Episode 3 - Your Financial Dashboard

“We need to be able to make informed decisions on a regular basis, so you need to have a high level familiarity with everything going on in your finances without doing a deep dive anytime you just need some simple information,” explains Dan Kent, host and owner of Best Self Coaching. Today, Dan shares best practices for creating your own financial dashboard, so that you can make better informed decisions about your business finances.

A financial dashboard is a customizable way to easily see all of your financial indicators at a glance. It works similarly to a dashboard on a car, you’ll be able to see just the data you actually need rather than getting overwhelmed by extraneous information. Dan provides a free downloadable template to get you started that requires nothing more than a basic knowledge of Excel. Once you populate the information for the spreadsheet, you will just need to review it monthly for accuracy.

 

Next Actions:

Being able to easily access your financial indicators will allow you to make better informed and more strategic decisions. The complexity of finances can be a difficult obstacle to navigate, but when you have a dashboard at your fingertips there is less potential for overwhelm. 

• Download the free template from the Google Drive link below.

• Fill in your revenue as the first data point.

• Next, add your cost of goods sold and your gross profit (revenue minus cost of goods sold).

• Add total expenses and then net profit

• Calculate the net profit margin (net profit divided by gross revenue)

• Consider including indicators like payroll to revenue ratio, accounts receivable, and accounts payable

 

To go deeper into this episode’s “Next Actions”, take a listen to the episode where we explore it even further.

 

Quotes

• “If you don't have a reliable mechanism and a consistent system to make informed and strategic decisions related to your finances, then you're going to find yourself stuck.” (2:59-3:10 | Dan)

• “Consider a financial dashboard not unlike the dashboard on your car.” (4:20-4:23 | Dan) 

• “The very first thing that almost every business owner is going to be looking at is their revenue.” (8:52-8:56 | Dan)

• “We need to be able to make informed decisions on a regular basis, so you need to have a kind of high level familiarity with everything going on in your financials without doing a deep dive anytime you just need some simple information.” (22:04-22:21 | Dan)

Connect with Dan Kent:

Website: clearingobstacles.com

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/117J2FIQ6AFIYQXw73lLqeL25HmTGJe7o?usp=share_link (Assets discussed in the episode) 

Best Self Coaching: bestself.coach

 

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