The management accounts are accurate to the penny. They arrive on the 19th.

Precision in reporting is bought with time, and by the time the number is perfect, the decision it was meant to inform has already been made on instinct.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The management accounts are accurate to the penny. They arrive on the 19th.

A finance function that closes the month in nineteen working days and produces a set of accounts nobody can fault has done something difficult. It has also, quietly, made itself irrelevant to most of the decisions taken in that period. The question worth sitting with is not whether the numbers are right. It is what they were for. The arithmetic of stale information Consider a business that closes on the 19th of the following month. Activity on the first working day of the reporting period is roughly seven weeks old…

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