Top 6 must know business figures

When businesses are starting out it’s crucial they get to grips with numbers. Firms will need to know their outgoings and levels of earnings in order to calculate profit. However, it’s not always as easy as that.

According to Startups.co.uk, successful managers focus on a broad range of metrics. Here, we have outlined the six most important for managers to understand.

Sales volumes and value

Firstly, in order to find out what a business is earning, you need to look at sales. Volume of sales gives you an easy way to track performance over a given period and once you have the volume you can assess the total value of sales.

However both of these measures can be deceptive, for example when the value is inflated by costs, pushing up the price of an item. Despite this, it’s still imperative to monitor these figures to keep a track of how your firm is performing.

Profits

There are two important sub categories here: gross profit and net profit. Gross profit is easy to work out, as you subtract the cost of raw materials from the selling price of your product. However, this doesn’t take all costs into account.

Net profit takes into account all other overheads. These can range from employees’ salaries and premises rent, to utilities and taxes.

Understanding costs

It’s important to know monthly outgoing costs before they are due. Costs include: wages and salaries; rent, utilities and business rates; supplier costs, such as raw materials or services; marketing spends - advertising, website creation/maintenance, email marketing; loan or credit repayments.

Monthly revenues

Keeping ahead of your revenues means you’ll know how much you need to earn each month to cover outgoings. Furthermore, you should project when customers will pay outstanding invoices, enabling you to pay bills on time, avoiding incurring any bank charges.

Money in the bank

You need to keep track of your bank balance. This will allow you to analyse the trends of rises and falls of your balance over the year, allowing you to see when your business is flush and when it is not.

Stock inventory

Careful management of stocks can keep costs down while making sure you always have enough products. Track inventories as sales are made to ensure you know when to order.

To read the whole Startups.co.uk article, click here.