Three Reports To Review Weekly
Your year-end accounts are history. They're useful for tax purposes and they're great for looking back at what happened last year. But for actually running your business? They're about as helpful as last week's weather forecast.
If you want to make good decisions in real time, you need reports that show you what's happening now and what's coming next. Here are the three reports we tell every founder to review weekly. Not monthly. Weekly.
1. Cash Flow Forecast
Not your bank balance. Not last month's profit. Your cash flow forecast. This shows you what's coming, not what's already happened.
A good cash flow forecast tells you when money is actually coming in (not when you invoiced), when money is actually going out (not when you committed to spend it), whether you'll have enough cash to pay everyone next month, and when you might need to have a conversation with the bank.
We worked with one founder who was planning their next funding round based entirely on gut feel. When we built them a proper cash forecast showing the impact of each new site opening, they realized they'd been about to raise too early and give away more equity than necessary. That's not a finance problem. That's a visibility problem.
What to look for: Are there any weeks where cash dips below your comfortable buffer? Are there any big payments coming that you'd forgotten about?
2. Management Accounts (Your Real-Time P&L)
Your year-end accounts are lovely. They're compliant with FRS 102, your accountant is very proud of them. But they're backwards-looking and they arrive too late to be useful for decision-making.
Management accounts are different. They're updated monthly (or more frequently if you're fancy) and they show you what's actually happening in your business right now. A good set tells you revenue this month vs budget vs last year, where you're actually spending money, which parts of the business are profitable, and whether your gross margin is holding steady or slipping.
We've lost count of how many times we've looked at someone's management accounts and spotted things their bookkeeper never mentioned. Like the fact they'd exceeded the VAT threshold. Or that one project type was consistently losing money.
What to look for: Any line that's moving in an unexpected direction. Any cost that's crept up without you noticing. Any revenue stream that's quietly declining.
3. Aged Debtors Report
This one's simple but it's the report most founders ignore until there's a problem. Your aged debtors report shows you who owes you money and how long they've owed it for.
A good aged debtors report tells you which clients are paying on time, which clients are consistently late (and might need a conversation), how much of your cash is tied up waiting to be paid, and whether you have a collections problem you didn't realize existed.
One business we worked with had £40k sitting in 90+ day overdue invoices. They'd just sort of forgotten about them, too busy delivering work to chase payments. We set up a simple weekly review and a payment reminder system. Within six weeks they'd collected £35k of it. That's not extra revenue. That's cash that was already theirs, just sitting there.
What to look for: Anything over 60 days old needs your attention. Anything over 90 days old needs urgent action.
Why Weekly?
Because things change fast. A cash flow problem that's two weeks away is fixable. A cash flow problem that's two days away is a crisis. A client who's 30 days late on payment? You can have a friendly check-in. A client who's 90 days late? That's a much harder conversation.
Weekly reviews take 15 minutes. They stop small problems becoming big problems. And they mean you're actually running your business based on what's happening, not what happened three months ago.
'But I Don't Have Time For This'
Right, so here's the thing. You don't have time NOT to do this. Every founder who's ever had a nasty cash flow surprise or realized too late that a client wasn't paying? They all had the same excuse. 'I don't have time to look at the numbers.'
Fifteen minutes a week. That's it. And if your reports are currently too messy, too complicated, or too out-of-date to be useful in fifteen minutes? That's a different problem. One that's worth fixing.
Getting Started
Pick a day. Wednesday mornings work well for a lot of people. Block 15 minutes in your calendar. Pull up your three reports: cash flow forecast, management accounts, aged debtors. Look for anything unexpected, anything moving in the wrong direction, anything that needs your attention. Then get back to running your business. That's it.
