Understanding Reports

Generating & Understanding Your Reports

Once your worksheet is complete, and you’ve dialed in all of your future movements and scenarios, it’s time to turn those numbers into presentation-ready financial statements.

You can do this by clicking Generate Forecast Reports from the main sidebar.

1. Setting Up Your Generation

Before hitting generate, you’ll be asked to make a few quick choices:

Select Scenarios

If you’ve built multiple scenarios (like “Base Case” and “Aggressive Growth”), you can select which ones you want to generate reports for. A separate set of reports will be created for each selected scenario.

Choose Layout

Full Detail: This generates the complete, month-by-month breakdown of your entire forecast period (up to 60 months).
Rolling 12 Months: This generates a shorter, dynamic 12-month view.

2. The Core Financial Statements

Regardless of the auxiliary options you choose, CompassForecasting will always generate the “Big Three” accounting statements. These are fully linked and balanced:

Profit & Loss (Income Statement)

This report shows your financial performance over time. It takes your Revenue, subtracts your Cost of Goods Sold and Operating Expenses, and shows your Net Profit (or Loss) at the bottom. Note: This report includes non-cash items like Depreciation, which is why your “Net Profit” rarely equals your “Bank Balance.”

Balance Sheet

This is a snapshot of your company’s overall financial health at the exact end of each month. It is divided into three sections:

Assets: Everything the business owns (Cash, Inventory, Accounts Receivable, Equipment).
Liabilities: Everything the business owes (Loans, Accounts Payable, Tax Bills).
Equity: The “net worth” of the business (what’s left over for the owners after all liabilities are paid). The golden rule of accounting is that Total Assets must always equal Total Liabilities + Equity. Our engine ensures this balances perfectly every time!

Statement of Cash Flows

For many business owners, this is the most critical report. It strips away complicated accounting rules and simply shows the actual cash entering and leaving your bank account. It is divided into:

Operating Activities: Cash generated from your day-to-day business (e.g., collecting cash from customers, paying suppliers and staff).
Investing Activities: Cash spent on or received from big assets (e.g., buying a new vehicle or selling old equipment).
Financing Activities: Cash from borrowing or owners (e.g., taking out a new loan, paying loan principal, or taking out owner drawings/dividends). The bottom line of this report is your projected closing Bank Balance.

3. Auxiliary Reports

You can toggle several additional, detailed reports on or off depending on what you (or your bank/investors) need to see.

Dashboard & BI

Generates a highly visual overview with charts and graphs highlighting your key performance indicators (KPIs), cash flow runway, and revenue trends. Perfect for quick presentations.

Accounts Receivable Detail

A full breakdown of how your customer payments are calculated. If you set your debtors to “45 Avg. Days”, this report shows exactly how your total sales are mathematically staggered and converted into actual cash received over the coming months.

Accounts Payable Detail

Similar to the Receivable report, this provides a transparent breakdown of your expected cash payments to suppliers based on the creditor terms (e.g., percentages or average days) you set in the Wizard.

O/D Interest (Overdraft)

If your cash flow dips below zero and you have an Overdraft Rate set in the Wizard, this report details exactly how your monthly overdraft interest expense was calculated based on your daily/monthly cash deficit.

Tax Reconciliation

Shows the mathematical step-by-step of how your accounting profit was adjusted to arrive at your actual “taxable profit.” It details any manual tax additions/deductions you set, the utilization of prior tax losses, and the final estimated tax bill.

Assumptions Sheet

A clean, easy-to-read summary of all the key drivers and settings you used to build the forecast (like tax rates, debtor days, inventory methods, and loan details). This is a crucial sheet to include when handing your forecast to an investor or bank, as it shows them exactly how you arrived at your numbers.