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Understand Profitability With 10 Best Management Reports

Monitoring your business operations on a regular basis will help you improve your business, according to Bob Whitten, executive vice president of SMA Consulting, a firm that offers financial and operational management consulting services to the construction industry.

The records you keep for your lending partners and the IRS are useful for those needs, but they are useless for helping you understand your company’s profitability and growth (or lack of it).

Instead of relying on those records, Whitten encourages builders to take snapshots of their business operations through regular business management reporting — items such as cash flow analysis, customer satisfaction and cost-per-square-foot analysis.

Whitten suggests that builders use his “10 Best Management Reports” as a guide to monitoring critical aspects of their businesses. The 10-report guide is available to NAHB members in the business management resource section of the NAHB Web site and will help keep builders focused on what needs to be monitored.

“Don’t fool yourself with land profit,” said Steve Maltzman, president of SMA. While that will help your bottom line, it will cloud over your company’s production operations. If you are a production builder, you are in the manufacturing business and you should always view your operation and profit numbers in that light. In fact, you should protect your land assets by keeping your land development business in a separate company altogether.

To read more about Whitten’s “10 Best Management Reports” in the members-only business management resource section at www.nahb.org/biztools, click here.



NAHB Has More Than 250 Resources to Help You Run Your Business More Profitably

Go to NAHB's Business Management Tools Web pages (available to members only) for instant access to more than 250 timesaving, moneymaking and cost-cutting business resources to help you run your business more profitably. Get guidance on accounting and financial management, business strategy, computers and information technology, customer service, human resources and more.

Resources are added weekly, so bookmark www.nahb.org/biztools to go directly to these vital business management resources.

Local and state home builders associations can link directly to www.nahb.org/biztools from their Web site and give their members instant access to these resources. It will make your HBA's Web site the place to go for the information and guidance that members need to succeed.



Subscribe to NAHB’s Business of Building e/Source

NAHB’s Business of Building e/Source is your monthly electronic guide to the hot issues and emerging trends in home building business management. You’ll find practical advice, tricks of the trade and sound business guidance — all delivered monthly, straight to your desktop, in a quick and easy-to-read format. Business of Building e/Source is available free to NAHB members and their employees.

To subscribe, visit www.nahb.org/BoB on the Members Only side of the NAHB Web site.



NAHB Technology Solutions Directory Now Online

NAHB’s Technology Solutions Directory — an easy-to-use directory that enables builders, remodelers, contractors and other industry professionals to find information on software and IT solutions and services for their businesses — is now online. The directory is sponsored by the Business Management & Information Technology Committee

Software and technology solutions providers interested in being listed can sign up for:

  • Enhanced Listing — Listing includes company name, URL, e-mail address, mailing address, phone number, company/product description, company logo. Click here for more information.
     
  • Standard Listing — Listing includes company name and phone number. Click here for more information.


For more information, e-mail Wil Heslop at NAHB.

The Technology Solutions Directory is solely for educational and informational purposes.  Nothing in the directory should be construed as policy, an endorsement, warranty or guaranty by the National Association of Home Builders of the listed software, IT service or the software/IT vendor.  The National Association of Home Builders expressly disclaims any responsibility for any damages arising from the use, application or reliance on any information contained in this directory.

 
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