CAs & CPAs – How to Prepare Business Performance Reports with Attitude
A Boring Report
A typical accountant’s report summarising a client’s trading performance will contain an array of charts with references to percentages, financial ratio analysis, a note on movement in working capital, perhaps a refence to benchmarking data, a forecast of forward cash flows based on the previous 12 months results and a narrative explaining what it all means.
Mm, nice. Fairly boring though.
The client may study it and react to the report it, but possibly not. If it contains substantially the same information as they received the last time the report was prepared, and the time before that, then it may not even be looked at.
A Report with Attitude
There is a different type of report, one that will have the business owner jump in their ute, recklessly drive to the accountant’s office and bang down the door demanding to learn more.
Compare a boring report to a report with attitude – which one do you think will get the client more excited?
Throughout a series of free online workshops and tutorials, I will be teaching young CAs & CPAs about the real profit drivers in their client’s businesses, how to review the performance of a business relative to its optimal level of performance and how to write a report that will create action and change – reports with attitude.
To participate in the workshops you do need to be a CA CPA, or be in training to achieve one of these qualifications – I will be following up the credentials of all people enrolling.
Prepare a Report the Client Will Understand
Most of our clients don’t understand financial ratios and percentages, some don’t even know what profit is, so we need to prepare reports in a way that business owners relate to and understand.  Join me at the workshop and tell your colleagues about the program where you will learn:
- How to analyse Financial Reports with a view to recommending change leading to increased profitability.
- The problem with prior year comparisons and benchmarking.
- How to determine the the key profit drivers in the business under review and how to report on them.
- What information to pull from your working papers and client software that will make you reports more meaningful.
[…] you read the document I attached to this recent post you will have received an insight into one aspect of Cleland’s work – his method of measuring […]