What Monthly Management Accounts Don't Show (2026)
German monthly management accounts, the BWA, show how the closed month went in the earnings dimension. What they structurally do not show: the balance sheet, liquidity and its development, results by business segment, and anything at all about the future. The widely used standard version (DATEV form 01) is a pure profit and loss statement whose reliability additionally depends on whether accruals were booked during the year and whether changes in inventory were captured. Steering a company from the BWA alone therefore means steering by a rear-view mirror that is also missing parts of the picture.
This is not a criticism of the instrument. The BWA does exactly what it was built for: a fast, standardised monthly earnings overview drawn from ongoing bookkeeping. It becomes a problem only when it is management’s sole basis of figures, which in smaller mid-sized companies it frequently is.
The structural blind spots
| What is missing | Why | Practical consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Balance sheet | The standard BWA is an earnings statement | Capital tied up in inventory and receivables stays invisible |
| Liquidity and its development | Loans, overdraft and equity development are not part of form 01 | Earnings and solvency get conflated |
| Segment results | No profit-centre or business-unit view | Unprofitable areas hide inside the total |
| The future | The BWA is by definition the past | No basis for banks, shareholders or decisions |
DATEV offers dedicated formats for some of this, such as the cash flow statement as BWA 51, and its controlling report combines the standard BWA with a cash flow statement. But the tax advisory firm has to set those up; they do not arrive automatically with the monthly BWA.
Why the figures themselves can wobble
Beyond what is missing, there is the question of accuracy. Two effects regularly limit the reliability of monthly accounts:
Missing accruals. A dependable monthly statement requires accruals to be booked during the year, even though German commercial law only mandates them at year end. Where that does not happen, expenses land in the month of payment rather than the month they were caused: the annual insurance premium hits January, the Christmas bonus hits December. Monthly earnings then fluctuate for bookkeeping reasons rather than economic ones.
Unrecorded inventory movements. Where material changes in inventory are not accounted for, the reliability of the BWA drops considerably. In a company with make-to-stock production or long-running projects, the effect can dominate the monthly result: goods produced but not sold appear as cost with no matching revenue.
The BWA is therefore only ever as good as the bookkeeping beneath it. For steering, a practical rule follows: monthly figures for the trend, quarterly accrued figures for decisions.
What the BWA does well
For balance, because the alternative is not to abandon it:
- It is fast, usually available within days of month end.
- It is standardised, and therefore comparable over time and against industry benchmarks.
- It is free in the sense that it arises as a by-product of bookkeeping that happens anyway.
- It shows cost structure and gross profit reliably, provided accruals were booked.
That makes the BWA an ideal starting point and an unsuitable end point.
From hindsight to forecast
Moving from the BWA to a basis for steering takes three additions, not a system change:
- Account-level data instead of an aggregated report. For a planning model, the trial balance is a better source than the BWA, because it is account-level and can be structured freely. How to build a model from it is covered in simulation on DATEV data.
- Add the balance sheet and cash flow. Only linking earnings, balance sheet and liquidity answers the solvency question. That is the subject of integrated financial planning, and its balance sheet half is covered in balance sheet planning.
- Roll the actuals forward. Closed months plus an expectation for the remaining ones produce a year-end forecast. “How was May?” becomes “where does the year land?”, which is the question banks and shareholders actually ask.
The key observation: all three steps build on data that is produced monthly anyway. This is not about additional data capture but about a calculation layer over existing numbers.
What the data says
This situation is not the exception. According to the BARC Planning Survey, the largest global user survey on corporate planning, 90 percent of companies say they plan with Excel, around 40 percent use driver-based approaches, and only about one in five has a fully integrated planning model. In smaller companies without a controlling function the gap is wider still: there, the monthly accounts are often not the starting point of steering but its entire extent.
Outlook
The BWA is not going away; it is becoming better connected. The relevant progress is not a better report but the fact that a forward view can now be produced from the same bookkeeping data at acceptable effort. For companies without a controlling department, that shifts the role of the monthly report from being the answer to being an input. The question stays the same in the end, only its direction turns: from “what happened?” to “what follows from it?”.
Frequently asked questions
Why don’t monthly accounts show my liquidity?
Because the standard BWA is an earnings statement, not a cash statement. It records revenue and expenses when they are incurred rather than when they are paid, and it contains neither loan movements nor the development of the overdraft facility. A liquidity view requires a cash flow statement, in DATEV for instance as BWA 51, or a dedicated liquidity plan.
Why do my monthly accounts differ from the annual financial statements?
Routinely because of the accruals and valuations that are only fully booked at year end: provisions, inventory valuation, depreciation at final useful lives, holiday accruals. Some deviation is normal; a large deviation indicates too little accrual accounting during the year.
Are monthly accounts enough for a bank meeting?
As evidence of the current position they are part of the expected documents, but never sufficient on their own. Banks additionally expect annual accounts and a forward view across the financing term, see preparing for a bank meeting.
Which BWA format is the right one?
The standard BWA (form 01) works regardless of company size and industry, which is why it is the most widespread. Anyone wanting to see liquidity or business segments needs supplementary formats or a controlling report. It is worth settling this with the tax advisory firm rather than treating the standard format as given.
How often should an accrued version be produced?
For small and mid-sized businesses it is common to work monthly with the simple report and produce the accrued, corrected version once a quarter. For decisions that tie up capital, the accrued version should always be the basis.