The five numbers an owner should see every week

Most business owners look either too much or too little. Too little means once a year, when the accountant comes by. Too much means a dashboard with forty numbers that you stop opening after two weeks.

The middle ground is five. Weekly. Below is which five, with the reason next to each one, because without that reason it is just somebody's list.

One: absence

Why first? Because it is the cost that gets underestimated the most and the one that tells you something earliest.

Absence is one of the few numbers that runs ahead of the rest. A department where absence is rising usually already has a problem before you see it back in your revenue or your quality. Planning that does not hold, pressure that is too high, or management that is not working.

Measure it split out: short against long, and per department. A global percentage is too coarse to act on.

And convert it into euros once, including the revenue that does not get realized and the service that suffers because of it. After that you look at it differently.

Two: cash flow

Because profit on paper does not get you through a month.

This is the number that businesses which are profitable fall over. A good order book with customers who pay slowly, inventory that gets paid for too early, an investment that landed just wrong.

What you want to see weekly: what came in, what went out, what is outstanding and how old it is. Not your bank balance, because that is the result and not the movement.

The outstanding balance with its age next to it is, for a lot of SMEs, the most underused number there is. Invoices only get chased when somebody happens to look, and that is usually too late.

Three: gross margin

Because that is the number you can really turn.

Your revenue depends on the market, on your competitors, on the weather. Your fixed costs are largely fixed. Your margin is where you make choices: what you buy, at what price, what you mark down and when.

Look at it in percentage and in absolute euros. That is not a detail, because those two can move in opposite directions. A higher percentage at lower volume produces less gross profit, and that is exactly the trap caution pushes you into.

Split out your markdowns separately as well, so you can see whether a low margin came from your purchasing or from your discounts. Those are two different problems.

Four: revenue against your target

Because a revenue figure with no target next to it says nothing.

A hundred thousand euros in a week is good or bad, and without a reference you do not know which. The same week last year is a reference. Your budget is a reference. Having both is best.

Two things to watch. Correct for calendar effects, because a week with a public holiday is not a bad week. And look at the cumulative position, not only at the week itself, because a week is too short to see a trend and too long to ignore.

Five: footfall

Because without it you never know whether a bad week was down to you or to the street.

This is the number that is missing most often, and it is the only one on this list that does not come from your accounting or your ERP. It has to be measured separately, with a counter, with center figures, or failing that with the number of transactions per hour as an approximation.

Without footfall you cannot take a drop in revenue apart. Did fewer people come in? Did the same number come and fewer of them buy? Did they buy but less per visit? Three different problems, three different solutions, and you pick the wrong one if you guess.

For anyone not in retail: the equivalent is the number of inquiries, quotes or leads. The principle is the same. You want to know the inflow, not only the outcome.

What is deliberately not on the list

Profit. Not because it is unimportant, but because you cannot calculate it reliably on a weekly basis anyway and the estimate confuses you more than it helps. Profit is a monthly or quarterly number.

Inventory value. Important, but it moves too slowly for a weekly look.

And anything to do with individual performance. That belongs in a conversation, not on a weekly screen.

How you do it in practice

One screen, five numbers, each with its comparison next to it. Fixed day, fixed time, ten minutes.

Put signals on whatever you do not want to check every week. A deviation above a threshold sends a message. Then you do not have to look in order to know that something is up.

And write those five definitions down on paper, with a date. If someone disputes a number a year from now, you want to be able to fall back on what was agreed.

The claim

Five numbers you look at every week are worth more than forty you never open. The art is not measuring more, it is deciding what you do not measure.