Profit Blog

Jarmo Manninen & Muutosdraiveri Oy


Is monthly reporting of a company's results better than cumulative reporting?

18. helmikuuta 2025

Cumulative reporting of a company's actual results means reporting in which, after each completed month, the company's actual cumulative result since the beginning of the financial period is reported as a total, including the actual results of the completed month, and the cumulative result is compared with the budgeted cumulative result for the same period.

If the company's monthly results are reconciled accurately on a monthly basis, so to speak, at the financial statement level, then this is an expensive reporting method to do every month of the financial period. Even if the company's monthly actual results were reconciled at the financial statement level, the company's monthly results do not tell the direction of the company's development, i.e. whether the company's results are developing in a better or worse direction compared to the budgeted figures. If a company only monitors monthly actual results and compares them to budgeted monthly results, then based on my experience, they are easily explained in the most bizarre ways, which easily distorts the truth about the company's ability to make profits.

If the company's monthly results are reconciled with income and expenses only in the essential parts, then there will be small inaccuracies that lose their significance when the company monitors cumulative actual results and compares them to the budgeted cumulative actual results for the same period. This method is a significantly cheaper reporting method than the reporting method based on accurate monthly reconciliations of income and expenses. The biggest benefit of a company's cumulative profit reporting is that when the ratio of the company's actual cumulative profit and the cumulative budgeted profit for the same period are compared monthly in the right way, it is clear whether the company's profit development is going in a better or worse direction.

For the reasons explained above and with the methods I have presented above, I consider the monitoring of the company's actual cumulative profit to be a clearly better reporting method than monthly profit monitoring. When a company has the right electronic financial management system in place, they can easily implement the cumulative monitoring of actual profit and comparison with budgeted cumulative profit figures as described above. This only requires that the company's management requires its implementation by the company's financial management, whether it is internal to the company or outsourced as a service.

What kind of company's profit reporting method is in your company?

I encourage you to share this blog post of mine on social media. If you have any suggestions for the topics of the next blog posts, I will gladly accept them.

I hope that you were interested in this matter and that you can continue to be involved.

I have written four books on creating the conditions for the company's financial management, and they are available in well-stocked bookstores and online bookstores in Finland, for example from BoD (Books On Demand) at:








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