Ten questions, about ninety seconds. Most owners can quote their bank balance to the penny and cannot say last month’s profit. You will get a score and, more usefully, a list of exactly what you cannot currently see.
There is no wrong answer here, and nothing is sent anywhere unless you ask.
The score runs entirely in your browser. Answer honestly rather than generously — a flattering score tells you nothing, and the value is in the list of gaps at the end, not the number above it.
Ten questions
Answer all ten, then click See my score.
The basics
Why the bank balance is the worst signal you have
Almost every owner checks the bank balance. It is the most available number and the least useful one, because it is the last thing to move and it cannot tell you why.
A healthy balance can mean a profitable month, or it can mean you have taken deposits you have not earned, delayed paying suppliers, and are about to be hit by a VAT bill. A low balance can mean trouble, or it can mean you have just paid corporation tax on a very good year. The number is identical in each case. It answers nothing.
What the questions above are really testing. Each one maps to a decision you are making anyway. If you cannot see which customers are profitable, you are still choosing which to chase — you are just doing it blind. If you cannot see three months ahead, you are still deciding whether to hire, buy the van, take the unit. Nothing is postponed by not knowing; it is just decided worse.
The gap is nearly always timing, not effort. Most businesses in this position have a bookkeeper, an accountant and a software subscription. The information exists. It arrives nine months after the year end, in a set of statutory accounts written for Companies House, by which point every decision it might have informed has already been made.
What closes it. A budget for the year so there is something to measure against. A rolling cash forecast so you can see far enough ahead to act. Management accounts within days of month end rather than weeks. And a regular conversation that ends in a decision rather than a report. That combination is what Buzz Business Pulse exists to deliver, and it is usually a matter of weeks to put in place, not years.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about knowing your numbers
What are management accounts?
A short set of figures produced monthly or quarterly for you rather than for Companies House: profit and loss for the period, a balance sheet, usually a comparison against budget and last year, and commentary on what moved. They are not audited, not filed anywhere, and not bound by statutory formats — which is precisely why they can be useful and quick. Statutory accounts answer what happened. Management accounts arrive early enough for you to change what happens next.
Isn't that what my accountant already does?
Most accountants prepare statutory accounts — a legal filing, in a prescribed format, due nine months after your year end. By the time they land, the year they describe has been over for the better part of a year and every decision it might have informed has been made. That work is necessary and it is not the same thing as management information. Plenty of businesses have an excellent accountant and no idea what happened last month.
How often should I get management accounts?
Monthly if you have staff, stock or a wage bill that has to be met regardless; quarterly is usually enough for a simpler business with steady income. What matters more than frequency is latency. Numbers ten days after month end change decisions. The same numbers six weeks later are history. If you have to choose, take quarterly-and-fast over monthly-and-late.
What is a rolling cashflow forecast?
A forward view of your bank balance, usually thirteen weeks or twelve months, rebuilt each period from what you have actually invoiced, what you owe, and what lands on fixed dates — VAT, PAYE, corporation tax, rent, wages. "Rolling" means it always looks the same distance ahead rather than running out at your year end. It is the single most useful report a small business can have, because it turns cash from something you discover into something you can see coming.
My bookkeeping is up to date. Isn't that enough?
Bookkeeping produces records; management information produces answers. Having every transaction correctly categorised in Xero is a prerequisite, not a substitute — the data being present is not the same as anyone reading it. Most businesses scoring badly on this scorecard already have tidy books. The gap is that nothing turns them into a number anyone acts on.
What are debtor days and why do they matter?
The average number of days between raising an invoice and being paid. It matters because it is usually the largest and most recoverable pot of cash in a small business, and because owners consistently guess it low. A business invoicing £480,000 a year bills about £1,315 a day, so every day of delay is £1,315 sitting in someone else's bank account. Cutting 62 days to 30 on that business releases around £42,000 — without selling anything more.
How long does it take to fix this?
Weeks rather than months, in most cases. A budget for the remainder of the year can be built in a couple of sessions. A rolling cash forecast can be running within a fortnight once the bookkeeping is current. The slow part is not the reporting; it is getting the underlying records reliable enough to trust, and that is only a long job if they have been neglected for years.
Do I have to change accounting software?
Usually not. If you are on Xero or FreeAgent and the bookkeeping is current, everything described here can be built on top of what you already have. Changing software is occasionally the right call, but it is a much bigger project than putting reporting in place and it is rarely the actual blocker.
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Two businesses, same turnover, different visibility
Both turn over £600,000. Both have a bookkeeper and an accountant. In March, both are offered a contract worth £90,000 that needs a new member of staff and about £15,000 of equipment up front.
The first owner checks the bank. There is £48,000 in it, which feels comfortable, so they say yes. What the bank balance does not show is £31,000 of VAT due in April, a £22,000 corporation tax payment in May, and customers who are averaging 58 days rather than the 30 on the invoice. By June they are paying the new salary out of an overdraft and chasing invoices instead of delivering the contract.
The second owner opens a forecast that already has the VAT, the tax and realistic payment timings in it. It shows the same £48,000 dropping to £4,000 in May before recovering. So the answer is still yes — but the equipment is financed rather than bought outright, the start date moves three weeks, and the two slowest customers get chased first.
Cash tied up at 58 debtor days£95,342
Cash tied up at 30 debtor days£49,315
Released by fixing credit control alone£46,027
Same business, same contract, same month. The only difference is that one of them could see six weeks ahead.
What to do with the answer
What to do with your score
Start with cash, not profit. If you fix one thing, make it a rolling forecast. Profit tells you whether the business works; cash tells you whether it survives long enough to find out.
Set a budget for the rest of this year. Not a detailed model — a set of expectations you can measure against. Without one, management accounts have nothing to compare to and become just another report.
Fix latency before frequency. Numbers that arrive ten days after month end beat better numbers that arrive six weeks after it.
Measure your debtor days this week. It is the quickest available cash in most businesses and it costs nothing to improve.
Put a date in the diary to look at them. The most common failure is not producing management accounts. The second most common is producing them and never reading them. A review that ends in a decision is the entire point.
Want to see the year coming rather than reading about it later?
