Finance Department: How long do you need to be able to answer these questions from your boss?

Enterprise management, to the management of decision-makers, there are a lot of questions are want to know at any time, below, we come together to discuss, these common problems, how we come to answer quickly.

First, let's answer the following questions: Note: These issues can be obtained through traditional balance sheet and income statement.

1. Did the company make money?
2. Why does the company make money?
3, the company who is helping me make money?
4, where is the money the company earns?
5, the company will not make money?

To answer the first question, it is very easy, just check the profit and Loss statement (time: Software production report time: 30 seconds, calculate query time: 5 minutes). Let's look at the second question again. To answer why make money, actually synthesize a lot of information inside. Profit = income-cost costs. You can also basically answer the question from the complete profit and loss statement. (Time: Software production report time: 1 minutes, calculate query time: 5 minutes)

The third question, who is helping me make money, the general situation we are through the department to examine. At this point, if there is a departmental profit statement, you can obtain the corresponding data through the departmental profit statement. In the financial software reporting system, it is not difficult to make a departmental profit statement, but it is a trivial matter. If the organizational structure changes, you need to reset the report formula. (Time used: Make report time: If the profit statement of a department takes 1 minutes, then the profit table of n departments will need n minutes; Calculate query time: 10 minutes)

Question fourth: In fact, where is my money? Is it in your pocket (bank deposit or cash) or in someone else's pocket (accounts receivable)? This result can be found in the balance sheet of the answer (time: Software production report time: 1 minutes, calculate query time: 5 minutes)

The fifth question: In fact, for the company's history during the profit situation, analysis of the company's profit trend. Because financial software does not have the ability to chart and predict, you need to export the data to Excel for processing. (Time used: Chart time: 2 minutes)

In practice, the top four issues can be in the existing financial software reporting System preset good report, the next month when needed, as long as the recalculation of the print out can be. But the 5th problem must be handled by Excel, so the new data is exported every month to fix the results. But overall, there's not much work to do with traditional financial software. The only drawback is that these reports to the financial department every month to print out to the leadership.

So why do we still need financial analysis software? Below, we might as well change the above question a little bit:

1, not only want to know when the period has no money, but also want to know how the previous year changes? How did the comparison change over the same period last year?
2, found that the current income increased, but the profit has declined? Why is it? Is the cost of sales increased? Or is the cost increased? What if the cost increases? Which is the cost of the increase? Why does it increase?
3, the profit contribution rate of a department has been very high, why this month fell?
4, why the sudden rise in accounts receivable? Who owes me the most money? How long have you been in debt?
5 、......

At this time? And how to use the original financial software to get the data? The first thing to be sure is that these data can be obtained, but we have to think about how many reports are needed in this case? How many times do I need to calculate and query? Every leader wants a result, you tell him, you can do it quickly? How much time do you need? Do you have enough time to do these things?

Decision making is a simple process: identifying problems--finding the cause of the problem--to solve the problem. When the previous two parts are clear, solving the problem can often become very easy. However, in the practical management, the first two parts are the most difficult to solve. The question does not jump out to tell you: "I am here!" "It requires management decision makers to find out from a lot of data. How to find? Contrast: Compare with previous time (YoY analysis/trend analysis), compare with data of the same type (structural analysis), compare with other data (ratio analysis). Because of the limitations of traditional financial software, providing leadership is usually limited static data, and when leaders want to compare from another angle, they need to re-provide the corresponding data. In this situation, many potential problems are hidden. While finding the cause of the problem requires more data to support, often the financial data is not enough to account for the problem and require the raw data of the business. Thus, the invisible increase in the "reconnaissance" cost, so, there are many even discovered the problem, there is no energy to solve.

This reminds me of a small story: King asked the famous doctor Flat Magpie said: "Your family brothers three, are skilled in medicine, in the end which one of the best medicine?" ”
The flat Magpie replied: "Eldest brother Best, second elder brother followed, I worst." ”
The king asked again, "then why are you most famous?" ”
The flat magpie replied: "My eldest brother Cures, is cures the illness before the disease attack." Since the general people do not know that he can eradicate the cause of the disease beforehand, so his fame can not be spread, only the people in our family know. My second elder brother Cure, is cure in the condition just attack of time. The average person thinks he can only cure minor diseases, so he is only small and famous in our village. And I beat the Magpie Cure, is the cure in the illness serious time. Most people see is I in the meridians needle tube to bleed, on the skin, such as large-size surgery, so they think my medicine is the most brilliant, so fame sounded all over the country. ”

This little story tells us that, in the enterprise management, after the control of the incident, the control is better than the control in advance. The truth is simple, everyone knows, but it is difficult to do. In most cases, it is not the problem of managing itself, but the lack of effective management tools. If all the questions discussed in this article, when leaders need to know, you can simply click a few clicks on the mouse to quickly answer, then, is it a fine thing?

Finance Department: How long do you need to be able to answer these questions from your boss?