You only find out in March how December went

December is your busiest month. You work hard, the tills ring, you have a feeling about how it went. But you only really know in March, when the accountant has closed the quarter and the numbers come in.

By the time the accountant is done, the quarter is already over. You can no longer adjust anything. You can only note what happened.

The accountant closes, he does not steer

That is not a criticism of your accountant. His job is to get the books right: every invoice in the right place, every return on time, nothing the tax office can fault. That takes time, and it can only happen afterwards. You cannot close a month that is not over yet.

In your accountant is not late, you ask too late I wrote that you can often get numbers more often than you think, if you ask for them. That is true. But even monthly numbers from your accountant are numbers about the past, made to be correct, not to steer with.

Steering needs something else: numbers that come in while you can still do something with them.

Three times too late

For twenty-five years I ran shops myself. Three moments stayed with me.

The energy crisis. Energy, rent and staff costs rose at the same time. There was little I could do about it: you need the energy, notice periods are what they are, and a lease is a lease. But the worst part was that I only saw the full effect when the accountant's report came in. By then months had passed, and the money had long gone.

Absence. I only noticed how much absence there was when I was entering the payroll and downloaded a report from the payroll provider. Not when it happened, but when it had to be paid. Absence is a killer for a smaller company, and it is not a separate line in your accounts.

The current account. In my first years, costs with incomplete documents, or costs where it was unclear what they were, were booked to my current account as managing director. Easy at the time. Years later a new accountant pointed at the high balance. Cleaning it up cost me a lot of money. Not because anyone did anything wrong, but because nobody looked at it until it was big.

Three different situations, the same pattern. The information existed. It just came too late to do anything with.

Adjusting is no longer possible, only noting

That is the real cost of late numbers. Not that you do not know, but that you can no longer act.

If you see in the second week of December that a shop is lagging behind, you can still move staff, run a promotion, adjust an order. If you see it in March, all you can do is write it down for next year. And next year is another year.

The difference between steering and noting is not the quality of the numbers. It is the time between what happens and when you see it.

What should be there to see it in two minutes every Monday

The answer is not more numbers. It is a handful of numbers, at a fixed moment, without you having to go and find them.

• Revenue last week, against the same week last year and against your target. Not the month, the week.
• What is really available in 30 days. Not your bank balance, but what is left once salaries, VAT and suppliers have been paid. See there is money in the account, but is it yours?
• Absence, per department or shop, and how it is evolving.
• Margin, in percentage and in euros, because they do not always move together.
• Open customer invoices and how old they are.

Which five are right for you differs per business. The idea is in the five numbers an owner should see every week. What matters is that they are ready on Monday morning, refreshed overnight, and that a message comes in when one of them deviates. Then two minutes is enough. That is the difference between business intelligence for a smaller company and another report in your mailbox.

What you can automate

Everything that sits between the systems and your screen. Sales from the till or webshop, open invoices from the accounting package, absence from the payroll provider and the bank balance can be fetched every night and put next to each other. Alerts on deviations run by themselves. Your accountant keeps doing what he does well. You get the overview in between.

The claim

The accountant tells you how the quarter went; you need to know how this week is going, while you can still do something about it.

Tell me what keeps you up at night. No-obligation conversation. No sales talk.