7 reasons to check your reports
Reports generated from your accounting are useful tools to help you understand your business. Find out why you should check your reports and what you can use them for.
1. Check your business performance
The first reason to take a look at your reports is to check on your business performance. The most useful report for checking your overall financial performance is the profit and loss report.
The profit and loss shows where your money is going over specific periods, both profits and losses. It’s easy to understand, and in Bokio, you can compare the profit and loss report for different periods so you can analyse any seasonal trends.
Find out more about your profit and loss report
2. Look at your cash flow
If you’re concerned about cash flow then the balance sheet report can help.
The balance sheet shows the company’s financial position at a certain point in time. You can see which assets are financed by equity and what proportion are liabilities. Look at whether your liquid assets will be enough to pay off your debts.
Find our more about your balance sheet
3. See your debts
Keeping control of your business debts is important, especially if you’re focussing on improving your liquidity.
Your balance sheet reports not only helps with cash flow. It can also give you an overview of your business debts so you can make informed decisions for your business.
4. Manage your expenses
If you’re concerned that you’re spending too much money on expenses your profit and loss report can help.
You can get an overview of your expenses, dig deeper into the different accounts and look further at the journal entries. You can use the profit and loss report to identify any areas where you can improve.
Read more about tracking your expenses
5. See outstanding invoices
It’s important to track your invoices, both money owed to you and money you owe suppliers. In Bokio, there are a few ways you can do this.
The first is by checking your Things to do, where you can see the status of all your invoices and supplier invoices. You can also visit the specific Invoice and Supplier invoice sections.
If you want to see the total amounts owed to you, or by your business, you can look at your supplier ledger (accounts payable) and customer report (accounts receivable).
A supplier ledger will show how much you owe to suppliers for goods at any time. A customer report will show any outstanding invoices that have yet to be paid to your business by your customers.
6. Find mistakes
When you’re doing your accounting you want to make sure that it’s correct. A good place to start checking your accounting is with the trial balance report.
With the trial balance report, you can check for calculation errors in debit and credit, and also make sure you’ve recorded transactions correctly in the right account.
You can view a trial balance report in Bokio by exporting it to Excel from your General ledger report.
Find out more about your trial balance report
7. Preparing for tax
Reports are a great way to prepare for your tax returns and compile year end accounts. Which report you use will depend on what you want to prepare for.
The profit and loss report will help you prepare for your Self Assessment tax return.
The trial balance report is a good starting point for compiling your year end accounts.
In Bokio, VAT Returns for Making Tax Digital will automatically be generated from your accounting, so all you need to do is check and submit it.
Do your accounting with Bokio
Bokio is a simple way to do your accounting, invoicing and more online.
Our software takes you through the process step by step, with time saving features like automated bank feeds, smart bookkeeping templates and integrated invoicing. Your accounting will automatically generate reports, so you can keep track of your business finances.
If you need help with your accounting, you can invite your accountant or colleagues to work together in Bokio.
