This post formalises part of Stage 3 — Rhythm — of the BIP Method. The seven reports below are what a monthly pack actually contains at a £1–5M SME. The five to cut are the ones that get bought into the pack without earning their place. If unsure where the current reporting stack sits, start with the Baseline Score.
Most SME monthly reporting packs are too big. A new tool got bought, somebody built dashboards, the pack grew, and nobody's willing to cut anything in case the one thing pulled turns out to be the one thing somebody wanted. The result: 30+ visualisations, half a day to prepare, nobody reads end to end.
A working monthly pack at a £1–5M SME is the opposite. Small. Opinionated. Stable. Seven reports, tied to the decisions the business actually makes. Everything else is clutter — and clutter is expensive, because every extra report is time not spent on the business.
Here are the seven that earn their place. And five that almost never do.
Seven reports that earn their place
Monthly P&L — actual vs plan, with year-to-date
One page. Revenue, direct costs, gross margin, overhead, operating profit. Actual for the month, plan for the month, variance, and YTD. Nothing fancy. The variance column is what gets read — it's where the conversation starts.
Revenue concentration — top-5 client share of revenue
A single number, with a trend. What percentage of last-month (or rolling 3-month) revenue came from the top 5 clients? If that number is above 60%, the business has concentration risk that should be a named agenda item. Most SME owners are surprised by this number the first time they see it.
Gross margin decomposition — by service line, product, or channel
A single gross-margin number hides the truth. Packaging work at 24% and brand strategy at 41% net to something unhelpful in the middle. The monthly pack should break margin into 3–6 rows — whichever split reflects how the business thinks about its offer. That's what tells the business which mix-shift to work toward.
Cash runway — two scenarios
Current runway at current burn is one number. The second number — runway if the largest single revenue line was removed — is what turns reporting into planning. Most SMEs run only the first and are blindsided by the second.
Pipeline coverage — forward 60–90 days
£ proposal value in the pipeline, compared to target revenue for the next 60–90 days. If coverage is less than 2x target, a sales problem is starting. This is the lead indicator to pair with the P&L, which is the lag.
Capacity utilisation — if the business bills people's time
Rolling 3-month billable hours as a percentage of available hours, by team or role. Near or above 85% means hiring is overdue. Drifting below 55% means pricing or pipeline is underperforming. Both directions matter.
Aged debtors — 30/60/90 buckets, with largest exposures named
Total outstanding isn't enough. The pack should show what's outstanding, in what bucket, and who the three biggest debtors are. This is the report that catches the problem client before it becomes a cashflow problem.
That's seven. A single A4 page, or two if each gets breathing room. Everything on it drives a question. Every question is answerable in a 40-minute meeting.
Five reports that waste time
Vanity traffic dashboards
Website visits, social followers, email opens, Instagram reach. Unless there's a direct line from any of these to revenue (and for most SMEs there isn't), they belong somewhere that isn't the monthly board pack. Move them to a marketing review and out of the financial rhythm.
The "exec dashboard" with 40+ metrics
If everything is on the dashboard, nothing is. The dashboard becomes decorative. The test is simple: if the pack can't be read end-to-end in five minutes, it doesn't work. Ten well-chosen numbers beat forty contested ones every time.
NPS and CSAT scores without a closed loop
Collecting a customer satisfaction score is fine. Putting it on the monthly pack without any process that acts on it is performance theatre. Either tie the number to something — a retention conversation, a service review — or cut it from the pack.
Pretty charts built before definitions got agreed
Revenue charts look nice. But if "revenue" means invoiced in one view, recognised in another, and booked in a third, the chart is fiction. Same goes for "client," "cost," and "margin." Agreement first. Visualisation later. Always in that order.
Month-over-month comparison without trend context
"Revenue was up 4% on last month" is not information without 6–12 months of context. A single comparison is noise. A trend is signal. The pack should favour rolling-3 or rolling-12 views over bare month-on-month lines.
What makes a report earn its place
The test is the same for each of the seven: does this report, in this business, at this scale, change what somebody does next month? If the honest answer is "no, it's just nice to see" — it doesn't belong in the monthly pack. Put it somewhere quarterly, or cut it.
Reports are a cost. Every chart built is time spent, and that time isn't neutral — it's time not spent on the thing the business is actually trying to do. For the broader case against the "pack that nobody reads," see Reports Nobody Reads.
The test: four standing questions
The seven reports above only earn their keep if they feed the four standing questions the Method uses every month:
- What moved?
- Why did it move?
- What do we do about it?
- What do we watch next month?
A report that can't contribute to one of those four doesn't belong in the pack. A report that can contribute to all four is a keeper. That's the filter.
Where to start
If the business currently runs a 20+ metric monthly pack and nobody quite remembers why each one is there, the first move is an audit: which of the seven above is already present (in any form), and which of the five clutter patterns are consuming time. The Baseline Score is the two-minute version of that audit — a 10-question diagnostic that identifies where the reporting stack actually sits today.
For the full decomposition — agreed definitions, metric selection, and a built monthly pack sized to the business — see the Review or the Method.