Most people would agree that the Balance Sheet is the most important report in your system—along with the importance of validating the balance sheet to ensure that the bottom line of your Income Statement is correct.
A close second is the Profit Margin Report, surely the second-most-important AccountMate report.
Located in the AccountMate AR module, the report has more than a dozen major sort options to show price, cost and margin in a myriad of ways—by customers and customer class/industry/ territory, by items sold and item classes/product-line, by salespersons, and other selections—with dozens of filter criteria, including the all-important date range.
And did we mention that it shows margin?! Keeping a close eye on margin just might be the single most important operational factor in a for-profit enterprise. And this is the built-in tool to help you do that, with the flexibility to analyze profitability from many angles and even compare margin over time for the same criteria.
The tricky part about this report is making sure your costs are flowing correctly from purchasing and/or manufacturing all the way through to the Profit Margin Report—we might need to implement lot control or tighten up kitting/manufacturing BOMs to assist you in that. But once you have accurate cost numbers flowing all the way through to this report then there’s a lot working correctly in your system.
If you’re not already using the Profit Margin Report, then be sure to check it out—and if the costs aren’t screwed down tight, then doing so is one of the most valuable projects you can undertake. Don’t hesitate to send us your questions about the report.