KPI's for Your Business (and QuickBooks' Company Snapshot)

Running a small business is all about the details.  So much that you can lose sight of the direction your business is taking.  Key Performance Indices (KPI) are a great way for you to see the big picture.  
          Although there are standard KPI's out there for you to use, they can be just about anything, customized to your business.  The trick to making the KPI's significant to you is easy, just follow these steps in making your choice:

1. Use your vision or business plan to focus.  Is customer service your mission?  Choose KPI's that relate to responsiveness, timeliness, and quality of service.
2. Choose 5 or less KPI's to keep an eye on.  Make sure you have one for revenue, one for profitability, and one for cash. 
3. Look at these first, before you look at the rest of your financial statements.  The summary will give you a direction for your review, and you can find answers to your questions.

Quickbooks' Company Snapshot is a ready-made tool that does just that.  Unfortunately, your choices are limited, but there are some good ones in there.  You can program the Snapshot to open on your desktop when you open Quickbooks, which is a good way to get in the habit of checking your company's big picture.

• Open the Company Snapshot (in the bar next to your Home button).  To add content, click the "Add Content" link on the upper left hand side.  You can scroll through the Quickbooks options to select five that work best for you.  
•  I recommend that you use the Income/Expense chart, the A/R Aging report, the Account Balances list, the Vendors to Pay list, and either the Top Customers by Sales or Top Product Sales.  You can arrange these on your desktop by dragging.
• To remove graphs or reports, click the upper right hand "X" and Quickbooks will delete it from your desktop.
• To program Quickbooks to open this report every time you start Quickbooks, with the Company Snapshot open (and no other windows), go to Edit/Preferences/Desktop View and select the Save Current Desktop option.  Click the Save button and you are done!
• There's also a Payments tab at the top of the Snapshot that will take you to another summary screen that is oriented towards receiving customer payments and making vendor payments.  This can be customized similar to the Company page.

There are three other KPI's that I would highly recommend you include at least in your monthly reporting:  Cash Gap, Expenses Per $ Revenue, and Product Margins.