Each month, your accounting system yields actionable information for you to run your business better. Here are some key reports that all business owners should review every month.

Balance Sheet

A quick review of the balance sheet can tell you the balances of your current assets and current liabilities. Current assets should always be larger than current liabilities; if it’s not, you may have liquidity issues.

You can also take a look at these accounts: cash, accounts receivable, and accounts payable. They should look reasonable to you based on your business history.

Accounts Receivable Aging

Your gaining report can alert you to who has not paid their invoice, so that you can take action to collect that money. Any balances over 30 days should trigger a collection process since the older the receivable gets, the less likely it is to collect.

Accounts Payable Aging

Hopefully, this report is clean and you are able to pay all of your bills on time. If you have an unusually large amount in this account, you’ll want to make sure you have the future cash to pay the bills.

Income Statement

The first number most entrepreneurs look at on the income statement is profit. It’s a good idea to review every account balance on this report to see if it is what you expected. Some questions to ask yourself include:

  1. Did I generate the amount of revenue that I expected? If not, should I ramp up marketing for the next few months?
  2. Do all of my expenses look reasonable? Are there any numbers that look too high?
  3. Are my payroll expenses in line with what I was expecting?
  4. Which accounts caused me to generate more or less profit?
  5. What I can I do next month to improve performance and increase profit?

Sales Reports

There are many excellent sales reports to dive deeper into your revenue so you can see what sold and what didn’t. Sales by Item and Sales by Customer are two good options for you to get more detail about your revenue balances. By analyzing your revenue, you can see what promotions worked and how you might take action to increase sales.

These five reports are very basic, but they are also very key to your business. To profit from these reports, it’s up to you to take action in your business to improve your success.