Revenue Visibility Review: can we explain the figures?
The monthly revenue number is available, but explaining a change requires combining sales, customer, delivery and finance reports. This review establishes which records connect, where they disagree and what management can reliably conclude.
Unsnag is not VAT registered, so no VAT is charged. Digital delivery is included. Travel or work outside scope is quoted separately.
Reconciling transactions, work delivered and financial periods
Revenue can fall, margin can narrow or a forecast can miss while every individual report remains technically correct.
The useful test is whether management can distinguish the possible explanations. Was there less demand? Lower conversion? Existing customers spending less? A change in work mix? Delivery timing? Invoicing timing?
No single report has to contain every answer. The reporting available to management should make it possible to follow the change far enough to establish what needs closer investigation.
What the reports must support
The review starts with the questions management needs answered, then works back through the reports and data used to answer them.
Coverage. Does the available reporting contain enough information to distinguish the main explanations for a material change?
Traceability. Can an important number be followed back through its calculation and source to the customer, project, deal, invoice or operating event behind it?
Definitions. Do Sales, Delivery and Finance mean the same thing when they report revenue, pipeline, customer value, margin or project status?
Reconciliation. Where two reports describe the same part of the business, can management explain why the numbers agree or differ?
Timing. Does the information become visible while management can still act, or only after the customer, project or month has already moved on?
Manual reconstruction. Which answers still depend on another spreadsheet, a meeting or the person who knows how the number was produced?
Illustration: what can a 12% revenue decline reveal?
The purpose is not to force one report to answer the whole question. It is to see whether the reporting system can separate materially different explanations.
Did the volume or quality of new opportunities change?
Did the business convert a smaller share of the demand it already had?
Did customers leave, buy less often or reduce the value of work?
Did the mix shift towards smaller or lower-value work?
Was work sold but delayed, constrained or not completed when expected?
Did invoicing, recognition or another timing difference change the reported period?
Evidence required for the review
Company name and website. Two or three reports, dashboards or screenshots management relies on. Who receives them and what question each is expected to help answer. A short list of the systems behind them is useful but does not need to be complete.
The review includes a 75 - 90 minute management working session and one targeted stakeholder check of up to 30 minutes if needed.
Scope: one management question, an agreed sample of existing reports and source records, the stated conversations and a written Revenue Visibility Map. A full data audit, financial assurance, new reporting-system build or wider multi-business-unit investigation requires separate scope and pricing.
Initial contact is through LinkedIn; sensitive reports and customer data should only be shared later using an agreed secure method, not in a first LinkedIn message.
The output identifies which management questions current records can answer and where the explanation breaks down.
Revenue Visibility Map PDF.
A written map of what management can establish from the reporting it already has, what remains unclear and where the explanation stops being traceable.
The material questions the reports are expected to help answer.
Which questions are adequately covered, partially covered or not covered by the current information.
Where important terms are consistent and where the meaning changes between reports or functions.
How far material figures can be followed back to the underlying customer, project, transaction or operating event.
Where two views of the same commercial activity cannot currently be connected or explained.
Where the information becomes available after the useful decision point.
Spreadsheets, meetings, side calculations or individual knowledge currently used to complete the picture.
Which gap materially affects management's ability to understand revenue or margin, and which gaps can be left alone.
The smallest justified change - reporting, definition, process, CRM, integration, data capture, development or no change.
Timing. The written Revenue Visibility Map is normally delivered within 10 working days of the final agreed input. The schedule and evidence needed are confirmed before the paid review begins.
What the reporting needs to explain
The anonymised situations show where reported results and operational records did not connect. The economic effect still needs to be established from the underlying data.
See situations from earlier professional work →Tracing financial totals to commercial events
Financial figures are supplied by the business or its accountant. I examine how customer, sales and delivery activity connects to those figures.
If Finance has established that revenue, margin or another result changed, I examine whether the commercial and operational reporting can explain what happened behind that number.
Missing definitions can prevent reconciliation
The gap may sit in a report, definition, handover, process, source data, CRM configuration or the way information moves between Sales, Delivery and Finance.
If the existing tools are sufficient, the recommendation should say so.
Limits of the current records
If management can reconstruct what happened but several explanations remain plausible, the next question is no longer about visibility. It is about which explanation survives contact with the evidence.
Revenue Visibility Review
Use this when management cannot reliably follow the result back through the reporting, systems and records already available.
Commercial Diagnostic
Use this when the relevant history can be reconstructed, but the business still needs to determine why the result changed.
CRM Decision Review
Use this before choosing or rebuilding CRM when the management requirements are not yet clear enough to define what the system should do.
Choosing between a visibility review and a diagnostic
Some questions can be answered by reconciling the reports you already have.