash report, but you have whatever you need:
3) Sales each week so you can see if you’re going hit target.
4) The value of your order book – is it going up or down?
5) Order intake that week.
6) How much you have in the pipeline – looking ahead to month 1, 2 and 3.
7) Stats on the key marketing activities that drive your sales.
8) What you’re owed by your customers.
9) The lowest forecast cash balance in the next 4 weeks.
10) When the next VAT and corporation tax payments are due, how much they are, and how much you’ve got set aside to pay them.
11) If you’ve got sales people, this is a brilliant way of keeping tabs on their pipeline and making sure they’re delivering on what they’re telling you..
But I don’t have that sort of visibility in my business…
If your business doesn’t have visibility on order book or pipeline, so a very short lead time for example, there will always been something that would have given you a clue. It might be number of sales calls, appointments or quotes, number of blog posts, mail outs, social media engagement.
There’s always something that drives future sales that we could’ve influenced if we’d known in time.
If you’d like my flash report template, just drop me an email and I’ll send it straight over to you.
Making your flash report work
This is an amazing tool and is the one thing that makes the biggest difference when I put it into companies.
There are just a few simple rules:
1) Simple and quick to prepare – 15 to 30 minutes tops
2) You need to be able to get at the information easily.
3) You need to get it every week, otherwise there’s no point (don’t go getting comfy, if things go wrong it’ll be when your back’s turned.
4) You’ll need to read it, and do something quickly if you’re off track.
Who prepares the flash report?
Usually your book keeper or accountant, as they’ll have the best access to the right information. The important thing is the routine and discipline, so give it to an organised person!
From your point of view, it’s a really great way to make sure the book keeping and cashflow forecasting is up to date.
And make sure you make sure you get your debtors report every week as well, to make sure invoicing and credit control are up to date.
Hope you found this useful, and if there’s just one thing you do this year on your finances, put a flash report into your business!