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Business Reports You Need on a Regular Basis

May 9, 2019 by Guest Author 1 Comment

By Wendy Dessler

Running a business, whether offline or online, can be a lot of work. While many people dream of becoming an entrepreneur or running a business, the chances of success are unfortunately not as high as you might hope. In fact, only around half of all small businesses will survive into their 5th year.

One of the best ways to ensure your business is successful is to make sure you remain in tune with all that is happening. To do this successfully, you will often need to see actual reports that outline your success. Thankfully, technology has made it easier than ever to produce a wide range of reports that you can analyze. These business reports can be quite important to your business for a number of different reasons.

Without any further ado, this article is going to look at a few different reports that your business needs to check out on a regular basis.

Website Analytics Report

With more and more people using the internet to shop or influence purchases, it is important to have a good business website. You should also be monitoring the various different analytics produced by your site. This can give you insights on your customers and the overall success of your business. However, in addition to knowing things like traffic, traffic sources and demographics, there are many more analytics and information that you should familiarize yourself with. For example, you should be sure to frequently check out your logs.

Your website or software will create logs, which are essentially a time-stamped documentation of events. Anything that happens on your site such as successful logins, failed logins, security threats or dozens of other events will be logged. By checking these logs, automatically or manually, you will have a good idea what is going on behind the scenes. If you want to learn more, be sure to check out the advantages of Apache Logging Basics.

A Productivity/Time-Tracking Report

The employees at your company are incredibly important to the success or failure of your business. If they are productive and on-task, you will likely be successful. However, if they are wasting time or generally being unproductive, it can hurt your bottom line. And unfortunately, while the internet has helped businesses in a lot of ways, it can also be a massive distraction for employees.

To ensure everyone is on-task and productive, you should be sure to use a software that can produce a productivity or time-tracking report. These types of reports will be able to tell you what your employees are really doing while they are clocked in at the office. This can help you address potential issues directly and ensure everyone remains productive while at work.

A Variety of Financial Reports

cartoon hands on laptop Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Of course, one of the single biggest indicator of the success of your business is your finances. Not only do you have to be making money, but you also need to ensure you are spending less than you are making, too. Thankfully, there are a variety of different financial reports that can provide you with all of this information and more.

You should be checking sales and revenue reports, expense reports, your balance sheet, your budget and even cash flow statements. Each of these reports can provide you different information about the finances of your business. They can help you notice if anything needs to be changed and can assist in making important business decisions.

 

Featured Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

 

About the Author: Wendy Dessler frequently writes about the latest advancements in tech and digital marketing. She currently focuses on helping SaaS businesses create a better world for our kids.

Filed Under: Strategy/Analysis Tagged With: status reports

Status Report: 06 – 06 – 08

June 8, 2008 by Liz Leave a Comment

What’s News at Successful Blog?

Working Plans logo

Yesterday, I posted the Ultimate Guide to Status Reports. My goal was to explain how I found that The routine of “publishing” a status report also keeps everyone aware when priorities when changing and where stresses might be coming in. Status reports also keep us aware of how we’re doing on reaching our goals.

I also think that putting a status report on top of this blog might make things more transparent. You’ll get a chance to see where things are going and to offer to jump and be a part if you are feeling like this community might be a great place to showcase something that you know.

You’ll note I’ve added a new heading in the fourth slot.

News

  1. Made the Chicago Tribune Business Section!
  2. Put a feedback request out there with a free consulting offer. What You’re Thinking, What Chris Brogan Said, and a Contest
  3. The first packets for Models and Mastermind Teams are available for anyone who wants to see them. Email me — lizsun2 [at] gmail [dot] com for a copy.
  4. Three clients completed the 6-week business coaching intensive with new focus and action plans. Two new clients are starting this week. Exciting!
  5. Have started the SOBCon / Successful-Blog master email list and planning. SOBCon09 is May 1-3 in Chicago! Sign up in the sidebar if you want to know what’s happening. You know I don’t have time to spam you. 🙂
  6. Joined Plurk. I think it’s more fun than Twitter, but not as efficient.

Issues and Requests

  1. Models and Masterminds for Companies — I’m looking for two VPs in Chicago businesses — VP of Marketing and VP of Sales — that want to partner on a social media training project. Email me — lizsun2 [at] gmail [dot] com for details.
  2. Models and Masterminds Teams — the time / $$ commitment might be a barrier. I thinking of restructuring the offer. Email me — lizsun2 [at] gmail [dot] com if you have ideas about it. It’s a beta version. I don’t mind tweaking it. Both bloggers and nonbloggers are signed up.
  3. I’m adding two contributing editors to Successful-Blog. No fortune, but possible fame involved.
  4. Got Ideas? Want to write a guest post? Send me your idea and tell me how it fits this community.
  5. Advice and Questions: Please look for answers in what I’ve written, before you email questions. If you don’t know me, please introduce yourself and know that I do this for a living. I get hundreds of questions and requests monthly.

Progress on Projects

  1. About the ebook: A Writer’s Guide to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog is in the final phases and should be available for sale by mid-June.
  2. Beam Global Social Media Campaign Life Cycle Tracking Project: The first interview with Jason Falls is in.
  3. TSheets Interview: First questions to this company that needs to reach online and offline customers are being answered.

Conspired With and Learned From

  1. Met the folks from Everything Attitude and Attitude Digest magazine. You’ll soon be hearing lots about them.
  2. Worked with ongoing business coaching clients.
  3. Helped a client get to a more customer-driven website design and navigation
  4. Went to a British Midlands seminar on starting a UK business
  5. Discussed arrangements with potential clients.
  6. Shared a big idea with and / or got sage advice from Dawud Miracle, Jason Fall, Chris Brogan, Lorelle van Fossen, and others.

Short Term Goals

  1. Finish ebook by Tuesday.
  2. Plan goals with City University of London Web 2.0 team.
  3. Write questions for Part 2 of the Beam Global Social Media Tracking Project.
  4. Send two invoices for work completed.
  5. Follow-up on offline networking class under construction.
  6. Move all ongoing projects forward to the next step by next week.

Publishing this was a good thing. It’s good business to put some things in writing.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Check out Models and Masterminds too

Filed Under: Business Life, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, business tactics, status reports

The Ultimate Guide to a Blog Status Report

June 7, 2008 by Liz Leave a Comment

A Status Report for a Blog?

Working Plans logo

This week Chris Brogan wrote about whether our personal networks would be of value to companies that hire us. He used Twitter to choose an example of someone with a strong personal network. The example he used was me.

The thoughts Chris wrote dovetailed with some thoughts I’d been having, so I put them together in a post of my own. I set out three questions with an offer of free consulting time to the most insightful comments. Joanna Young offered this idea that I’ve shortened some here . . .

. . . But what might be more interesting is the frame that needs to go round that, the parameters if you like, that come from *your* wants and needs: they might be things like wanting to blog less (or more!) frequently; to spend more time off line (or online); to experiment with a different style or topic; to focus on one dimension or get more creative by sending out streams with many…
How to deliver the material that’s working for our readers at the same time as achieving the things that need to work for us.

That got me thinking about accountability, communication, and managing projects in all of the past publishing jobs I’ve ever known. One tool I always insisted upon was a status report.

So I’m starting a Status Report for this blog. It seems like a fine way to answer the question of what keeps this blog running and what choices I make to ensure the bills are paid.

What Makes a Great Status Report

A status report is a snapshot of how finished something is at a specific point in time and next steps in the process. With a well-written status report, everyone knows what the news, issues, problems, and great new ideas are. A great status report is written to be

  1. brief,
  2. relevant,
  3. and easy to scan

just like a great blog.

My form for a status report has four headings:

  1. News — Changes in the atmosphere, market, strategy, or agreed plan, as well as important people we’ve met, events we’ve attended, and publications that have taken notice of what we’re doing. New initiatives will get announced.
  2. Issues and Requests — Information about actions, requests, and ways of doing things that make work harder or are inappropriately handled in some way. Requests for help and volunteers might be here. Think of these as business problems that need talking about.
  3. Progress — an update of what’s going on and what’s starting up
  4. Short Term Goals — dates by which certain things will be done.

When it’s shared, the status report keeps a community / team involved in the ongoing work and how it’s getting done. People can offer help. People can spot future problems. People can generally participate more because they can see where they might fit and how busy things are.

The routine of “publishing” a status report also keeps everyone aware when priorities when changing and where stresses might be coming in. Status reports also keep us aware of how we’re doing on reaching our goals.

Joanna’s comment is perfectly tuned advice for a community blog like this one. It nudges me to be more transparent about the business of blogging. I’ll be posting the first Successful-Blog Status Report tomorrow. Hope you’ll look for it then.

Have you worked with status reports before?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!
Check out Models and Masterminds too

Filed Under: Business Life, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, business strategy, status reports

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