Over the years, I’ve met many business owners who pay little or no attention to their financial reporting. They “hate” accounting and prefer to just fly by the seat of their pants. And while I get where they’re coming from, to me that’s like driving in the dark without headlights.

That’s why building a monthly reporting package is such a good idea. Instead of running your business based on guesswork, you create a set of key financial reports that tell you how your business is performing and then get them delivered to your inbox every month.

“Wow, that sounds great. But what reports do I need?”

I’m glad you asked. The starting point will be your Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss (P&L). These are the two primary financial reports for any business, whether you’re Amazon or Dancing Turtle Yoga Studios, and they’ll be the foundation of your monthly reporting package.

After that, you can add additional reports that drill down on specific accounts and/or areas of the business you want to keep a close eye on. These reports will vary depending on what industry you’re in and what type of business you have but here are a few key reports we like to use at Scooter:

• A/R Aging Summary: A report that shows how much your customers owe you and the amount of time their balances have been outstanding (0-30, 31-60, 61-90, and 90+).

• A/P Aging Summary: Shows how much you owe your vendors and suppliers, also organized by time periods.

• Sales by Customer Summary: An overview of all your customers and how much they’ve bought from you. We like to sort this report in descending order so it ranks your biggest customers from top to bottom.

• Expenses by Vendor Summary: A summary of how much you spent last month and who it went to. We also like to sort this report in descending order, it’s a great way to monitor your monthly expenses.

• P&L by Month: Looking at a one month P&L is almost useless, it’s much better to look at multiple months (3-6) so you can spot trends and variances.

QuickBooks provides a gazillion different reports and it takes some time to figure out which ones you do (and don’t) need. However, once you get a consistent monthly reporting package in place, the job of "staying on top your numbers" becomes a lot easier and less time-consuming.