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What the numbers say
Two QuickBooks exports, a cash position in five lines, and the calls that get you paid this week.
Two exports, five lines
Nadia has a bookkeeper two days a week and a QuickBooks file she opens about as often. You do not need a dashboard. You need to know, on a Wednesday, whether the money coming in covers what leaves on the 15th. That takes two reports out of QuickBooks Online: the profit and loss for last month, and the aged receivables detail as of today. Run both, export both to Excel, upload both.
The answer you want back is five lines long. Cash in. Cash out. What you are owed. What you owe. And what is left if every customer over sixty days pays nothing this month. That last line is the one that changes behaviour, because it is the only one that assumes the thing that actually happens.
Five lines is a choice, not a limit. An owner who asks for a summary gets two pages and reads none of it. An owner who asks for five named lines reads all five, on a phone, standing in the warehouse, and knows by the end of them whether this is a normal week or a week where the equipment order waits.
Who to call this week
Aged receivables sorted oldest first is a call list, not a report. The useful column is not the amount, it is whether the customer has ordered again since the invoice went out. A customer who is late and still buying can pay. A customer who is late and has gone quiet is a different conversation and it happens sooner.
Try this
[upload the QuickBooks profit and loss and the aged receivables detail] Give me five lines and nothing else: cash in, cash out, what we are owed, what we owe, and what is left if everyone over sixty days pays nothing. Then separately, name the one number in these files you would want me to explain, and say why it caught your eye.
From the aged receivables, list every customer over thirty days with the amount, the days outstanding and the last invoice date, oldest first. Mark which of them have placed an order since that invoice. For the top five, draft a four-sentence note that asks for a payment date, not for payment.
Compare last month's profit and loss to the same month a year ago, not to last month. Show me the three expense lines that moved the most in dollars, not in percent. For each one, say what would explain it in a distribution business this size, and what I should check in QuickBooks before I believe it.