Epic: Accounts, P&L, Utilisation, Estimates vs Actual

[nelsonic]

As a decision maker
I need up-to-date management information
so that I can plan for the future of the company/team effectively.

Management Accounts Should Cover:

• Revenue and Expenditure
• Contribution to Fixed Overheads for each project (i.e. does the project make or lose money? and if so exactly how much?) Profit & Loss Fixed Costs per Project #373
• List of people on each project and how much time they are spending in the project. Capturing full time dwylers' time allocation in the short term #363
• [ ] Utilisation Rate for each person in the team/company Utilisation Rate #374 - closed because we agreed this wasn't the right metric to track
• Estimates vs Actual Times for each task/issue on a project so we know if we are getting better at estimating. Estimates vs Actual Times for every issue in GitHub #375

relates to: #229 (Financial Accounts)

Note: I did my Masters in Management Accounting (I know, super-interesting, right?!),
so if you have any questions, please ask! 😉

[iteles]

@markwilliamfirth This is the subset of #229 we were discuss last week and this morning as the most urgent thing to have a handle on asap so that all other company decisions (around big things like hiring and smaller things like #) can be made 👍

These are in priority order.

@nelsonic Thanks for writing up the detail!

Additionally, this is a good example of something I don't want to go up raw or in bits on github, we will issue this information transparently in one bundle

[ghost]

Initial report has been sent to Inês - I'm currently liaising with carl with regards to project by project ROI

[nelsonic]

carl?

[iteles]

@nelsonic Carl the bookkeeper who we hired to get all of our accounts sorted and set up in Xero so Mark could take over once the admin backlog is done.

I haven't had a chance to look at this yet as have been in back to back pre-organised tasks and 'Carl' was very late getting this to us, so I wasn't expecting to review it. I will take a look at it asap.

@markwilliamfirth Thanks for sending.

[iteles]

@markwilliamfirth It's been a few months for this priority-1 issue. Can we have an update please?

[ghost]

Update: Management accounts were created by our accountants at iHorizon and these were sent to @iteles (#321 (comment)). @iteles gave feedback that they were not particularly useful. Requested that we look into other ways of producing management accounts in house without the help of accountants and requested mark to spend a 1d spike into looking into the capabilities and limitations of Xero related to this. This spike hasn't been done yet as there has been other higher priority work. Currently ahead of this:
dwyl/process-handbook#35
#272
#283
and day to day project work (scrum), finances, invoicing, etc

@iteles do you have a particular deadline in mind for these? Are the requirements still the same as the top comment?

[iteles]

They are not particularly useful because they only cover point 1 in the checklist for this issue and don't provide enough data to make any decisions with.

This has been a priority-1 issue with a blocker label which has been blocking my ability to make data-driven decisions for months 🕥 . All of the other issues you have linked to are priority-2 and lower.
Before these points are raised:

• I had suggested that Operations processes process-handbook#35 would be a good thing to work on during dwyl summer because it's a very apt environment when everyone is in the same place and there's a great team spirit in the air. But that week has elapsed so it's very much a priority-2.
• Rewrite and Review Supplier Agreement #283 has an incorrect priority label on it with a comment towards the bottom on its lower priority

We can't get behind on invoicing clients or paying people as you say, but other than that, let's please focus on this.

If you would prefer an actual date deadline other than constant highlighting of how important this is, please time estimate the issue so that I can ensure it is not unrealistic.

[ghost]

Have changed this to an epic and separated the requirements

[rub1e]

UPDATE: movement on this 🔑 issue has been the activity on #373 (see update there) / #437

Main takeaway 🍛 is that we're holding ourselves to the following:

the goal is to start the new business year being able to run a report for any project whenever we want and be able to tell how profitable they are