Most month-end reviews start with the P&L and stop there. Net income matters, but it doesn’t tell you whether you can pay next month’s bills or whether a customer has quietly stopped paying. These ten numbers cover that in about fifteen minutes, and all of them come from reports you already have in QuickBooks Online.
1. Cash in the bank. The total of your bank accounts on the balance sheet as of today. Everything else on this list explains why this number moved.
2. Net cash flow for the month. Cash in minus cash out, from the Statement of Cash Flows. Profit and cash flow often disagree. A profitable month with negative cash flow usually means customers haven’t paid yet or you bought stock.
3. Runway. Cash ÷ average monthly burn over the last three months. If cash is growing, runway doesn’t apply. If it’s falling, this tells you how many months you have to fix it.
4. Revenue, and growth vs last month and last year. Month-on-month swings are normal in seasonal businesses. Comparing with the same month last year removes most of that noise.
5. Gross margin %. Gross profit ÷ revenue. If revenue went up but gross margin went down, you’re selling more and keeping less of each dollar.
6. Net margin %. Net income ÷ revenue. This is the one to watch as you add staff or software.
7. Money owed to you, and how much is overdue. The A/R Aging Summary total, and everything outside the Current column. A small overdue balance that sits in 61–90 days is worth a phone call this week.
8. DSO, days to get paid. Accounts receivable ÷ revenue for the period × days in the period. If your terms are 30 days and DSO is 45, customers are paying two weeks late on average. DSO and DPO explained →
9. Money you owe, and DPO. Your A/P aging and how many days you take to pay suppliers. Paying much faster than you get paid squeezes cash; paying much slower can strain supplier relationships.
10. Top customers’ share of revenue. If one customer is more than a quarter of your revenue, losing them would hurt. That’s worth knowing before you renegotiate anything.
You can pull all ten by hand: export the P&L, balance sheet, cash flow and both aging reports, then paste them into a workbook. Or let MorningSync keep a Metrics file in your SharePoint folder with every one of these worked out, next to the period before, updated daily. See the sample files or start a 14-day free trial.