Making decisions is an important part of any business. But making the right decisions can be tricky – especially when you’re dealing with a lot of data.
That’s where flash reports come in.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss what flash reports are, and how they can help your business make better decisions.
How Does Decision Making Work?
Decision making is a process that businesses use to identify and choose the best course of action, given their goals and constraints. Decisions are mostly taken either based on backable information or on gut feeling.
Gut feeling can be trusted only when you are new to a business; an entrepreneur or a startup because a high number of decisions need to be made during the early stages. Such cases do not have backable information as the business is new and there is no track record.
On the other hand, the decision-making process for an established business should always be based on data and analytics.
What Is A Flash Report?
A flash report is a type of business report that gives you a snapshot of your current situation and can help you quickly understand complex data sets. It includes information like your sales numbers, your expenses, your inventory levels, and more. Flash reports are typically created on a weekly or monthly basis.
Flash reports can be customised to show the information that’s most important to you. For example, you could create a flash report that shows your sales revenue by month or your website traffic by day.
Why Use Flash Reports?
1. Make Informed Decisions
Flash reports can be extremely helpful in the decision-making process. That’s because they give you a clear picture of where your business is at any given moment.
With that information, you can make more informed decisions about where to take your business next.
For example, let’s say you’re trying to decide whether to invest in a new marketing campaign. If you have a flash report that shows your sales revenue by month, you can quickly see whether your marketing efforts are paying off.
If you see a significant increase in sales after launching a new marketing campaign, you know it’s worth investing more in that campaign. If you don’t see an increase, you might want to try something different.
2. Spot Trends and Patterns
Flash reports can also help you spot trends and patterns that you might not have noticed otherwise. For example, let’s say you run a website that sells products. You might not realise that your sales are seasonal until you look at a flash report that shows your sales by month. Once you see that pattern, you can adjust your inventory levels and marketing efforts accordingly.
Flash reporting has mostly been part of the accounting department as they generally collected business data exclusively. However, with the rise of data analytics and business intelligence tools, flash reporting is now being used by businesses of all sizes to make better decisions.
How to Create A Flash Report?
Creating a flash report is relatively simple.
- Decide what information you want to include
- Gather that information from your various business systems.
- Finally, put it all together in a format that’s easy to understand.
There are a number of different software programs that can help you create flash reports. Many accounting and business intelligence tools offer flash reporting capabilities.
Or, you could use a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel to create your own custom flash report template.
The bottom line is that flash reports can be a valuable tool in the decision-making process. If you’re not already using them, Axis Accountants encourage you to give them a try.
To know more, get in touch with us today.
