Unlock your business data with Spotlight
Spotlight is a cloud-based reporting and forecasting tool with a visually attractive design, which can be customised to ensure the most important numbers are being focussed on for regular and up-to-date reporting on your business’ performance and position.
Your BDO adviser can set up these reports and forecasts to connect with your Xero data (or other accounting packages) and work with you to tailor them to not only make sense to you, but point you towards how to get you the results you want.
There are four different styles of Spotlight that you can use:
Dashboard
After simplicity? Snapshots? Quick insights? The Dashboard is your answer.
Select up to six key performance metrics that you want to see on a regular basis, presented on a one-pager and backed by real data from your Xero.
You can use a dashboard to easily see if you are on track with your goals, and have regular discussions with your adviser on the ongoing performance on the business.
Reporting
The multi-page report means you can dive into different areas of the business, as deep or as shallow as you want, as number-heavy or picturesque as you want.
At the click of a button, you can bring in your actual data, budget, and forecast and compare the results across these, and in different categories (sales, cost of goods sold, bank position etc.).
Shine a light on key revenue and expense drivers as they happen in order to understand how they impact the bottom line, rather than ‘waiting and seeing’ at the end of the year.
Take it further and compare how each department is performing. Or filter to provide each manager with their very own regular report on their part of the business. Both of these aspects are easily enabled with the use of tracking in Xero and the power of Spotlight reporting.
Forecasting
Cash is king and having a cashflow forecast in place is a vital practice to ensure you are keeping your business’ head well above water. Oftentimes however, undertaking a cashflow forecast can seem incredibly time consuming and too static for the fast paced business environment we are in.
This is why Spotlight Forecasting is a great tool – it takes the pain away by making forecasting much simpler. Use an existing budget or quickly develop one using your Xero (or other accounting system) actual information, and then Spotlight works its magic by automatically calculating your cashflow forecast. Our team of advisers can work through this process with you to ensure all is properly in place and makes sense for your business, without having to spend hours manually processing or calculating anything.
Spotlight will then produce great reports where you can track actual vs forecast on an ongoing basis, number vs number or visually using graphs and snapshots.
Multi
This is essentially Reporting for Franchises. See a multi-page report that summarises how the franchise is performing, along with graphs and data that combines and compares the performance of your franchisees. These reports are so easily compiled but provide such powerful information that will help you help your franchisees keep up to standard and beyond. You no longer have to wait for franchisees to send through information, deal with messy inconsistencies, or spend time consolidating – let Spotlight do it all for you.
BDO NZ offers Spotlight as a reporting and forecasting service, and also as a subscription for our clients to use the system themselves. Get in touch with your BDO adviser to discuss how Spotlight can help your business or organisation and ways we can make it work best for you.
