You live in your P&L. It’s the beating heart of your business, so understanding how sales, cost and expenses performance is impacting and will impact your business is key to understanding your profitability.
This page tracks your live forecast and actuals against saved budgets, forecasts or scenarios and gives you all of the top ten and historical analysis you need to make clear decisions.
The ability to save multiple budgets, forecasts & predictions
You can save a base 3-way (Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow) budget at the beginning of your financial year or quarter. You can save as many forecasts as your future plans need, you can also save different scenarios for things like, taking on debt, moving premises, launching a new product or service line, hiring staff etc.
When you’ve reviewed and refined your first budget or forecast, come to the Profit & Loss Performance page. You’ll be guided to save a version, which you will then be able to compare to the live forecast that will continue to update as data flows in (think of it as an early warning system), and your actual data for the current month, quarter and year.
Report 1: Profit & Loss performance to plan
This report tracks two things. Actual vs Saved budget/forecast (how you are actually tracking) and Live prediction vs Saved budget/forecast (how you think you will track).
You can filter by this month, quarter and year. You can also change the saved budget/forecast you want to compare performance to.
Use the actuals variance to course correct now. Use the live prediction variance to course correct things that look like they will happen in the future.
Reports 2 & 3: Top ten sales, cost and expense accounts
Tracking your P&L activity net of VAT/GST, these reports get to the crux of your operational performance. You can filter by this and last month, quarter and year. Use these to sense check your future live predictions. They may flag possible future opportunities and risks. It’s helpful to see accounts as a % of revenue for efficiency measurements, so each report ensures that is clear.
Reports 4 & 5: Current vs past performance
This month’s actual + predicted performance vs last month is critical for tracking today and how your month end will look. As the month passes, this report will change with updated actual data. Click into any account category to be taken to its prediction pages.
You have the same approach below, but for the current financial year. Use this to make sure you are going to end on the numbers you want and need in your business across your day to day operations. You can also compare this year to last year with clear variances.
