Creating Budgets, Reports, and Business Performance with Tony Barakat

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Welcome back to the Business Systems Summit, and in this session we're going to be chatting with Tony Barakat. He's the CEO and co-founder of ABJ Business Solutions, and what they do is they help SMEs with expert business solutions, putting in place efficient processes, understanding their numbers, trying to identify specific key indicators that can be used to measure and also drive business performance. They've got a range of different services that they offer, including bookkeeping and CFO expertise, tax strategy, and they also help implement innovative IT solutions. Now, he's got a wealth of experience, and I was introduced to him through Daniel Davis, who— him and the team at EOS, we were having a little bit of a chat about someone who might be able to come into the summit to help explain some of the systems and processes around finance and good business management. And they said, look, you've got to chat with Tony. So having a quick chat with him, I thought, yes, he's going to be perfect. So without further ado, Tony, just like to welcome you to the Business Systems Summit.

Thank you, David, and thanks for providing this opportunity, and I hope I can provide you and your audience with some knowledge and some insight into the finance element of business. I'll jump right in and I'll stop this video for you.

Perfect. And I know you're going to run through a few different things. We'll have a look at some budgeting systems, we'll talk around reporting and performance, and also some systems around cash funding options. So I'll let you drive from here, and if it's all right, I'll just kind of chime in every now and then if I've got some questions as we go.

Not a problem at all. So thanks again, and we'll jump right in. Firstly, I'd like to start by introducing myself. As David said, my name is Tony Barrakat, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of ABJ Business Solutions. By way of introduction and background, Joe Boyd, my business partner, and I created this business nearly 8 years ago because we believe that we can change the way in which businesses and their owners can use financial data to make better decisions in A) running their business and B, growing the revenue and profits of their business. And 8 years on, we still believe the same thing and we're still passionate about SMEs and how we can help them more than ever. As senior finance executives, I guess we've seen and been involved with enough businesses to understand that the challenges that all these businesses face, be it big or small. Throughout our experiences in the SME space, we've learned to appreciate the complexities that business owners face on a daily basis. I was asked to present to this forum. I was very aware that I should share the insight that will make a difference to, to a business. And so what I decided to talk about are the 3 following topics. First one is budgets. Secondly is reporting and business performance. And the third one is cash and funding options. The first topic that I'd like to talk you through, as I said, is budgets, and I'd like to break it down into the following subtopics: What is a budget and why is it important? How do you go about creating a budget? How do you best use a budget? And what are the key points that you need to take away from this presentation on budgets? I'm often asked why the budget is the first piece of engagement that I promote with a business, and my answer is usually quite simple and generally consistent. If you don't have an idea of where your business is heading and its impact on your financials, how do you know what to focus on? So whether it's setting the expected growth in a particular product and understanding its impact on your bottom line, or ensuring that you have factored in any impact that a change in business will have on cash flow so that you can make the right funding decisions with plenty of time on your hands, setting a budget is critical to the success of any business. In a nutshell, a budget is created to provide you with some guidelines over the course of the year in relation to revenue, costs, gross profit, net profit, and EBITDA, just to name a few metrics. Ultimately, a budget provides you with a financial roadmap to your destination. So how do you go about building a budget? The steps involved in creating a budget are broken down in the following ways, and, and this is basically the approach that we take which is fairly consistent across all the budgets that we build. And there are systems that we use, but just for the, for the sake of the audience, just putting together a budget in Excel can be as effective so long as you take the following approach. First one is, what are your high-level aspirational numbers for the business for the coming 3 years, and how does this translate into an annual projection? Of course, with this, you want to use historical financials as a starting point and factor in any changes in the business or the industry or the economy in general. So, understand where you want to get to. What's that high-level revenue number and the high-level net profit number that you want to reach over the next 3 years and for the coming year? Secondly, what you then do is you create the detail, and this is what we call a bottom-up approach. So, starting point is generally revenue and cost of sales, so you can determine what your gross profit is. And I'll break this down in the following key drivers. Look at your client base, or look at your product base, or look at your channel base. Break down what revenue you've generated across these elements historically and what you'll generate from these revenue line items going forward. And what you'll find is, if you can look at the detail of your revenue by client or by channel or by product, you'll very quickly begin to see which products or which clients you're going to be able to generate this revenue from going forward. And when you do that and you look at the detail, if you fall short of your high-level aspirational number, then you do one of two things. Either one, you've got to change that high-level aspirational number that you, that you first started with, or two, You look at that bottom-up approach and you have to find either more clients or try and look at what ways you can sell more products or what ways you can actually grow your, your channel base. The third step is once you've arrived at that gross profit number that you're comfortable with, you'll need to map out such like your operating expenses, and the elements there are generally rent, staff costs, and marketing. Amongst other things like telephone and internet and so on, to help you arrive at a net profit target. Most costs generally remain the same year on year. Some, there's a, with some there's a small movement, but generally the costs are the same. People, when I go through this process, people generally focus on resources, so staff costs, travel, rent, and marketing expenses, as the costs that change or can dramatically change. Otherwise, all other costs go up a little bit or down a little bit from the previous year. The final detail is, in creating a budget, is you want to be able to use the budget. So ultimately, you want to be able to use the budget on a month-to-month basis. So you break down the budget month on month so that when you report your monthly accounts, you have a benchmark to use against. That's basically how I build a budget. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this budget piece, I generally use Excel, although there are tools out there such as Futurely that you could also use to be able to create a budget.

So with this, I might chime in just on a couple of questions on each of those different stages. So I'm starting off a budget thinking step 1 is around what those aspirational top-line numbers will be. Is there any guides or suggestions on how to pick that? I mean, as business owners, it's always easy to go, "Oh yeah, I'd like to make, you know, 200% increase." That's right. I'm wondering how are those numbers arrived at?

It really comes down to a number of things. I generally like to think that you can use the current year as a guide, and then you look at what growth you— factoring in the industry, the economy in your business, and the maturity of your business, and any major changes in your business— I'd like to think that a business owner can at least have a rough guess as to where they want to take the business. And I guess what we use as a sanity check is the second step, which is the bottom-up approach. So I think I'll answer your question by saying Your guide is where you want to take your business. So start off with your aspirational number, but your sanity check around what that looks like is step 2 of the budget approach. If you want to guess that your business is going to grow 100% this year, as a step 1 approach, fine, go with that. But it's only when you look at the detail, those revenue segments that I mentioned, by client, by product or service, or by channel, it's only when you build this budget from the bottom up, do you then understand whether that aspirational number is real, achievable, too much of a stretch, a little bit of a stretch, or whether it's actually, you know, you're a good chance of getting there. So, that's step 1. Have a guess, go for what you think you believe the business will grow to, but use that step 2 as a sanity check to understand what's real and what's not.

[Speaker:RYAN] Yeah, so then we move into step 3, Step 2, and obviously looking at historical data is a good place to start, then potentially also seeing what you've got in as far as recurring revenues and potentially clients that you know that will be coming up in certain jobs. So you then start to back that up, and then I'm assuming then you start to go, okay, well, and here is how much additional revenue that we haven't accounted for that we'd need to then have growth. Then we kind of move into the operating expenses and figuring out those and also our fixed costs. When it comes to thinking in terms of the elasticity, as obviously we're selling more, let's say we want to get those few hundred percent increase and then thinking about how do our cost of goods and things fluctuate as a result to that. I don't know if you've got any insight to that.

So cost of goods is a number that obviously is related to revenue. And some businesses understand very clearly what their cost of goods is. And so that will be considered as a— I guess, as a percentage of your revenue. Other businesses, some work has to be done around cost of goods to understand what you want to budget that at. That's like fairly consistent, but it's very dependent on whether you're selling products or service, yeah? The other elements of elasticity, as you refer to, are generally staff and marketing, sometimes travel depending again what industry you're in. But as your revenue base grows, the two elements that grow with it are your staff costs because you generally need more resourcing, and marketing because you want to grow your revenue. You generally have to get the message out there as to what your product or services that you're selling.

Yep. And then when we break that down, let's say then we're creating monthly budgets. So you might obviously start out with some of those aspirational numbers for the year and then you figure out, okay, well, how does that translate into our monthly budgets? And then we're looking at both the income and then potentially also the expenses there. Is this something that is done on a— I mean, you said monthly budget, so I'm assuming we're creating this on a monthly on a monthly basis?

[Speaker:DAVID JENYNS] Yeah, it's absolutely created on a monthly basis. And the monthly basis, it's not always as simple as dividing that annual number by 12, because as you and I both know, there are seasonality consequences to most businesses, be it whether you're in retail or be it if you're in a service industry, or depending on what you do, there are certain times of the year that you know you'll do better or worse, yeah, again depending on what industry you're in. And so we try and set the budget accordingly. So when we are having, and you'll see this in the second piece that I'm going to talk about, when we're having those monthly discussions around your profit and loss position and we're reviewing your performance, you want a meaningful budget to be discussing your numbers against, so that you can look at why you've you've overperformed or why you've underperformed. And you really don't want those discussions to be against an arbitrary number that you've just divided by 12 because that was the easiest way to go about it.

And are we setting budgets just for P&Ls here, or do we set cash flow or balance sheet budgets, or it's very much a P&L thing?

I guess most businesses set budgets just against P&L. Some of the more mature businesses do look at 3-way forecasts. That's a whole different sort of topic that I don't want to go into right now, but ultimately, when you get to a point of maturity in your business and you understand the, I guess, inflows and outflows in your accounts, then we do recommend that you set 3-way forecasts. And that 3-way forecast is basically a P&L forecast that feeds into a cash flow forecast that feeds into a balance sheet so that you can project different, I guess, projected cash flow, and you project your balance sheet, which allows you to look at where you're going to have peaks and troughs in cash and allows you to look way in advance when you're going to have to go and speak to a lender to be able to plug that hole. So they're very powerful tools, and I know some of the businesses that we are CFO for, that we act as a CFO for, we basically do do those 3-way forecasts and The banks find them critical in being able to assess their viability and to be able to assess any lending applications that those businesses have.

Yeah, perfect. Okay, so at this point, I'm kind of— we've gone through those first few stages. I suppose now we start to move into, okay, well, you've got a budget set now. What the heck do we do with it?

Yeah, so how do you use a budget? And I guess this is where, when I do first engage with businesses, they don't generally buy into, you know, why my starting position is a budget. But I guess the idea of a budget is to allow a business to plan in advance and therefore make the appropriate decisions in good time. And the areas that a business will focus on with the knowledge of a budget are on cash flow, as we just mentioned. So if you can see that your projections are going to be a challenge over a particular period in the year, then rather than get to a point and say, you know, I'm actually out of money, what do I do? And you basically, you're reactive to your business. You can approach your bank or your lender in advance, armed with a budget, outline the detail around how much funding you will need to guide you through that particular period. So, that's the one advantage, right? The other one is around recruitment and marketing spend. And as I mentioned, they're key drivers in revenue growth. So, you need to plan accordingly and make the right decisions with the appropriate lead time. So again, if you're seeing that your revenue is going to grow or you want your revenue to grow 5 or 6 months from now, well then maybe the flow is that your marketing spend over the next 3 months increases. And so you need to plan and strategize around that both in terms of resources and funding now. And then if that actually comes to fruition or that actually translates into increased revenue, then chances are 3 to 6 months from now, you're going to need to start a recruitment process so that when those revenues hit, you've actually got appropriate staff trained up and ready to go. So again, it's all about the planning, and that's where a budget can help you make these decisions in advance. The third one is around tax, and a tax accountant is usually in a much stronger position when they're armed with where your business is traveling, so they can give you advice around tax strategy when they actually know in advance how your business is traveling. They can come up with the ideas around, if this is how we're going to perform this year, then these are the things that we'll factor in, or these are the things that we'll do around, around your tax and strategy. The other piece is around the monthly reporting. So without accurate, timely, and consistent monthly discipline in your reporting, you'll not take away the benefits of creating a budget. So you need to be— so you create a budget, one, you don't put that in the top drawer and say, I'll look at it in 12 months' time. You need to make sure that you're using on a monthly basis so that you're reporting exactly, you're reporting rather your actual accounts against this benchmark and you're explaining to your management team or to your board why you've overachieved or the reasons why you've underachieved. So why is your revenue down? Is it a timing reason or is it that you've actually lost a deal? And if the timing reason, why? And what can we do to sort of nail it? And if it's, we've lost a deal, and then why have we lost a deal? Or the flip side, what are we doing right? And why are we winning all these sales? And what can we do to continue doing that? And how can we operationally be ready to account for that if we continue to grow in this manner? The final piece, David, is a budget is done once a year. Businesses, however, are dynamic. So if your business is performing in a particular way, that has steered off from the budget, well then, sure, continue to report against the budget, but ultimately put in place a quarterly forecast so that you at least have another set of numbers which are more live and more up to speed with what's going on around you as an additional element. So that every quarter you're updating your quarterly outlook to ensure that your management team is clear on where they aim to be in the coming period. What are the takeaways, or what do you need to remember on this piece on budgets? Firstly, make sure that you have buy-in on the key numbers from your management team and key staff. Without their input and expertise, you'll not be able to deliver on your projections. Secondly, make sure that you report against your budget every month and identify reasons why you have either underachieved or overachieved. It's with these golden nuggets that your business will grow. Thirdly, be strategic in your approach and focus on the growth and on the profitable products and services. And finally, as I mentioned, although a budget is static and is your benchmark for the year, it doesn't stop you from creating a quarterly forecast if your business dynamic requires you to set up a new updated target because of changing circumstances. You want to ensure that your reporting remains relevant. And that is my take on budgets. So we will move on to reporting and business performance, and I'd like to approach this topic in the following way. I'd like to review some very key questions around reporting. I'd like to take you through a real-life case study and focus on certain business issues and solutions for a client. And again, I'd like to finish off by giving you the takeaways or the golden nuggets around reporting and business performance. So I'd like your audience to ask themselves the following questions that are up on screen. Do you struggle to understand how your business is performing at any one point in time? And why do the results show a profit? So why does your accountant tell you you're actually profitable but you never ever have money in the bank and you never quite get that connection? Do you accurately and confidently assess the business opportunities that are presented to you? And do you actually even understand or know what your business breakeven point is? Do you hold your staff accountable to their targets? And if you do, is this done proactively or is it, I guess, reactive? And these are just some of the questions that business owners ask themselves. And for a finance person or finance expert, timely reporting and business dashboards are critical to show the results of the financials and answer some of these questions. These are the results and key indicators of performance that will drive your organization's success. So I'll take you through a client case study which will explain how valuable information makes decision-making easier. More accurate, and more profitable. So this particular business is in the architecture and design industry, and they've been operating for over 7 years. So they've been around for a little while. Turnover is relatively healthy at just under $5 million. But this business could never understand all the projects that they run, which ones made them money and which ones didn't make them money. So the issues that they had were, no idea, or very little idea rather, on the profit associated for each project that they undertook. On the back of this, they were not robust and clear around the resources and the allocation of resources to the appropriate jobs. And further, any future jobs that were coming in as leads or as sales were not being undertaken with enough historical analysis to understand as to how they should approach them. So again, the planning aspect of future jobs was not, was not strong. And ultimately, this business was not tracking its performance and therefore was unable to ascertain which jobs were returning a profit, which jobs were returning a loss, which jobs they should avoid, or which jobs they should take on with any level or degree of accuracy. So what were the suggested solutions that we put in place around reporting? Ultimately, with the reporting analysis and discipline that was specifically implemented, the following solutions allowed this business to move forward and to actually thrive. We ensured that the business had controls in place to continually reconcile and validate the data that the bookkeeper was providing. So the information has to be accurate. That's first and foremost. The second piece was providing a month-end review and timelines to ensure that the month-end and the month-end management pack was completed in a timely fashion. And sorry, just to finish that point, that monthly management pack in this case was a profit and loss report, a balance sheet, a cash flow, and certain key performance indicators. But I guess just to expand on that, some businesses report their accounts once a year when they go see their tax accountant. That's all well and good, but at the end of the day, you don't want to be looking back on your year and not able to make decisions around how your business is performing and what changes you can actually make to your business so that you perform better. Some businesses look at their accounts every now and again when they need to go to a bank. I mean, ultimately, the point I want to make around this month in review is put a date in place. If your bookkeeper or your accounts team or your financial controller, your CFO, needs 5 days or 6 days after month end to put the accounts together so that you're reviewing something accurate, fine. Then by the second week of the month, you want to systematically review your accounts. Don't leave it too much long after that, otherwise your numbers become old and decisions you make become outdated. The third point around the solution for this particular business was we agreed 5 key metrics. That we could measure monthly, which allowed us to hold the management team accountable and to assess the performance of the business. And for every business, these indicators can be different. It can be anything from a gross profit margin, it could be anything from the number of Facebook hits or Facebook likes that your business, you know, sees every month. It could be around how many leads are generated. It can be anything financial or non-financial. That you know is, or are, the key drivers to your business. As an extension of this, we ensured that the P&L was broken down by project and that the information and analysis provided allowed accurate reporting, determine profitability by project. So we ensured to understand in this particular case that timesheets were being kept around what was put against a particular project. We ensured to break down costs against projects as best as we possibly could so that when we were assessing the revenue collected against a project, a project, we also knew the costs associated with that project and therefore the profitability associated with that project. So were certain projects in a certain location more profitable than others? Or were certain projects that were being delivered to us by specific channel partners more profitable than others? What was the key piece of information and the analysis around projects that we could take away for assessing future projects and basically targeting those sorts of projects? And finally, we were able to calculate the break-even point for the business to understand how much revenue we needed to generate for that business to return a profit. And that allowed us to be able to make decisions around revenue, around staff, around costs that made this business more profitable.

With that one, if we just go back a slide just to run through those points, I almost feel like these points potentially could build off the back of the budget, the 4 budgeting steps, because now we're going to move into the analysis, and that makes me feel like, well, next step would be, okay, make sure that you've got process in place to make sure that all of the data has been collected correctly, allocated correctly, effectively, so you can look at what you have budgeted and then make sure that there's some validity in, well, this is where we wanted to be and here's what we are. So that felt like that would be the next step. Then the step after that would be getting some sort of process or system in place to get those budgets consistently delivered and reported on, probably through to the leadership or the management team. As far as like those reports, P&L is obviously one of them. Are there particular reports that you think should be reviewed on, let's say, that monthly process?

Yeah, correct, and good question again. Yes, so just in answering your question piece by piece before I talk about the reports that are reviewed monthly, it is a system and it is a process, and as you rightly said, you starting off with the budget feeds into this, into the second piece around the monthly reporting. And with this monthly reporting, in terms of the detail around it, you need to firstly ensure that the information that's input into a accounting tool is accurate. So, and there are many accounting tools out there. I'm guessing most of your audience either use Xero or MYOB, and there are others out there that are also available to businesses. But irrespective of the tool that you use, the first step is the information that goes into that tool has to be accurate. The second piece of that process is there has to be some sort of control or mechanism in place where a senior finance person is reviewing the details to ensure that from an accounting perspective, systems and processes are being followed in an accurate fashion. And I guess by way of example, one of the key things that drops out of our monthly meetings is matching revenue with costs. So some businesses comfortable with just adopting the revenue as it hits their bank account or adopting the cost as it hits their bank account. We take an approach around accrual accounting to ensure that the revenue and the costs associated with a month lie in that month so that you're accurately reporting performance that falls in that month. So that's, that's an important aspect of a process that's followed. In terms of the same process, the first piece— or sorry, the second piece that I mentioned around a timeline— that's also part of the process and system. You need to ensure that you don't leave it too late after month end, that checks and balances occur, and that a management pack is presented. And that's generally the job of a financial controller in conjunction with the bookkeeper. And then the third aspect of that process is that a senior finance person, be it a financial controller or a CFO, sits down with a management team that makes time available to this part of the business and they talk through performance and they objectively and systematically talk through the key indicators of the business and objectively assess how a business is performing and what a business can do to do better the following month, the following quarter, or so on. And I guess the—

So the reports, that management pack you mentioned, that was the piece I was really keen to get clear on. So what would be the the reports that would be in the management pack? Obviously, if there's been key performance indicators identified, delivering on those, plus obviously the P&L, let's say, documented within accruals fashion. Are there any other ones that you think would be key?

Yeah, so the P&L is an obvious one, and the P&L— we report P&L against budget. So it's P&L for the month against the budget for the month. And there's a variance, and there's a variance column. We also report against the previous period last year where it's relevant. We report the P&L year-to-date against the budget year-to-date with a variance year-to-date, and we report the same year-to-date period in the previous year where it's relevant. That's on the P&L. We also report on the balance sheet. We also report on a cash flow And again, where it's relevant, we look at the quarterly forecast for the business in P&L coming up, and we also look at the quarterly cash flow forecast for the business coming up. We also look at the accounts receivable in detail where there's a problem around collection of invoicing and debt. And again, we look at the accounts payable in detail where relevant. That's on top of the key performance indicators. And with all of these reports that I've mentioned we like to put in place a report of commentary. So a commentary against these different reports to allow business owners or the management team to review, to review the commentary from the CFO or the financial controller to put things in, I guess, in written format.

And then the next step then in that process, once this management pack has been delivered, it's probably already been identified, but it's probably the review point point of those KPIs. Now, KPIs, obviously something like a net profit or something like that would do well. How many KPIs should we be looking at identifying and what might be some of the top-line suggested KPIs?

Yeah, so look, again, depends on the business, depends what the focus is. EBITDA, and for those that don't know, EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization. So it's basically the net profit figure adding back interest and depreciation, if you like. So EBITDA or net profit is usually a good one. Sometimes KPI for revenue by a particular segment is important for the business. So they see particular growth in a segment of the business, so they put that down as a good measurement tool. Gross profit margin. So businesses know that they will return a healthy profit figure if gross profit margin hits a particular number. So that could be a KPI. Age debt, so ensuring that your collection of cash happens within a certain period and that a percentage of your accounts receivable over 90 days is kept to 1%, 2%, again, depending on the business, 3%. A cash balance could be a KPI. There's a whole raft of things, even certain ratios. So a liquidity ratio to see how liquid your cash position is in the business. Certain covenants that banks may have for you around debt and around the funding facility, that could be a KPI so that you're always a step ahead of what you need to report into your bank around the lending facility that they've offered you. There's certain— I mean, I can go and list off 10 financial KPIs, but they're the financial KPIs that can be relevant for a lot of businesses. And then there are also, as I mentioned, there are also non-financial KPIs that we can put, or that businesses can put into their reporting tools that they might see as important indicators around the health of their business. And that could be related to lead generation. So how many leads, you know, do you want to ensure come through your business this month or next month or next quarter? What sort of conversion of those leads, you know, do you consider to be healthy and set as a benchmark? And again, I mentioned one around Facebook just to sort of make it relevant for some of your audience, and they may say that, you know, for this business to gain traction in a certain market, we need X number of hits or likes on Facebook or on social media. There are many. It can be as wide or as small as you want, but what I always suggest is keep your KPIs to a minimum. So keep it manageable, keep it robust, keep it relevant, and keep it sort of focused on the coming period so that you're focused on those KPIs that are going to drive your business in the short term. Yep.

Yep. So at this point, again, I always try and think in terms of the stepped process. So if we've identified those key performance indicators and then we're starting to do the analysis, that's probably that next step now that you've confirmed all the data is accurate, you've got the timely reports, you know what your KPIs are. Now we're into the point of, okay, let's review it. What suggestions have you got around making meaningful decisions based on reading the data? Because, you know, it's a lot of business owners, what they'll do is, of the few that actually do set budgets, when they look at a budget, they go, okay, well, that was down by 'x' percent, that was up by 'x' percent, and okay, cool, that's the story's done. I think, do you have any suggestions on, well, how do you extract meaning from that to then take action?

Yeah, look, I'll say, I'll answer that in, you know, with the following two points. One is you need the business smarts to understand, I guess, the variances. So if you're— the KPIs that are coming back to you are painting a grim picture, or a positive picture for that matter, then you need the business smarts or the industry smarts to understand what you can do to either put the negative performances to an end or to ride the wave of the positive, you know, the positive results, and I guess hit the accelerator to produce more revenues and more profits. The advice that I would give is Monitor the trends. If you see that performance is not going according to plan, then you need to delve into why that's happening. Is it the industry? Is it the economy? Is it your specific business? Is it around what your specific business can do better? Is it around your resources? So you're going to have— you have to assess all the different elements, all the different drivers around what makes your business successful, and try and delve into which one of those drivers is the one that's actually not performing and correct that. And how you correct that again is industry or business-specific.

Yeah, makes sense. Perfect. Well, I know that kind of rounds out that first piece, and I know we approached it almost as two separate sections, but I almost think when we put this together, we'll put that almost into one process because it feels like that kind of flows quite well together for from budgeting through to analysis.

It's an extension of, and that's the reason why I wanted to, I guess, present it in that format, because you start off with the budget and then you use that budget to report on the business and use as a benchmark against the business. But it's that reporting and analysis piece that's going to help you drive your business performance. And I guess just to sort of wrap up on this reporting piece, what I'd like the audience to take away is 3 things. Make sure you review and you discuss accurate and timely reports at month end, and especially report against agreed targets. The second piece is agree and measure the key performance indicators which will drive business performance. And the final piece is around the break-even position of your business and profitability in as much detail as you can. So, revenue and profitability, if you have business that covers different geographies or different channels or different products or services, understand what your revenue and your profit is at that level of granularity so that you can make appropriate decisions around where you want to take your business.

Tony, that was, yeah, really excellent. I feel like we went through all of those different steps and that is a standalone SOP in itself. Itself feels very complete to me. I know just with regards to timing and stuff like that, maybe what we'll do at this point, if it's all right with you, we might bring the session to a close and we'll end up documenting that into an SOP that will go along. And I know you were planning on touching on the second section or the third section, which was the cash and funding options. I'm thinking maybe the best thing I can point people to the direction of you, we'll put your contact details beneath the video. But if people wanted to find out a little bit more, where's the best place for them to head?

I'm happy to take anybody through the final piece on cash or any of the other two topics. Happy for people to call me on my telephone number, which is up on screen, or to email me at tbarakat@abjsolutions.com.au, which again is up on screen. And what I'll also ask your audience, if they'd like a complimentary 90-minute health check on their business. Myself and the team are more than happy to go through that with them and hopefully offer them some insight into the finance function of a business.

Yeah, perfect. Well, thanks for that, Tony. It's definitely an area that a lot of business owners miss, yet it's— I mean, the money and monitoring cash flow and finances, it's lifeblood of the business. So getting the systems and processes in place so it happens, happens consistently, and following a process is absolutely key. So again, thank you very much for your time, and we'll have all the details beneath the video, and we'll continue with the Business Systems Summit.

Thank you very much, David, and I hope yourself and your audience gained insight from my talk today.

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