If you're not using your financial data to make decisions about your business,
Then what are you even collecting it for?
Chances are, it's for one of the following reasons:
Taxes – because you need to track your finances to pay them (and not get thrown in jail).
Investors – because they need to track your progress to evaluate their investment in you.
But if these are the only reasons you're building a finance function, you're missing 90% of the point.
Why?
The data you track for taxes won’t tell you much about the future prospects of your business.
The data you collect for investors won’t tell you what actions to take to fix or improve anything.
So, if you're doing "finance" only for external stakeholders
And you're frustrated
Because it feels like there's nothing useful in it for you,
Chances are, you're actually right.
If you really want to know what's going on in your business and what you can do about it,
You need to be tracking completely different metrics.
Want to know what they are?
Don't ask an accountant;
Ask a CFO.
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