Financial reports reflect the state of your business.
Where is the business heading? How much money do you have to work with? What can you afford?
These questions and more can all be answered by examining an organization’s financial statements.
What is financial reporting?
Financial reports are the records of any of the financial activities of a business. Company financial metrics include profits, capital, expenses, revenue, and cash flow. It’s only by looking at their financial statements that an organization can tell where their business stands and answer some important questions — how much cash do we have? Can we pay our bills? Are we making money?
For both private and public companies, financial reporting must be in accordance with GAAP regulations. This can vary by location, but each country has its set of regulations. For example, the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is used by over 110 countries in the world.
There exist three main financial statements:
- P&L — this statement reflects revenues and costs incurred over a particular period of time
- Balance sheet — reflects the assets, liabilities, and equity of an organization
- Statement of cash flows — this statements provides an indication of how much cash the business has
A simple financial report template may look like something like this:
Why is financial reporting important?
Financial statements provide valuable information that helps investors and stakeholders alike evaluate how the company is doing. Beyond its informative nature, some of the key values of corporate financial reporting are:
- Tax-related reasons
Financial reports are used to verify that an organization is paying the amount of taxes it should be paying. - Checking up on operations
Using reports such as the income statement, investors and stakeholders can determine an organization’s past income performance, as well as look into future expected behaviors. - Assisting with decision-making
When the c-suite needs to make a purchasing decision, they first start with assessing their current state. Decision-makers can look into assets and liabilities to determine whether a particular purchase is vital or possible.
Financial reporting software can significantly assist organizations with their management reporting.
Financial reports often serve as the basis for more extensive reporting such as management reporting. Since this is the case, financial reports must be as accurate as possible — the future of the organization depends on it.
Instead of relying on shaky foundations, organizations should do everything in their power to ensure that the foundations for decision making are solid. This is where financial automation comes in — financial reporting and analysis software such as DataRails can help with this.
Financial reporting done better.
DataRails CPM solution allows you to create management reports and presentations that visualize your numbers without leaving the Excel platform you know and love. Directly feed data to Excel or Powerpoint, or vice-versa — DataRails’ unique Office-native integration pulls data from your unified database to Excel or Powerpoint. Watch as live embedded charts update figures on the spot, in real-time.
Filter through all your organizational data, whether it be from your GL, ERP, CRM, or Excel-based data, to generate reports that meet your specific needs. All your data is consolidated in one place, just select what you want to see.
Thanks to DataRails, watch your data transform into live charts with embedded, real-time visualizations. Compare any two or more metrics to better understand trends and cross-influence metrics. Create monthly managerial packages instantly that will be populated automatically for each month-end and send them to stakeholders.
