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.

Is the information you report standardized (e.g., common data definitions)?
Has unnecessary complexity been taken out of the production process?
Do analysts spend more time compiling data than interpreting it and providing actionable insight?
Are reports relevant for decision making, forward looking and action-oriented?
Is information timely, relevant and reliable?
Are there sufficient automation and self-service capabilities?
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!