Bill BrownFounder of ServiceTitan Hacks community (9k+ pros) | INC 5000 Contractor | Helping contractors win with AI & Automation

Financials Shock: Why Your Chart of Accounts is Failing #shorts

14 Mar 2026 · 0 min

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In this short, Bill Brown and a colleague discuss common failures in company financial reporting that hinder meaningful analysis. Brown highlights that many firms provide only year‑to‑date or single‑month PDFs lacking key columns such as percentage of revenue and trailing‑12‑month (TTM) figures. He stresses that the proper format should include a TTM column and a % of revenue column for each month. When he examines balance sheets, he finds that 90 % of the time the chart of accounts is essentially missing—often only one or two general‑ledger entries exist, causing every line item to be lumped as an expense. This makes internal analysis possible but prevents any comparison to industry standards, which is critical when evaluating potential partners or acquisition targets.

they are inaccurate or not split up correctly into the right accounts or both.
It is appalling to me how many times over the years that I've asked for financials and I get, let's say, a year-to-date view or just a single month view in PDF format with no column as percentage of income. I say, I want, I said, remember this, I want your TTM with a percentage of revenue column. Next to each month, trailing 12 months. That's the format that you should only accept to look at your financials. And then I see— then I say, I want to see your balance sheet. And as soon as I look at the financials, Bill, I'm not kidding you, 90+ percent of the time— and I'm being generous— chart of accounts is basically non-existent. There's maybe one, sometimes two GLs, two entries.
Then everything is an expense. You could analyze it within your own company, but you can't analyze it with any sort industry standards. So you've got these, got these companies who want to sell and work with you, and the first thing you ask for is financials.