Financial reporting is how businesses keep score. Accounting data is used internally as a tool for the business to determine if internal goals and budgets are being met. External users include potential creditors and investors. Accounting data must be uniform in order for it to be useful as the basis of financial analysis of a company.
A standard financial package will include an Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Statement of Cash Flow. These provide the results of the operation for a specified period, the residual balances that remain, and a breakdown of the sources and uses of cash.
Clients who track operating results by lines of business, use a P&L by Class to aid them to see the relative contribution of each business segment to the company’s results overall. They can also run reports to monitor profitability by Customer or Project when these references are tagged in the data entry process.
Comparison to Budget/Forecast can be critical to a client who has established projections and will update their models based on actual results. Some management teams or Boards of Directors prefer to see key elements in Waterfall Charts to be able to see how the Budget and Forecast change over time.
We encourage clients with clear-cut goals to have us create a Dashboard for them to be able to keep their eye on the driving factors of their success.