Periodic Performance Report
Navigate to Reports/Queries\Financial Analysis and click on "Periodic Performance Report".
What this report tells you
It is your business health check for a period — a month, a quarter, a year, whatever you choose.
One report, read top to bottom, tells you what you sold and bought, what stock and cash you are sitting on, who owes you money and how long they have owed it, what you earned after costs, and which customers and products the business actually depends on.
It is the report to open when someone asks how did we do last month? and you want a proper answer rather than a sales figure.
You choose which sections appear, so it can be a one-page summary for a weekly review or a full analysis for a board meeting. You can also put each branch in its own column, and compare against last year, so you are looking at movement rather than a single snapshot.
If you used the earlier version of this report
This report has been rebuilt. It is in the same place under the same name, but there is one thing to know before you start.
Your previously saved setups will not be there. The list of saved configurations starts empty, and you will need to choose your sections and settings once more.
Nothing has been lost — none of your data or figures are affected, and this is a one-time job. The settings could not be carried across because there are now far more sections to choose from, the ageing ranges work differently, and the branch and comparison columns did not exist before.
It takes a few minutes, and it is a good opportunity to switch on the sections that are new.
A good starting set
Rather than working through all of the sections on your first run, switch on six and add from there:
Sales
Purchases
Stock Position
Total Outstanding Receivable
Top Selling Parties
Profitability
That gives you a readable one-page summary. Once you are happy with it, save it under a name you will recognise — Monthly Review, say — and add sections as you find you want them.
You can keep several saved setups side by side: a short weekly one, a fuller monthly one, and a detailed year-end one.
A tip while you are in the settings: every option now has a plain-English explanation on screen. If you are unsure what something does, the answer is next to it.
What you can put in it
Around 37 sections, each switched on or off on its own. They always print in the same order down the page. Here they are grouped by the question they answer.
How did we trade?
Sales
Gross sales, less returns, net sales
Purchases
Gross purchases, less returns, net purchases
Stock Position
What your closing stock is worth
Valuation Of Stock
Closing stock valued as quantity × rate
Profit and Loss
The trading statement, from sales down to net profit
Profitability
Gross profit, expenses and net profit, each as a percentage of sales
Gross Profit (Actual)
Your real margin — what you sold, less what those goods actually cost
Expense Analysis
Where the money went, largest expense first
Where is the cash?
Bank Account
Opening balance through to closing, adjusted for cheques not yet cleared
Fund Flow Planning
What is due to come in over the next few days, split into overdue and falling due
Fund Flow — Payable Side & Net Position
What is due to go out, and your net cash position
Collection Efficiency %
How much of what you could have collected, you did collect
Who owes us, and for how long?
Outstanding Receivable / Payable Age Wise
Ageing on both sides, in your chosen day ranges
Outstanding Receivable / Payable Party Wise
Balance by customer, and by supplier
Parties With Highest Debit Balance
Who owes you the most
Parties Collection Wise
Who actually paid you in the period
Receivable / Payable Quality
How much of the debt is stale rather than current
Who is the business built on?
Sales Analysis
Sales totals, averages and customer counts
Area wise Sales Analysis
Sales split by customer group or region
Top Selling Parties
Your best customers, ranked
No. of Parties Being Sold Above
How many customers bought more than an amount you set
New / Repeat / Lapsed Parties
Who is new, who keeps coming back, who has stopped
Parties By Growth / Decline
Who is growing and who is falling away
Top Item Groups, Top Agents
Best-selling ranges, best-performing agents
Concentration / Dependency
How much of the business rests on a few names
Are we running efficiently?
Stock Days, Collection Days, Payable Days
How many days of sales are tied up in stock, in debtors, in creditors
Cash Conversion Cycle
The three together — how long your cash is locked up
Turnover and Trading Efficiency
How fast stock turns, and what you make per unit and per customer
Working Capital and Liquidity
Your working capital and the ratios that follow from it
Party & Growth Ratios
How well you retain customers, and how many you lose
You will not want all of these at once. A report with everything switched on is long enough that the important parts get lost in it.
Comparing your branches
If you run more than one branch, this is the feature worth knowing about.
Normally the report gives you one consolidated set of figures for the whole business. Switch on Show Amount Columns and you get a column for each branch beside the consolidated total — all the way down the report. Sales by branch, stock by branch, outstanding by branch, profit by branch, on one page.
It turns the report from how did the business do into how did each branch do, which is usually the more useful question.
Branches or branch groups?
You can column by individual branch, or by branch group.
If you have more than a handful of branches, use branch groups. Twenty branches will not fit across a page legibly; the regions or zones above them usually will. Choose the grouping level with Branch Group Level.
There is also a limit on how many columns will be built, which you can adjust. It stops a large chain accidentally asking for a report hundreds of columns wide.
Filtering is not the same as columning
These are two different things and it is worth keeping them apart:
Filtering to a branch — selecting branches when you run the report. This narrows which figures are included. It works exactly as it always has.
Branch columns — breaking the figures out into a column each.
You can do either, both, or neither. If you leave branch columns off, the report behaves just as it did before. There is also Show Data For Current Branch Only, which restricts everything to the branch you are logged into.
Comparing with last year
A figure on its own tells you less than a figure next to what it was.
Set Compare With to a previous period and the report gains two extra columns beside every figure: LAST YEAR, showing the same figure for that earlier period, and VAR %, showing the change as a percentage.
It applies right through the report, so you see not just whether sales rose, but whether your margin held, whether debtors grew faster than sales, and whether expenses kept pace.
One thing to expect: choosing a comparison makes the report take noticeably longer, because it is effectively being produced twice. That is normal. If you want a quick look, leave the comparison off; turn it on when you are doing a proper review.
There is also a % of net sales column, which shows each amount as a share of your turnover. It is useful on expenses — an expense that rose 10% while sales rose 30% has actually fallen as a share of the business, and this column shows that at a glance.
Settings that change your figures
Most settings just switch sections on and off. These four actually change the numbers, so they are worth understanding once.
How your closing stock is worked out
Stock Position Basis offers two approaches:
Estimated from sales, using a gross-profit percentage you supply. Quick, and fine if you do not value stock regularly, but it is an estimate resting on an assumption.
Valued from the stock ledger — the real figure, worked out from what you actually hold.
Use the valuation basis if you can. Several of the ratio sections — stock turnover in particular — need it and will print blank without it, because a turnover figure calculated from an estimated stock value would just restate the assumption you fed in.
Making it agree with your Trading Account
Sale / Purchase / Expense Basis decides which accounts count as sales, purchases and expenses.
Set it to follow your Trading Account group structure and this report and your Trading Account will agree with each other — net sales, gross profit, expenses and net profit all tie. If the two reports have ever disagreed and you have had to explain why, this is the setting that fixes it. It does need your account groups to be properly set up.
Stock moved between your own branches
Inter Branch Transfers decides whether stock you move between your own branches counts in the ranking and counting sections — included, excluded, or shown separately.
It does not affect sales, purchases, stock, bank or profit. Those always agree with your Trading Account regardless. It only affects sections like top customers and area analysis, where counting an internal transfer as a sale would distort the picture. Any section that is excluding transfers says so in its heading.
How outstanding is measured
Two choices under Outstanding Basis:
Bill wise — each bill, less the receipts matched against it. Accurate only if your receipts are actually matched to specific bills.
Ledger balance — the customer's account balance, the same figure your balance sheet shows, spread back across their bills.
Ledger balance is the safer choice unless you know your receipts are consistently matched to bills.
Also here: Ageing Buckets, where you type your day ranges as a simple comma-separated list — 30,60,90,120. Anything older than the last figure falls into a final bucket. You can have up to eight ranges. And Overdue Analysis On, which decides whether a bill's age counts from its due date or its bill date.
Reading it, and acting on it
The report prints top to bottom in a fixed order. A practical way to read it:
1. Start with the trading figures. Sales, purchases, stock, profit. Are you ahead or behind? With the comparison columns on, the VAR % answers that immediately.
2. Then look at cash and collection. Healthy sales with poor collection is a problem waiting to arrive. Check outstanding receivable, collection days, and collection efficiency together — they tell one story.
3. Then the ageing. Not just how much is owed, but how long it has been owed. The Receivable Quality section shows how much of the book is stale rather than current, which is what actually matters.
4. Then dependency. Concentration shows how much of your turnover rests on a handful of customers. New / Repeat / Lapsed shows whether you are gaining or quietly losing customers — a business can post record sales while losing customers, and only this section shows it.
5. Finally the efficiency ratios. Stock days, collection days, payable days and the cash conversion cycle. These move slowly, so they are worth reviewing quarterly rather than monthly.
Numbers worth watching month to month
Collection days
Money is taking longer to come in
Stock days
More cash is tied up in stock
Cash conversion cycle
Cash is locked up longer overall
Share of debt in the oldest bucket
Debt is going bad rather than being collected
Lapsed customers
You are losing customers, whatever sales say
Concentration
You are increasingly dependent on a few names
Single readings are of limited use. The value is in the direction of travel, which is why the comparison columns are worth the extra time.
Common questions
My saved setups have disappeared.
The report has been rebuilt, and setups saved against the previous version do not carry across. Your data is untouched — you just need to choose your sections and settings once more. See the start of this guide for a suggested starting set.
Some figures do not match what the old report gave me.
Most of the report matches exactly — sales, purchases, stock, bank and the profit statement are unchanged. A few figures have been corrected:
The ranked customer lists now cover the period you asked for. They previously ranked the whole year despite being headed with your period, so the names and values will differ — and are now right.
Opening balances now start the day before your period, rather than including the first day twice.
Blank or unnamed accounts no longer appear in the customer rankings, where they could previously outrank real customers.
Expenses now come from your actual expense accounts, which is why the report ties to the Trading Account.
A section is blank.
Usually one of three things. Some ratio sections need the stock valuation basis and print blank on the estimated basis. Some need another section switched on to supply their figures — the payable quality rows need the payable ageing section, for instance. And a few need particular master data, such as account groups, to be set up.
It is slower than it used to be.
Check whether the comparison columns are on. Comparing against a previous period roughly doubles the work, because the report runs twice. Turn the comparison off for a quick look.
Otherwise the report should be faster than before, particularly the ageing sections.
This report and my Trading Account do not agree.
Set Sale / Purchase / Expense Basis to follow the Trading Account group structure. With that set, and your account groups in place, the two tie exactly.
There are too many branch columns to read.
Switch from individual branches to branch groups, or reduce the maximum column count.
The report is very long.
You have more sections switched on than you need. Save a short setup for routine reviews and a fuller one for month or year end.
Getting good results from it
Keep two or three saved setups. A short one for the weekly look, a fuller one for the monthly review, a complete one for year end. Switching between them is quicker than rearranging sections each time.
Run it on the same day each month. Comparisons only mean something when the periods are comparable.
Turn the comparison on for reviews, off for quick checks. It doubles the time. Worth it when you are studying the figures, not when you just want today's sales.
Use the valuation stock basis if you can. It gives a real stock figure rather than an estimate, and unlocks the ratio sections that depend on it.
Set the account basis once, properly. Getting this report to agree with your Trading Account is worth the few minutes it takes, because you will never again have to explain why two reports disagree.
Watch the direction, not the number. One month's collection days figure means little. Three months of it rising means something, and the comparison columns are what make that visible.
Show your branches separately. If you run several branches, a consolidated total hides the branch that is drifting. Branch columns are the fastest way to see which one needs attention.