Complete a management accounts form to work out your financial position by entering simple figures that also make up your Balance Sheet. Once you start using this simple form you will become naturally capable of doing this monthly task to a high-degree of accuracy.

A word of warning: estimating stock, and any similar tasks you do, MUST be accurately recorded either every other month or quarter depending on your industry and cash flow position.

b) Company Reports

When it comes to trading with other businesses, it is common to overlook the statistics reflecting their performance capabilities. By doing so, your business can be faced with credit problems having a serious impact on future cash flow.

To avoid putting yourself in this situation, a Company Report can be obtained that reviews the suppliers you use. The report information can then be used to help you make a more confident judgement of, say, a new customer you are about to deal with on a credit period basis (or not confident as the case may be).

MUCH overlooked is the task of obtaining regular (at least annually) credit reports of EXISTING suppliers: doing so will mean less of you saying "I never thought they would do this to me" when they cease to trade and owe you the equivalent of a year or twos profitability. The larger reports have ratios that are easily understood after a little practise (see next page).

Why not see if our Credit Reports service can help you to make the right credit decisions?

Article Index

1. Successful Small Business Statistics
2. Using Statistics in Business
3. Analyzing Statistics in Company Reports
4. Using Statistics for Business Analysis
5. Using Statistics in Marketing
6. Usings Statistics for Sales Purposes
7. Questionnaire Sampling Statistics