Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is a great way to measure business success. By adding KPIs to your reporting arsenal you will be able to measure and monitor whether your targets are being achieved. They can also serve as great motivators for you and your team. Here’s some creative ideas on effective KPIs.
Key Performance Indicators for Business Success
Integrating KPIs into your standard reporting means poorly performing indicators will be detected early while you still have time to address and improve them. Therefore, Calxa makes KPIs easy as these can be added directly to your standard Profit and Loss style reports. For example, you can include key ratios such as:
- Operating Profit Margin
- Break-even Point
- Wages to Turnover
These standard KPIs can be added directly into the reports you already use. In addition, these ratios are all standard out of the box KPIs. However creating your own custom KPIs in Calxa Premier is easy. This way you get to measure what’s most important in your organisation.
The ability to edit KPIs opens up endless possibilities and here are some of the interesting ways our customers are using KPIs.
Calculating Unit Costs such as Cost per Participant
Calxa doesn’t provide a direct method to calculate unit costs such as cost per hour, cost per activity or cost per client. To calculate this requires non-financial data such as number of hours or number of clients. For instance, there is no way to capture this data in Calxa, however thinking outside the square you can capture this data in your GL accounts and then use the KPI calculation engine to calculate just about anything. Check out this guide on how to start with your Unit Cost Calculations.
Cumulative YTD Net Profit in Spreadsheet Report
This idea makes interesting use of the relationship between Current Year Earnings and Net Profit. Essentially in this idea you create a custom KPI that calculates the Current Year Earnings closing balance. Then, you add this KPI to the Spreadsheet Variance 12 Months report. The end result is you have a Cumulative YTD Net Profit row added directly below the standard monthly Net Profit value. Check out the Calxa Support Note for more details.
Budgeting for Overdraft Interest
It can be difficult to budget for overdraft interest as there are many linked dependencies. It circulates through your budget then cashflow and back to your budget again. Above all, a custom KPI formula can look at your forecasted closing bank balance and check when the projected forecast is negative. Similarly, when it’s negative a quick multiply by the monthly interest rate and you have your overdraft interest value. Running this in a spreadsheet report will give you your monthly overdraft interest values that can be used to populate your budget. Our help note Budget for Overdraft Interest guides you through the steps.
Top Key Performance Indicators – EBIT or EBITDA
Why not add an extra row to your reports to capture EBIT, EBITDA or both. It’s as simple as grabbing your Net Profit and adding back the Interest, Tax and Depreciation.
Expenditure Report Including Capitalised Expenses/Purchases
The P&L doesn’t always tell the whole story. To deliver an expenditure report that includes capitalised expenses or purchases can be difficult. This is where you want to combine the required Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet accounts into the one report. KPIs overcome these boundaries and allow you to easily include an account group that is made up of Balance Sheet movements and add them as additional rows to your Profit and Loss reports.
Create Your Own Custom Report from Scratch
The Calxa Report Designer is very flexible but you still need to work within the general structure of a standard P&L layout. Key Performance Indicators provide the flexibility to calculate whatever rows and totals you like. As long as the data is available in your GL accounts then the KPI editor can be used to calculate your report rows. Combine this with the report designer to calculate your columns. This will enable you to come up with your own custom report layout.
To get started with Key Performance Indicators to measure business success, check out some of our industry guides like 7 KPIs for Retailers, KPIs for Dairy Farmers or KPIs for the Bookkeeping Practice.