Ask your business how it did

The figures have been in here the whole time. Margin by kind of work, a job’s estimate against its actual, what labor ran over by — all of it computed, all of it a report somebody has to know exists, open, and set a date range on. Most people running one van do none of that, which is why the number they act on comes from a bank balance.

So now you can ask. What did I make last quarter? What moved it? Why did the Henderson job come in under? The assistant answers from the same reports you could have opened, and says which period it used before it gives you a figure — a question read as the wrong three months gets you numbers that are all correct, about a quarter you did not ask about.

Ask something that needs two answers and it runs both. How did last quarter go, and what moved? is two questions; the new Evaluate tab takes it as one, runs the readings it needs, and writes a short paragraph over them. Under the paragraph it shows you what it read — each reading named, every row still linking to the report it came from — so you can check it rather than trust it.

Every figure in that paragraph is your report’s own, and that is enforced rather than promised. Before you see it, each number in the summary is checked back against the readings it is about. One that does not appear there means the paragraph is not shown at all — you get the figures with a line saying the summary is what went missing. The figures are worked out before anything is written, so they are never the part that is lost.

And the month now arrives on its own. Switch on Monthly Business Summary under Profile → Notifications and on the first of the month you get what you made, what moved it, and a short summary over those figures. It is a draft for you: nothing in it goes to a client, there is nothing in the product that forwards it, and you can switch it off without touching My Day or My Week. A month your reports found nothing in gets no email — a digest that arrives every month saying nothing is one people stop opening.

Two things it will not do. It never produces a figure of its own — every number came from a report you could have opened yourself. And it never proposes a change, to a rate, a template or a job; it says what the records show, and a summary that told you what to do instead is refused before it reaches you.

Asking needs Professional and spends the same monthly AI allowance as drafting a proposal — the balance is shown before you use it. The figures themselves cost nothing: they run on our own systems. What you pay for is working out which question you asked, and writing the paragraph.