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Home | Tip of the Week | 7 Principals of World Class Financial Reporti . . . Search 
Budgets Are Tight!
7 Principals of World Class Financial Reporting

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Is your reporting all it can be? Are you sure you're serving your own needs and those of top management in the best way possible?

Last week, we offered a template to help you quantify exactly how much your credit department is worth and detailed why that's an important planning task you shouldn't neglect.

But being able to compile tons of data for both your own and management's consumption is only one part of the task. In fact, you sure as heck don't want to bury management with data. You'll be wasting your time and theirs. Plus, we guarantee, they won't read it all!

So what should you do?

Questions to Ask...
For guidance on this topic, we are indebted to Hackett Finance's recent "Finance Metric of the Month" piece, in which they offered up seven "self evaluation questions" to ask about your financial reporting.
  1. Is the information you report standardized (e.g., common data definitions)?
  2. Has unnecessary complexity been taken out of the production process?
  3. Do analysts spend more time compiling data than interpreting it and providing actionable insight?
  4. Are reports relevant for decision making, forward looking and action-oriented?
  5. Is information timely, relevant and reliable?
  6. Are there sufficient automation and self-service capabilities?
  7. Is sharing of consistent information across the enterprise enabled? How many of these do you follow?

Credit Today's Best Practices
Best practices in Credit, Collections, and A/R, written in plain English. Step by step throughout the entire order-to-cash process.
Click here to check it out...

 
To do this properly takes some real thought. Chances are, you're missing something in one or more of these practices.

And if so, pick just one today and get to work improving both what and how you track and report your performance!


Printer-Friendly Format
·  Finance Metric of the Month: Percent of Finance Staff with the Skills and Business Acumen to Partner with the Business
·  How do you track individual employee performance?
·  Month-End Credit Reporting Could Use a Makeover
·  Automation and Transparency Are Key Traits of Top Performers
·  Six Bunker Busting Tips for Improving Internal Communications
·  Shaking Up Management Reporting, Goal-setting, Loyal and Experienced Staff All Add Up to Excellence
·  Six Characteristics Dashboards Must Have – and 3 Pitfalls To Avoid


Budgets Are Tight!
 This Month's Survey
This month's topic: Extended Terms Requests

Click here to participate! We're examining:
  • Whether there has been an increase or decrease in requests for extended terms recently
  • Whether or not credit departments have policies relative to extended terms requests
  • Whether or not extended terms impact sales commissions
  • What the primary factors are when considering extended terms requests
  • Who is ultimately responsible for approving extended terms
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