Ask three people in a growing business for last month’s sales and you’ll often get three different answers. One came from the accounts, one from the sales spreadsheet and one from someone’s memory. Each is right in its own way, and none of them helps you make a decision.
One version of the numbers is one of the first things we fix with owner-managed businesses, because almost everything else depends on it. Here’s how to get there, with AI doing most of the legwork.
Why the numbers drift apart
It’s rarely anyone’s fault. Spreadsheets get copied and adapted, each department builds its own, and definitions slip. Is “sales” before or after credit notes? Does “this month” mean the invoice date or the order date? Over five or ten years you end up with several versions of the truth.
Step 1: List the numbers that actually matter
You don’t need fifty measures. Most owner-MDs run the business on six to ten: sales, gross margin, overheads, cash in the bank, money owed to you, money you owe, and a few that are specific to your trade. Write your list down.
Step 2: Agree one definition and one source for each
For each number, agree exactly what it means and where it comes from. Usually that’s your accounts software for anything financial and your sales or stock system for the rest. Put it in one table: the number, the definition, the source, and who is responsible for it being right.
AI is useful for the first draft. Give it your list and ask it to suggest definitions and spot where people might be counting things differently.
“Here are the ten numbers I use to run my business. For each one, write a clear one-line definition, suggest the most reliable source, and list the common ways different people end up calculating it differently.”
Step 3: Retire the copies
This is the hard bit, and it’s a people job more than a software one. Once the table is agreed, old spreadsheets get archived, not updated. If someone needs a number, it comes from the agreed source.
Step 4: Let AI build the weekly summary
Now the useful part. Each week, export the agreed figures and let your AI assistant turn them into the same one-page summary: the numbers, how they compare with last week and last year, and anything unusual worth a question. Claude, ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot can all read a spreadsheet export and do this, as long as you give them the same instructions each time.
“Here is this week’s export. Using the definitions below, produce a one-page summary with this week, last week and the same week last year, a short chart, and three things I should ask about.”
Always check the summary against the source before it goes to anyone. AI is very good at this job, but a person should check the work and make the decisions. Use a business account for your AI assistant and check its data settings before sharing financial details.
What changes when the numbers agree
Meetings get shorter, because nobody argues about which figure is right. Decisions get quicker, because the information is already there. And you can finally see whether turnover growth is turning into profit.
If you just want the weekly report built for you, our Sales Report Setup does that for a fixed price. Getting the whole business onto one version of the numbers is part of what we do in MD Advisory. That’s the part we help with. We’re not IT people. We’ve sat in the MD’s chair and built the systems behind it, and we’ll talk to you in plain business terms.
Growing pains like this are normal in a business that has grown quickly, and they’re fixable. Take the free Growing Pains Check to see where your business stands in three minutes, or book a free call about a Growing Pains Diagnostic: half a day with you and your business, then a written 90-day plan with the three changes that matter most.
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