Periodic financial statements are the definitive record of a business’ health and achievement. Wherever possible, they should be the starting point for the performance analysis of any area of the business.

Trouble is, directly behind the financial statements sits the GL transaction table; a stripped-down summary table; a slim list of postings with very few useful analysis fields.

Successful investigation of any business area in terms of its profit or loss or risk, therefore requires going beyond the GL to the subsidiary ledgers and their numerous subsidiary tables; to locate, extract, relate and organise information into useful pieces of analysis, all the while ensuring that the results successfully tie back to the facts in the financial statements.

Easy, right?

Let’s take London Wanderers’ legendary player-manager, Will Watson, by way of a comparison. Will’s official “financial statement”, his starting point for performance analysis is the league table. The league provides a certain amount of immediate, summarised information: position and points; games won, drawn and lost; goals scored; goals conceded; games played.

Come December, when Will begins to question why his Wanderers have been knocked out of the cup and are forever stuck at mid-table, he needs to go beyond the summary information of the league. If he wants to get behind the bottom line he must access the subsidiary information:

• Who is scoring most goals? (customer sales and revenue)
• Who is conceding the most? (purchases and expenditure)
• Which of his players are past their best and what are they worth? (fixed asset valuation)
• Who is coming up through the ranks of the youth team? (available inventory)
• Which players’ loans are nearly up? (long-term liabilities)
• Who’s injured? Who’s suspended? (cash flow statement)
• Did first-leg away goals make a difference in the cup this year? (accrued income)
• Which players are combining best? How does crowd attendance affect results? How are the South American signings doing now that Winter’s begun? (err, multi-dimensional analyses)

Will knows that a team is bigger than any one player (himself included). He knows that all of these factors are important and appreciates that the debt of success is the sum of all parts. Assessing strikers on goal tally alone fails to take into account the goals conceded during those games, or the goals which had been the fault of the strikers not tackling back, or indeed, how many own-goals the over-paid under-performing forwards may have inadvertently netted themselves. Neither Will, nor the team coach (nor any of the management staff) has the answers at their fingertips, and this is frustrating.

So, how does Will attempt to get the bigger picture? He consults members of his technical staff and reads the subsidiary dossiers they have compiled. He watches recorded footage but simply doesn’t have time to take in all the games again. He consults the youth team coach, the director of football, the players, the chairman, his wife and kids. He can’t hide from the heckles and chants of the fans, nor from the external advice of those God-forsaken, neanderthal TV pundits. He is surrounded by opinion. Presented with conflicting facts. He is a very busy man. Should he tinker with the defence, experiment with a 4-3-3 or just sit back and leave the players to gel?

Relax, Will. It no longer has to be this way.

There is a software product dedicated to making your life easier and developed by people who agree that you should always be able to see the wood for the trees. People who believe (when it comes to analysis) that disseminated and dispersed information should be brought together in one place; made directly accessible behind your financial league statement. Will, just imagine being able to lift the lid of the league table and discover all the knowledge and information right there in front of your eyes; organised, unambiguous and ready for the picking. From the findings of the head coach’s training report, right down to Johnny Striker’s metatarsals. Automatically integrated, validated and reconciled. Entirely accountable and easily accessible. Time for you to get on with your job, Will: taking Wanderers into Europe. PrecisionPoint Software. Get in!