Making sure that you, as a business owner, are fully aware of the position of the business at any particular point in time is vital. There is though no generic list of information that can be provided as a guide as every business is different in the way it operates and therefore business owners will require different information to asses performance. It may be that the value of sales is essential to you and that you need to achieve a certain level of sales to ensure that overhead costs are covered. In this case you may simply monitor the pound value of sales. You may though extend this so that you monitor the number of customers, the number of sales, the quantity purchased and the value of each item as success may be a measure of these items. It may be that you need to understand the break-even point within the business so that you are comfortable that when you reach a sales value you will have covered your overheads and that you may need to monitor the margin you make on each sale. A good cash flow forecast is also likely to be important so that you can plot actual cash flows, both in and out, against your plans and expectations. At the same time as planning and preparing and reviewing forecasts it is also important that internal book keeping and financial systems are robust enough to provide good and accurate information. Not only will this be important for you to review but it may also be required by third parties such as banks etc. It should also be possible to create systems to monitor actual performance against budgets and plans at the same time to.