Operations - Do you conduct effective monthly financial meetings?

Companies often lose sight of their financial health due to disorganized processes or lack of regular oversight. This can lead to missed opportunities, unnecessary spending, or even financial instability.

Monthly financial meetings help mitigate these risks by providing clarity, accountability, and actionable insights into your business's performance.

In these meetings, key staff members should review the past month and look at forecasts for next month.

It is a good idea to split reporting responsibilities into two sections:

• Sales Team - Responsible for preparing sales reports, utilization metrics, and billable leaderboards
• Accounting Team - Responsible for generating financial reports, select KPIs, forecasting and trend analysis

Pre-meeting preparation steps

Proper preparation is crucial to avoid delays and ensure accurate data is available for discussion.

1. Reconciling

• Reconcile transactions in the accounting systems
• Balance Sheet reconciliation - emphasis on accruals, prepayments, loans
• Allocation of costs to appropriate cost centers

2. Data validation

• Fix any data discrepancies between systems
• Review of invoicing

3. Generate reports

• Executive page (summary KPIs)
• Current cash position
• Monthly Profit and Loss Report
• Year-to-Date (YTD) Profit and Loss Report
• Monthly Receipts Report
• Sales and Invoicing Report
• Utilization and Breakeven Analysis Report
• Cash Flow Report
• KPI selection
• Expenses Breakdown and Revenue Breakdown by Office
• Balance Sheet Summary Report

Meeting #1: Sales and operational performance (Sales Team)

This meeting focuses on operational and sales metrics to gauge the company's performance over the past month.

Tip: Record a concise summary of Meeting #1 to share with participants in Meeting #2 for an executive overview.

Meeting #2: Financial review and strategic planning (Accounting Team)

This meeting focuses on financial health and longer-term trends. Use visuals like graphs to simplify complex data.

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By adhering to this structure and leveraging the tips provided, your monthly financial meetings will deliver actionable insights and drive better decision-making for your company.