As a small business owner, you’re probably plagued with questions.
“Am I overspending on rent?”
“Am I spending enough on advertising?”
“Is my business bringing in less cash than other businesses like mine?”
Where do you find the answers to these questions? That’s where QuickBooks Trends comes in.
From more than 30 years of helping small business owners manage their businesses, we’ve amassed quite a bit of data and can use that to draw some valuable insights.
With QuickBooks Trends, we take anonymous data and show you how you’re doing compared to other businesses within a specific industry, location, and annual income to see averages in these areas:
Sales growth- Ratio of cash flow (days receivable outstanding vs. days payable outstanding)
- % of new vs. existing customer sales
- % profit margin (net, gross and operating)
- Median total income over the past year
- Median total expenses over the past year
- Expenses by category (advertising, rent, insurance, etc.)
- Income by category (products, services or other)
Now, you have real metrics to see how you’re doing. If you want to find out whether an industry is profitable before making the leap to open a business, you can do that. And you want to know whether you should look for cheaper business spaces, you can find that out.
And remember, the data is anonymous. So you get the value, but everyone’s private data stays private.
Of course, you should never rely on just one tool for big decisions, but we hope this step forward in democratizing big data for the small business owner helps you work smarter and make business decisions with greater confidence.
So, take a spin around QuickBooks Trends, and let us know what you think at qbtrends@intuit.com. And don’t forget to share QuickBooks Trends with your friends or embed the widget on your own website!
About Shelly King
