What Your Monthly Financial Dashboard Must Include

Your financial dashboard isn’t just a report. It’s the health check of your entire business. And if you’re not looking at the right numbers each month, you’re essentially flying blind.

In this episode, we break down the essential metrics every financial dashboard should include, no matter your business size or industry. These aren’t “nice-to-haves”. They’re the numbers that reveal whether your business is healthy, sustainable, and scalable.

We cover:

• Why profitability is the single most important KPI to track monthly
• Revenue vs. profit and why revenue alone doesn’t tell the whole story
• The importance of cash flow, cash on hand, and projections
• Accounts receivable (and aging) and accounts payable you can’t afford to ignore
• Payroll, taxes, and lines of credit and how they fit into your financial picture
• How budget variance and balance sheets help you catch issues before they spiral
• Why trends and forecasts matter just as much as the numbers themselves

Finances are the lifeblood of your business. This conversation will help you take control, avoid surprises, and finally run your business like a business, not a hobby

If you don’t have these numbers on your dashboard, or you don’t even know where to start, apply to work with us. We’ll help you get your financial systems in order so you can finally run your business with clarity and confidence.

“If you don’t know your numbers, you’re running your business blind.” – Jores Minasvand

Transcript for “What Should Your Monthly Financial Dashboard Actually Include?”

The transcript below was automatically generated. Please ignore any errors or inconsistencies in the text.

Anna Angelova   0:05
Happy Thursday and welcome to more than just Task Management, your favorite daily podcast where we help you build a driving business with me and Angelova.
Well.
A business coach and consultant and a co-host of these daily podcasts and my favorite co-host and business consultant, Joris Minusma, who is here with me.
Hey, Joris. Uh, happy Thursday.
You’re on mute again. Yes, you need to unmute yourself.

Jores Minasvand   0:52
Hey Anna, I love technology. Happy Thursday. How have we been? Have you had a good, good week this week? How are things going?

Anna Angelova   1:03
It’s been a very, very good week and it’s getting even better because we are talking about finances, one of my favourite topics. So let’s get going, let’s get going with today’s conversation and today’s episode. And as we mentioned today, the topic.
Is what your monthly financial dashboard should include and we’ll be focusing on the elements that are necessary for any business. Now depending on what the type of business you have, you might want to include some other things as well, but these ones are necessary no matter what business you have and.
I would say it starts with your KPIs, first and foremost your KPIs and especially profitability. Like this is one of the things like it’s a financial dashboard. So profitability, where are you? Like what’s percentage? What’s the real value?
So this is this is, um, where you wanna.
We we will start and then this is one thing you want to have then of course revenue like you want to have like gross revenues, right? Like you want to know what what happened in the last month and another very important one which it it applies to any type of business.
For some businesses, it matters a lot and you need to keep track of this one very closely. It’s cash flow and cash flow projections. So with some businesses like with what we do, for example, we do get a lot of the payments.
Beforehand, like in advance. So we don’t really have accounts receivable. Like usually it’s like a no, not a lot, but then a lot of businesses do have accounts receivable, right? So this is another thing.
Accounts receivable, what’s, what’s on, what’s outstanding and with accounts receivable, what you want to have in your in your dashboard, in your monthly dashboard, financial dashboard is also accounts receivable based on how age they are.
And you also want to monitor the aging as well. Are they going from 30 days to 60 days to 90 days and over? So this is a very, very important one. And then you might want to look, so depending on how detailed you want to be, you might want to.
Who have a a report, whether it’s one report or like it’s a separate report, but you might want to look at budget variance for example, like if if you had a projected budget that OK, this is what the budget looks like for this month and then at the end of the month.
If you review it and there are differences like you want to know, you want to know and not just for understanding, but for overspending as well and for to see how things are going and what’s going on and you might want to review your balance sheet as well.
Like to to see what’s going on and this is where like with the balance sheet, this is where you can look at the ultimately your assets and like the equity you have in the company like this is where you can see.
Changes in your equity. This is a good place to to monitor this and of course some of the other things that you might want to monitor in terms of financials can be cost of acquisition like this can be a number that you want to see.
That’s applicable to a lot of businesses and of course again, like with a lot of these.
Numbers with a lot of these elements, you might want to see them as KPIs where a certain range is green, then others is yellow, red, right? If you want to see them as KPIs, you also might want to look at the trends. What’s going on? Is it increasing? Is it decreasing?
Seeing all these kind of things and.
Uh.
Cash at hand, I think is also like how much you have in your different accounts, especially if you’re using the profit first system, like you might actually want to see the different accounts, like how much cash you actually have right now within these accounts, how much cash you have on hand.
And last, the last one I know and I know it’s kind of becoming a bit of a laundry list, but finances are really important and you need to stay on top of this. Like we discussed this I think last week where we talked about one of the things you should never delegate, you should never give the control over, it’s your finances. So you do want to keep track of these things.
Is balances and your lines of credit and things like this. Because like some of these expenses, they creep up. Like you might use your line of credit for something this month for like $1000 this month, then for another $500 next month and then for another 750.
And then for another thousand and then something comes up and you’re thinking, oh, we have like 20,000 in our line of credit, we’re OK. But then it turns out that you have already spent 15,000 here and there. So you want to monitor this as well like your line of credit.
But the balance there, if you have a line of credit, of course you want to monitor this and see this in your financial report or reports, like if you want to have them separate. So I know I mentioned quite a few things and Joris, I do want to give you a chance to chime in and share.
If there’s anything that’s like really, really outstanding that that you think I didn’t mention.

Jores Minasvand   7:03
So more of a question then maybe you tell me if these are the right ones for one of them is payroll. Do you really wanna do you or is that or is that part of your operation? Like do you wanna know, understand your payroll as well? I don’t know if that’s something that needs to be.
To be on there or is that part of your operations? The other one is taxes. I know these are things that you need to monitor but aren’t necessarily part of your finance dashboard. Maybe your finance dashboard should be more high level numbers and the other one that I’m know for sure that needs to be done is.
It’s good to have all of these numbers, but also you need to have some forecast, trends and forecasts. Those are also very, very important.

Anna Angelova   7:49
Yeah, absolutely what you were saying. So for example, with the payroll, cash on hand is one of the places where you can look at those different accounts as I said. And if you’re following profit first, you have a special account that is specifically for payroll.
And this can actually allow you, you’re absolutely right, like the way that you can structure it is like payroll is a huge thing. So you could see in your dashboard, you can see this is how much cash we have on hand in payroll in our payroll account. This is what our payroll looks like.
For this month, what it was for this month, this is the trend and then this is the projection.
So you can actually see what’s going on where you are. Do you have enough cash to sustain your company if something happens, right? Is it something that allows you to sleep like a baby or does it keep you awake at night? So, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
This is something that we did the dashboard itself like one of the profit first account again, especially once you have people working for you should be specifically for payroll. You want it to be there and absolutely I I completely agree and this is a great reminder that.
You want like you want this to be to be included in the dashboard and something that you pay attention to because you know like if your business like if you have employees you know that your biggest expenses are.
It’s the payroll, it’s the salaries you pay for your employees and then taxes as well. Absolutely. Like how much do you have in your tax account? How much did you pay for taxes this month? What are projections for taxes and things like this? Again, if you’re following the profit first method, which like we’re not affiliated with the profit first, but we love it.
So much so sharing it with the world if you if you have to follow the profit first method, you do have a tax account and if you are in Canada and if you have a GSTHST, actually you have a tax account and a GSTHST account so.
The account, so monitoring these, these are all the different accounts that with accounts that we have in the profit first model that you want to monitor for like I said cash on hand. So you quickly get at the end of the month you get the snapshot and you see OK this is how much we have in each account.
Then you can see this is what the trend looks like. This is how much we paid this month. This is how much what would it look like for the last three or six months or a year, depending on what trend you want to see. And then you can see projections as well. So absolutely.

Jores Minasvand   10:39
I love it. It’s good to have. Information is key and how you use the information. It gives you the power on staying on top of your your business, keep your business healthy and yeah, I love it. This is perfect.

Anna Angelova   10:56
And while a lot of times we talk about.
Not overwhelming yourself and just keeping keeping side of like a few things, a few key things. When it comes to your finances, you want to stay on top of this. You want to make sure that it because finances it is the blood of of the business like without it.
Your business can’t operate. And again, that’s why you want to monitor all these different things. You want to know that revenue is not enough, right? Gross revenue is not enough. Yes, it reflects.
Sales and things like this, but it doesn’t reflects how efficiently your business operates. For you to efficiently see how efficiently your business operates, then you need to know the other numbers, right? You need to see either some kind of gross margin or profitability so you can see that. Oh, actually.
Not only we brought that much in in revenue for the business, but this is how profitable we were as well and the business operated in a way that it it left profits like there were profit for it and.
All these numbers, they tell you a story like the top level revenue it tells you.
Can point you to problems with your marketing, problems with your sales, maybe even production problems. And then when it comes to cash flow, like how much cash you have in hand, like this is really, really important because ultimately you have to pay people.
Right. You have to pay people their salaries. You have to pay your suppliers. You have to pay expenses. You have to pay taxes, like all these things, like you have to pay these things for your business to continue operating and to continue running. So you really need to know what’s the cash flow right now, what’s the cash at hand.

Jores Minasvand   12:40
E.
Absolutely.
Mhm.

Anna Angelova   12:56
And then what’s the cash flow looks like and that’s why the other one I mentioned right with accounts receivable and maybe even accounts payable, OK, this is what we need to pay. These are all the payments that are coming out and as I said the loans as well line of credit.
So ultimately you don’t see need to see the daily transactions, monitor daily transactions and things like this. What you need as the business owner is a report or reports. It might be actually a few financial reports.
They show you the health of your business. They show you how well or not well your business is doing. And every month you want to review this. You want to review this with your CFO or or financial advisor or or bookkeeper or account or whoever, whoever you’re working with.
It you want to review this so you know what’s going on and how well your business is operating and.

Jores Minasvand   13:56
No.
We doubt it again. We doubt it with it.

Anna Angelova   14:01
We doubt it again. We doubt it. Losing sight of it is one of the biggest problems, like one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a business owner.

Jores Minasvand   14:05
Like one of the business takes you.
100%, Yeah, it’s a lot of people. We talk about this all the time. They are good at what they do, whether it’s plumbing or or welding or electrician or weaving baskets or making, I don’t know.

Anna Angelova   14:13
100%, yeah.

Jores Minasvand   14:30
Bagels, but I think 90% of the and I’ve seen this happen to solopreneurs, to small businesses, to even large businesses, medium businesses, larger businesses are regulated, so it doesn’t happen to them, but.
It uh, it’s more like uh.
They don’t know how to manage finances and that is a big, big, big problem. Even as an individual, I don’t think 8090% of people know how to exactly manage their their finances personally. They run credit card debts, etcetera. So a business is the next level.
Of all exacerbated problem. And if you don’t know how to manage your finances, you’ll go down very quick. Very, very quick. I mean, if not owing to the bank or losing your profitability to interest rates.
You’ll be owing to CRA and getting shut down and owing them for the rest of your life. Absolutely. I mean, it is as a business owner, as a as a consultant and then a business owner myself, that has been my biggest part that I paid attention. Sometimes I pay more attention to my finances than I did to my sales.
And my delivery. Because without that, you don’t exist. You will not exist. You will vaporize. I don’t care what people say. The bottom line business comes to your general Ledger. If you’re in the black, you stay alive. You go into the red, you’re done.
It’s very simple.

Anna Angelova   16:08
Absolutely. And one of the things I see you mentioned here a it’s IRS in Canada ultimately it’s the the Canadian Revenue Agency which is equivalent to IRS in US. If you don’t know what CRA is, it’s the taxman here and.

Jores Minasvand   16:18
Yeah.

Anna Angelova   16:28
Because we are located in Canada. So I know that listening to this episode you might feel a bit like, oh wow, I need to monitor all these kind of things. Where do I even get the data to see this? And this episode, if it raised questions for you, amazing.
That’s fantastic because now you can go and get these questions answered by your team, by your bookkeeper, by your accountant, by your CFO. You can go and say, oh, this is Anna and George said I need these things in my financial reports.
Every single month, chop, chop, go do it. So this is fantastic and highly, highly encourage you, even if you’re just starting, start monitoring these things. Get into the habit of even if it’s just you, right? Even if you are the one who needs to prepare this report.
In the beginning it might be easy because you might sell two things for the month. So your profit, like your revenue might be $200 for example, right? If you say so sell two things that are $100 each, so your your revenue might be $200. So it’s and then some of the expenses you paid might be 50 or something like this.
But you’ll see that OK, with $200 of revenue, my business will not survive half a half a month. So you know, like it’s a good habit to develop from the beginning if you have an existing business and you’re not monitoring this.
Highly, highly encourage you to start right now. Today’s what, August 28th, September 1st is coming. It’s a long weekend in both in Canada and US. It’s Labour Day weekend. Use it to gather the data and start monitoring your finances.
And again, if you listen to this episode and you feel a little bit afraid and you feel a little bit panicky with, I don’t know my numbers, I don’t know my finances, what do I do?
Apply to work with us. I’ll add the application link. Apply to work with us and we can help you get things in order and start running your business like a business, not a hobby, not a full time job. Start running it like a business, like a business that’s meant to make a difference.

Jores Minasvand   18:26
Yeah.
Mm.

Anna Angelova   18:44
Business that will leave a legacy and allowing you to go on that well deserved vocation.

Jores Minasvand   18:51
Yep, definitely panic. I will tell you to panic if you don’t have those numbers. If you don’t, even if on a piece of paper, on a sheet of printed paper by your accountant. If you don’t have those numbers, panic. Really panic, because you’re not. You’re literally driving in in in like a whiteout.
In fog, you’re blind. You’re chancing it. So yeah, contact us. Come to us. We’ll help you out. Amazing. Thanks, Anna.

Anna Angelova   19:19
Oh, thanks, Joris. And I love the way we ended it with panic. So, OK, take a deep breath, Don.

Jores Minasvand   19:22
Yes, panic, panic, come to contact us. No, I literally I’m saying it because I would have panicked if I didn’t have the the those numbers. It’s like I do a lot of mental things as well. But absolutely, I mean you need to know those numbers. You need to have a these days with technology and everything is at your team.
Fingertips at on on your phone, so there’s no excuse. Contact us.

Anna Angelova   19:48
Yeah, how about the the the link is in the description of the episode, so you can you can go and check it out and we will be glad to chat with you and help you with these things in order, get your financial system in order because you deserve it, you deserve it and your business deserves it.

Jores Minasvand   19:57
Hello.

Anna Angelova   20:08
So go and do it and remember to come back tomorrow. Where, when or where, whatever we will be talking about.
Picking between Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, and this is more if you’re just starting like you might be wondering which one to go with, because if you already have your business, you probably work with one or the other and chances of you moving from one to the other are very slim to to none.

Jores Minasvand   20:23
Yes.

Anna Angelova   20:39
Because it’s too much of A hassle. So I would say this is more if you’re just starting, but if you want to listen to the episode anyway, listen. We are always happy when we see people return to our podcast. So yeah, this is what we’re wrapping the week with tomorrow.
And go enjoy your day today and go to some number crunching and contact us.

Jores Minasvand   21:06
Thank you. Bye Anna.

Anna Angelova   21:06
Thank you. Take your respite.