Over the years, I’ve met many business owners who don’t pay much attention to their financial reporting. As I’ve said before, 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 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 an eye on. These reports will vary depending on what type of business you have but here are a handful of key reports we like to use at Scooter:

• Accounts Receivable Aging: A summary of unpaid invoices/how much customers owe you.

• Accounts Payable Summary: A list of your unpaid bills and when they’re due.

• Sales by Customer Summary: An overview of all your customers and how much they’ve purchased 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.

• Sales by Product/Service Summary: Shows the total sales for each product or service you sell along with its percentage of sales.

QuickBooks provides a gazillion different reports and it takes some time to figure out which reports 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.