50 questions to ask your business data

The problem is rarely too little data

A typical small or mid-sized business works with five to fifteen software packages. Each one records something: invoices, hours, projects, quotes, customers, absence, website visits. Together they hold the answer to almost every question a management team has. Yet that data is mostly used for daily work and the annual accounts, far less for steering.

The reason is usually not technical. It starts with the question. If you do not know what you want to know, you do not build a dashboard or ask an AI agent anything. Hence this list: 50 questions that deliver the most for businesses in practice, with the source you need.

Use the list like this: cross out the questions that do not apply to your business, mark the five you would most like answered this month, and start there.

Leadership and strategy

1. How is our revenue developing per month compared with last year? (accounting)
2. Which five customers account for the largest share of revenue, and how dependent are we on them? (sales invoices)
3. Which product group or service is growing fastest, and which is shrinking? (sales invoices)
4. How does operating profit compare with budget, per quarter? (accounting + budget)
5. Which branch or business unit performs best on margin? (accounting with cost centers)
6. How much revenue per FTE do we generate, and how is it changing? (accounting + HR)
7. Which costs have risen faster than revenue? (general ledger)
8. What were our best and worst quarters in the past three years, and why? (accounting)

Finance and cash

1. How much is outstanding with customers, and how much of it is overdue? (open items)
2. Which customers consistently pay latest? (payment history)
3. How is our DSO developing per month? (receivables + revenue)
4. Which purchase invoices above EUR 5,000 fall due in the next four weeks? (payables)
5. What will our bank balance be in 13 weeks? (open items + fixed costs) See building a cash flow forecast.
6. Which cost lines deviate by more than 10 percent from the average this month? (general ledger)
7. How many credit notes have we issued this year, and for which customers? (sales invoices)
8. Which suppliers have raised their prices? (purchase invoices)
9. What is the gross margin per month, and what explains the swings? (accounting)
10. Which entity contributes most to the group result? (multiple administrations)

Projects and operations

1. Which running projects have already used more than 80 percent of their hour budget? (project software)
2. Which project types consistently miss their margin? (projects + invoices) See automating job costing.
3. How much extra work have we delivered that has not yet been invoiced? (project software + invoices)
4. How much work in progress is there, per project? (project software)
5. Which clients deliver the highest margin per hour? (projects + hours)
6. Where do planned and worked hours differ most? (planning + hours)
7. How long does it take on average between delivery and the final invoice? (projects + invoices)
8. Which work orders are completed but not yet invoiced? (work orders + invoices)
9. How much material was used compared with the estimate? (material bookings)
10. Which employees or crews work overtime most often? (hours)

Sales and marketing

1. What is our weighted pipeline for next quarter? (CRM)
2. Which deals have been in the same stage for more than 60 days? (CRM)
3. What percentage of our quotes do we win, per salesperson or product group? (CRM or project software)
4. What is the average lead time from first contact to order? (CRM)
5. Which customers bought last year but not this year? (sales invoices)
6. Which customers keep buying more, and what do they have in common? (sales invoices)
7. Which marketing channel brings visitors who also become customers? (Google Analytics 4 + CRM)
8. Which landing pages generate the most inquiries? (Google Analytics 4)
9. What is the average order value per customer segment? (sales invoices)
10. Which products are often bought together? (invoice lines)

HR and organization

1. How is absence developing per department? (HR system)
2. How billable are our teams compared with target? (hours)
3. How do payroll costs relate to revenue, per month? (payroll + accounting)
4. How much leave is still outstanding, and when does it hit the schedule? (HR + planning)
5. Which contracts expire in the next three months? (HR)
6. What is annual staff turnover, and in which roles? (HR)

Customers and service

1. How many service requests or tickets come in per customer? (service software)
2. Which customers need a lot of service and deliver little margin? (service + invoices)
3. How long does it take on average to complete a work order? (work orders)
4. Which customers have we not spoken to in the past year? (CRM)

Checking the data itself

1. Which invoices have no project or cost center? (accounting)
2. Which hours were booked to a general code instead of a project? (hours)

The last two questions look dull, but they determine how reliable the answers to all other questions are.

Which of these questions can your records already answer? Request a 20-minute demo. Choose three questions from this list in advance, and we will ask them of your own figures together.

How to ask these questions

There are three ways, and they complement each other:

• Dashboard. For questions you ask every week, such as DSO, pipeline and project margin. See KPI dashboard examples.
• AI agent. For follow-up and one-off questions: "Why did margin drop in August?" The DigiData AI agent answers in plain language on your connected data and shows which figures it used.
• Automated report. For questions you want answered without asking, such as a Monday overview or an alert when a KPI crosses a threshold. See automating reports.

Which sources do you need?

Almost every question above needs a combination of two sources: accounting plus projects, CRM plus invoices, hours plus HR. That combination is exactly what is missing when every package stands alone. By connecting your software, for example Exact Online, Twinfield, Simplicate, Bouw7 or HubSpot, the data comes together in one place. See all connectors.

Read also how to make this a habit with data-driven working.