DAY 16-20 of 30 Day Reset for New Bookkeepers: Daily Bookkeeping Tasks
By days 16 through 20, we’ve cemented fundamentals allowing us to level up into more advanced financial analysis and insightful reporting.
Now we transitions from bookkeeping basics into leveraging reconciled data, spotting trends, and telling stories to inform management decisions propelling growth.
Sharpening Analysis Techniques
First, let’s expand our analytical toolbox applying ratios assessing liquidity, leverage, efficiency, and profitability – the core financial health quadrants.
Liquidity ratios like current and quick ratios evaluate ability to cover short-term obligations. Leverage ratios like debt-to-equity show financing structure risk.
Efficiency ratios like receivables turnover demonstrate collection effectiveness. Profitability ratios like gross margin percentage reveal pricing and cost health.
Benchmark figures over time, against competitors, across business units, and between departments to contextualize. Link ratios into KPI dashboards tracking progress towards targets.
And leverage spreadsheet modeling to forecast how initiatives like new product launches, capital investments for automation, or adding sales staff influence key metrics based on reasonable assumptions.
Constructing Actionable Financial Reports
Reporting best practices go beyond simply exporting data history. We want to compile projectable insights in clean formats speaking the audience’s language, focused specifically on metrics within their control.
Executives care about top level revenue and profit trends plus macro economic forces shaping strategy. Sales and marketing analyze lead pipelines through conversion funnel stages. Production teams track detailed cost drivers and throughput rates.
Enable self-service customized report building too. Empower stakeholders exploring data by department, campaign, region or other filters unveiling micro opportunities for improvement.
Schedule recurring monthly or quarterly reviews to discuss trends and drill into changes. Guide stakeholders towards identifying root causes within their purview rather than reacting to symptoms.
The goal is leading stakeholders towards insights unlocking targeted performance gains aligned to organizational objectives. Our analytics and reporting sharpen focus.
Looking Ahead… Coming up we will explore variances analysis, building rolling forecasts, techniques for presentation persuasiveness, and data visualization best practices.
But for now, congratulate yourself on progressing towards increasingly strategic financial activities driving enterprise value! Our skills open so many doors. Onward!