Financial Performance

With note pad and pen poised …. designing your agency financial goals can be drafted in a coffee meeting.

Key metrics and visual presentation of the figures is my preference – providing context (historic, targets, actuals) will help motivate and direct efforts towards achieving goals.

With July coming to a close, that’s month one done, and 11 to go in this financial year. We need to know – did we achieve our target this month? If not, how short are we? Was there a chance we could have hit the target with a bit more effort?

Looking ahead – What does Quarter one (Q1) look like, and can we see what Q2 looks like? Seeing the future is essential if we are to achieve our financial goals.

My suggestion is to extend your budget to be dynamic, showing a rolling forecast, linked directly to your pipeline to immediately see any gaps and know in advance which months you may experience cash issues.

No matter whether you are using the best in class industry job management solutions – Harvest, Workflowmax, Accountability, Paprika, Function Point, or even just excel – if you are not getting what you need in time to make the right decisions, then create your own motivating dashboards (make sure they are linked to your tech-stack, so that they can be updated automatically):

• Billings – annual, quarterly, month by month tracker charts
• Revenue with Contribution Margin combo tracker chart
• Year-On-Year trend graphs
• Operating Expenses stacked graph – resourcing, rent, opex, profit
• Client profitability – billings and revenue trackers, effective hourly rate
• Staff productivity – bar charts, with average agency utilisation

As an EFFIE judge and industry spokesperson, I can tell you: managing performance on a weekly basis is a key attribute of successful agencies – see where you have come from, where you are going,  how you are tracking, and where to focus your attention.

Review your reporting capabilities and reporting routine, to make sure they inspire and propel your performance forward.

If your agency needs to do better this year: give Kathryn a call

KMint creates bespoke financial reporting programs which automates your data so that your team can ‘see’ and ‘know’ exactly what’s going on, and what they need to do.