Your Money Machine - Reporting - Russell Colbourne

Russell Colbourne : Your Money Machine

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INTRODUCTION
Your business is Your Money Machine.  In this Show – I’ll take you under the hood of your enterprise and show you how to fine tune your business.  Get ready for lift off as we add rocket fuel to your profitability!  This show is focused on businesses that have launched and are preparing for exponential growth.

Are you sure you’re ready for exponential growth?  Getting your mindset right to transition from business owner to CEO.  Are you prepared to give up some control and trust others to help you build?  As well as ensuring all your systems and standard operating procedures have been documented and are in place, you will need to ensure your financial reporting provides you with the feedback you need to run your business. 

To be successful, you and your senior managers need regular access to accurate insights into your business. You need to be able to spot problems when they first emerge; see what’s working; find opportunities, and recognise threats. When you know the reality of how your business is actually performing, you have a platform to work from and can make decisions based on facts rather than speculation and anecdotal evidence.

What You Need to Know - The What

• The three key financial statements you need
  
• How to interpret your key financial statements using ratios
  
• Which financial ratios should you use
  
• The main reasons for poor business reporting
  
• How a part-time CFO will improve your business reporting structure.
  

What You Need to Do - The How

There are many activities that sit behind each of the 12 boxes and the list below is not exhaustive, but merely gives some examples of what a business owner needs to consider in the area of Reporting:

• Identify the business’s KPIs (Key Performance Indicators); 
• Ensure visibility of your KPIs, which will allow a much faster response time;
• Produce monthly management accounts/reports within 14 days of month end so the data is fresh and relevant; 
• Establish reporting processes for sales and marketing so that there is clear visibility over what’s working and what’s not; 
• Establish reporting processes for business operations so that activity can be monitored and improvements can be made periodically; 
• Create back office systems and processes to ensure the right infrastructure is in place to operate the business efficiently; 
• Implement processes for keeping costs to a minimum and visibility over expenditure so that managers can understand their own department figures and be held accountable for cost control; 
• Introduce budgets and targets by department and allocate responsibilities to managers to free up your time to focus on growing the business; 
• Educate managers about gross margin and profitability to help focus resource throughout the business to spend time on the things which lead to business growth; 
• Identify the business’s fixed and variable costs and understand how to control them; 
• Analyse trends within the business and within the market and move to more predictable and considered forecasting to avoid panic and fighting last minute fires.

Shows 

• Previous: Episode 6 – Internal Systems
• Next: Episode 8 – Profit Improvement

 
Written by Russell Colbourne, FCCA, GAICD
Your Money Machine

Russell is a CFO and Entrepreneur who has worked across a diverse range of industries over the past 25 years.  After a short service commission as a pilot flying Seaking Helicopters in the British Royal Navy, Russell studied business and qualified as a Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA) in the UK. Since then he has been integral with the start-up of many successful companies and operations within larger organisations.  He has bought, sold and spun off business operations in the UK, Australia and the US. 

In 1994 Russell joined Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Airlines where he was responsible for a number of innovative services that were, at the time, ground breaking and helped revolutionise air transport.  From launching the world’s first limo boat on the River Thames to developing the world’s first handheld check-in device and implementing drive through check-in booths around the world, Russell has helped the Virgin Group deliver unparalleled customer service. In 2000 Russell was the first of the Virgin team to arrive in Australia to start a new low cost Airline, and within 8 months had built a team operating flights between Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

Russell now works as a Part Time CFO for a number of SME businesses in South Australia.  He is a Director of a health and wellbeing business; a crowdfunding website for educational costs and of the Founder Institute program in Adelaide where he lives with his wife and 3 teenage sons,

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