Not all the numbers are created equal.
The results displayed in your cashbook are purely financial measures. Businesses run on more than just financial measures. They also include non-financial measures.
Non-financial measures could include things such as Customer Numbers, Labour hours or any other measure that doesn't involve the payment of moneys. For instance, your Sales for the last two years are $1000 and $1100. Looks good you're growing. Now we take a look at your customer numbers (a non-finacial measure) and we see that they have grown as well, from 100 customers to 150 customers, again a promising outcome. Dividing those numbers, we see the average sale of $10 has declined to $7.33. That is signalling a potential problem on the horizon. For this business "customer numbers" and "average sale" is a key number of strategic importance.
We call those numbers Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and eCashbooks now has the tools to track those metrics and give greater insight.
Key Performance Indicators
You can now create up to 6 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to help you track your business.
To start you'll need to access the new "Smart" tab located on the top menu bar, (keep an eye out for future performance tools).
It is this "Smart" Tab where you will find future evolving management tools to help you keep track and analyse your business.
What is a KPI?
A KPI is a key number that allows you to focus your performance. For instance, in a restaurant, it could be cost of labour or cost of food; in a trade business it could be labour efficiency or cost of materials. In all, they are numbers that can be automatically generated that aren't represented by your expense columns to give you greater insight.
The eCashbooks KPI system allows you to create a KPI from your existing column headers or create one that represents the metric you are trying to track. KPIs are also useful for Creating metrics that align to your future intent, that is key numbers that will making your strategy work.
You can also apply mathematic calculations to your KPI. So, your KPI could involve use of + - / x, these functions can be applied in relation to other KPIs or with numbers.
For instance, in a restaurant you may want to calculate the average spend by a customer. That would involve two metrics, Sales and customer numbers. Customer numbers would not be a column header so you would need to set this KPI and enter the data. The required KPI of Ave Customer Spend would equal Sales divided by Customer numbers. You will use the "Is Calculated" feature in creating your KPI.
You can also set targets so you can compare actual performance with planned performance. So, Sales targets would be entered and referenced to your "Money In" Column.
The KPIs are displayed in graphical format and can be presented as a power point presentation.