When reviewing the financial reports for a company, it is easy to get caught up in big-picture enterprise numbers analysis. When this happens, there is the very real risk of missing an important piece of information.
This was brought home to me when I had a client comment, as we were reviewing his financial reports, “I know we are going through these financial numbers every month to see if the business is improving, but is there any way to see the financial results on a JOB basis? I want to know if the JOB was profitable.“
He is absolutely right. If the jobs are not profitable, there is no way the company is going to be profitable.
Further, if you can’t figure out why a job was not profitable, you don’t have any way to fix the problem for future jobs.