The ideas behind the reports, worked through
How to lay out a monthly report, budget variances, year to date against the full-year forecast, the cash conversion cycle and rolling forecasts, each worked through with figures from the same sample workbooks as the report guides.
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What a monthly management report should contain, and in what order
A monthly report sent to management is often read only as far as the first page. If that page does not say how the month went against plan and what needs deciding, the rest of the report goes largely unused.
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Reading a budget variance: favourable, unfavourable, and what to check next
August closes with revenue THB 0.516m below budget and operating expenses THB 12.92k above it. Both are bad news. In the variance column, one is negative and the other positive.
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Year to date versus full-year forecast: what each number answers
Management usually asks two questions back to back: how much have we done this year, and where will we finish? The first is answered by the year-to-date figure. The second needs a forecast.
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DSO, DIO, DPO and the cash conversion cycle, worked through
A business that is selling more can end the month with less cash, if customers are paying later or stock is sitting longer in the warehouse. Three measures show it: DSO, DIO and DPO.
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Rolling forecast versus annual budget: what each one is for
A budget finished in November explains less of the business by July. Material prices have moved and a large customer has pushed back its orders, but the budget figures are where they were. A rolling forecast deals with this by moving its window forward every month.
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Price-volume analysis: was it fewer units or lower prices?
August revenue is THB 0.516m below budget. The first question in the meeting is whether the company sold less than planned or sold for less. The two answers lead to different fixes.
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Where the article figures come from
Every figure is computed when the site is built, from the same synthetic dataset as reports 01–07; none is typed in. The one exception is the working capital simulator example in the cash cycle article, which uses the report 09 model and says so where it appears.
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