Importance The erosion of the purchasing power of the population and aggressive expansion of large retailers disadvantage trading enterprises of small and micro-businesses. Hence, businessmen should have tools and methods to analyze their revenues and profits that will accurately and quickly identify the effective and ineffective lines of business, and to take timely management decisions to maintain the business and increase return on investment. Objectives The study aims to identify the needs of Russian trading micro-businesses in the sphere of information on revenue and profit, to develop a set of methods to analyze their financial results, to identify the most important and understandable tools of the analysis, and to specify options for management decisions based on the analysis results. Methods The article presents methods and tools to group and analyze the economic information on financial results of small businesses in trade. I provide recommendations on improving the efficiency of the analysis, and present a case study of the most typical situations arising in the operations of small businesses. Results I focus on the specifics of management reporting and analysis by entrepreneurs developing small business in the trade sector. The article presents analytical procedures, indicates the most relevant ways of grouping the data subject to analysis, and the options of management decisions based on the analysis results. Conclusions and Relevance Entrepreneurs of trading micro-enterprises should pay more attention to the analysis of financial results; conduct it timely and accurately, using the methods and tools proposed in this paper.
Ginzburg A.I. Ekonomicheskii analiz dlya rukovoditelei malykh predpriyatii [Economic analysis for managers of small enterprises]. St. Petersburg, Piter Publ., 2007, 224 p.
Endovitskii D.A., Rakhmatulina R.R. Maloe predpriyatie. 5 v 1 [Small enterprise. 5 in 1]. Moscow, Eksmo Publ., 2010, 420 p.
Shokhnekh A.V. Kontseptsiya kompleksnogo ekonomicheskogo analiza v malom biznese [The concept of integrated economic analysis in small business]. Audit i finansovyi analiz = Audit and Financial Analysis, 2008, no. 1, pp. 20–26.
