How to cut your end of month reporting time in half

If you’re involved in reporting in your workplace, it’s likely the sound of “end of month” sends a shiver down your spine.

There’s the week leading up to month end where you find yourself rushing to make sure all your data is up to date.

You spend countless hours trying to extract data from different sources.

On top of this, consolidating information for the reports you need can feel like a constant battle.

Sound familiar?

You’re not alone.

All too often month end is a tedious and time-consuming process for businesses which leaves people feeling exhausted.

Imagine if you could halve the time it takes for end of month reporting and remove that feeling of dread.

What would you do with the extra time and peace of mind?

The good news is there are simple ways to get off the end of month hamster wheel and reduce your reporting time.

Here’s how…

Capturing and recording information

When reviewing your reporting process, make sure you first consider whether you can create efficiencies in the way information is captured and recorded in your daily operations.

Regardless of size or industry, it’s not uncommon for businesses to rely on a number of paper-based processes, particularly when it comes to inventory management and invoicing.

If you’re on the receiving end of suppliers who send paper-based invoices and delivery notes, or you keep track of your inventory movement using paper records, it can be really challenging to find information when you need it and create quick and accurate reports.

Replacing paper-based processes with electronic solutions will require an initial investment but will save you a substantial amount of time and money when it comes to finding the information you need and generating accurate and timely reports.

If there are parts of your business where you can’t move away from using paper to capture and record information, find a way to convert hard copy documents into electronic versions easily and quickly.

One way to do this is to use a scanner with OCR (optical character recognition) capability.

When documents are scanned using OCR, the computer recognises text and numbers so the information is stored in a way that can be searched or easily copied and pasted into other systems or other electronic documents e.g., spreadsheets.

An OCR scanner will save you a tonne of time and increase the reliability and accuracy of the information you capture, plus it won’t break the bank.

You can find OCR scanners from many common retailers.

Extracting and consolidating data

One of the biggest challenges faced with end of month reporting is extracting and consolidating data across the business.

Rather than being able to easily extract the data from one source, days can be spent manually extracting data from an abundance of spreadsheets or multiple systems to consolidate it into one location.

Using reporting and analytics tools that are designed to integrate and talk to all your systems is the easiest and most efficient way to ditch the manual labour and bring your information into one place for a centralised view of your whole business.

When you’re weighing up reporting and analytics software options, there’s a few things you want to consider on top of functionality, cost and benefits.

Firstly, make sure you look at the usability of the software.

Some reporting and analytics tools are built in a way that the basic functions can be used by most people but to get sophisticated reports and insights you need a Business or Data Analyst to manage it.

Choosing a reporting and analytics tool that’s easy for everyone to use will save you time and money and make the transition a smooth one.

Another important factor to consider when you’re in the market for a reporting and analytics tool is how often the data is updated.

Using a tool that regularly checks your systems for new data and updates the consolidated data will provide you with real-time and reliable information on your business anytime you need it.

Real-time updates also free up the time you would have spent manually updating your data so you can use that time to find the insights that help grow your business.

If you’re not quite ready to use a reporting and analytics tool, you can streamline your end of month reporting by using an Excel spreadsheet in SharePoint, or a Google Sheet, which allows multiple people to input their data at the same time.

These shared spreadsheets provide a single location for the data that forms the basis of your reports so you can easily combine that data.

Creating reports

When it comes to creating end of month reports a smart reporting and analytics tool will automate the process for you, saving you time and money.

Reporting and analytics tools that use artificial intelligence will go the next step and analyse your data in a way that uncovers unseen issues and untapped opportunities to help you grow your business.

If you’re unable to consider a reporting and analytics tool to create your reports, you can use the vertical look up function (VLOOKUP) in Excel.

A VLOOKUP allows you to bring numbers from different Excel worksheet tabs into one worksheet.

This means that your team can load their monthly numbers on separate worksheet tabs and they can be displayed together in one area for easier reporting.

VLOOKUP formula is a calculation in Excel which uses four components.

VLOOKUP(<lookup value>,<table range>, <column index>, [range lookup])

1. Lookup value

The lookup value is the value you want to look up in the first column of a table

2. Table range

The table range is the range of data to be searched

3. Column index

The column index is the column number of the table range that you want to return a value from

4. Range lookup (either TRUE or FALSE)

The range lookup defines what should be returned in the instance that the calculation is unable to find an exact match to the lookup value.

The range lookup is either TRUE or FALSE.

If you set the range lookup as TRUE an approximate match will be returned if an exact match is not found. The calculation will use the closest match below the lookup value.

If you set the range as FALSE an error will be returned if an exact match is not found.

You can find plenty of step-by-step guides on how to perform a VLOOKUP, including examples on the web.

Summary

Not only do businesses have end of month reporting, but there are also other reports that need to be produced as part of your day-to-day operations such as sales pipeline reports, order reports, and time and attendance reports.

If you had to manually capture and record information and manually extract and consolidate data to produce every report, you’d probably wish you had a different job.

Fortunately, you don’t have to do that.

You can use automated solutions and reporting and analytics tools to cut your reporting time in half and escape reporting mayhem.

These solutions will not only save you time. They’ll also help you save money and get better insights into your business.