Reports That Answer Questions People Actually Ask
Not a report builder with four hundred options. A set of answers to the questions that get asked every month, each one drilling back to the documents behind it.
Most reporting modules are a construction kit. They can produce anything, which in practice means somebody has to know what to ask for, and the same question gets a slightly different answer depending on who built the report.
The ones that matter monthly
| Question | Where it is answered |
|---|---|
| Did we make money? | Profit and loss |
| What do we own and owe? | Balance sheet |
| Where did the cash go? | Cash flow |
| Who owes us, and how late? | Receivables ageing |
| What do we owe, and when? | Payables ageing |
| Did this job make money? | Project profitability, estimate against actual |
| What is sitting in the stores? | Stock valuation by location |
| What is our GST position? | Output and input tax summaries |
Every figure drills to its documents
A receivables total is a list of invoices. A cost figure on a project is a list of time entries, stock issues and bills. This is the difference between a report you can act on and one you have to go and verify first.
Why they reconcile
Because the ledger is written by the documents themselves, the management view and the financial view are the same data. The project P&L and the company P&L do not disagree, because neither is a separate reconstruction.