Why this one matters If there's a single number that lets you sleep at night, it's this one. Cash runway answers the question every founder is quietly carrying around: "How long do I actually have?" Profit on paper doesn't pay your bills — cash does. You can be "profitable" and still run out of money because a big client pays late or you stocked up on inventory. Runway cuts through all of that. It tells you, in plain months, how much time you've got at your current pace of spending. Once you know it, you can make calmer, faster decisions: - 12+ months? You have room to invest — a hire, a marketing push, better equipment. - 6–12 months? Steady as you go. Keep an eye on it and grow deliberately. - Under 6 months? Not a crisis, but it's your cue to act early — chase overdue invoices, trim non-essential spend, or line up a plan. Founders who watch this number make their moves from a position of calm, not panic. The whole point of clean books is being able to open them and make a decision in minutes. This is that number. The simple math Cash Runway (in months) = Cash you have right now ÷ Average monthly net burn Where net burn = how much more cash goes out than comes in in a typical month. Quick example: You have $60,000 in the bank. Over the last 3 months you spent about $10,000 more than you brought in each month. That's $60,000 ÷ $10,000 = 6 months of runway. (One happy note: if you're bringing in more cash than you spend, you don't have a burn rate to worry about — you're building a cushion. In that case runway is effectively "as long as this keeps up," and you can skip straight to deciding how to put that surplus to work.) How to pull it — step by step You need two things: cash on hand and average monthly net burn. Here's exactly where to click. If you use QuickBooks Online Step 1 — Get your cash on hand. 1. In the left menu, go to Reports. 2. Search for and open Balance Sheet. 3. Set the date to today. 4. Look at the Bank Accounts total near the top of the Assets section. That's your cash on hand. Write it down.

That's like checking your gas gauge and calling it a road trip plan. Your bank balance tells you what's there today. It says nothing about what's coming in, what's going out, or how long you've got before things get tight. So I built you something. Paste in your trial balance and it spits out the 5 numbers that actually run your business: - Cash on hand - Revenue - Profit - Money owed TO you - Money you OWE Plus your runway in months and a plain-English verdict telling you if you're fine or need to act. No formulas to write. No accounting degree required. Tag your account types from a dropdown and it does the rest. Grab it below as an excel file or get the googlesheet version here. Run your real numbers through it this week and drop your verdict in the comments — I want to see who's flying green and who just found out they're closer to the edge than they thought. Your books should answer questions, not create them. If you need help setting it up so it works with your trial balance, just let me know and they will be happy to help.

This is the question I see founders ask online more than any other. Some version of: "My P&L says I made money this quarter. My bank balance says I'm broke. What am I missing?" You're not missing anything. Profit and cash are two different things, and nobody told you. Profit is a story your books tell about a period of time. Cash is what's actually in the account today. They drift apart for boring, fixable reasons: a client invoiced but hasn't paid yet, inventory you bought with real money that's sitting on a shelf, a tax bill quietly accruing, or you hired ahead of the revenue that hire was supposed to bring in. Here's the move. Stop looking only at your P&L. Once a week, look at two numbers side by side: what your books say you earned, and what's actually in the bank. When they don't match, ask why — and the answer is almost always one of those four. That gap isn't a sign you're failing. It's a sign you're reading the wrong page. Profitable founders go under all the time because they confused the story with the bank balance. Which number do you check first — profit or cash? And be honest about whether you trust it. 👇

Your number this week: gross profit margin. It tells you what's actually left after the cost of delivering your product or service — before all your overhead. Pull it: (Revenue − Cost of Goods Sold) ÷ Revenue. Most accounting software shows COGS right on your P&L. So what's healthy? For a professional services firm, you're generally aiming for a gross margin in the 50–70% range. Under 50% usually means you're underpricing or your delivery team is too expensive for what you're charging. Above 70% is strong — common in lean, high-leverage firms. Pull yours this week and see where you land. If you're not sure how to read the result, DM me.

If you're here, you've probably felt it: that knot when someone asks "how's the business doing?" and the honest answer is I'm not sure. Maybe the books are messy. Maybe they're clean but you still can't tell what they're telling you. Either way — you're flying blind, and you're tired of it. That stops here. This community has one job: get you to the point where you can open your books and make a real decision in minutes. Pricing, hiring, runway, whether you can actually afford that thing — answered from your own numbers, in plain English. Two quick asks to kick things off: Introduce yourself. Drop your business, how long you've been running it, and the one money question that keeps you up at night. Post your wins here. First clean month-end? First confident decision from your numbers? We celebrate those loudly. What we love here: questions, real numbers, helping each other out. What we don't do: spam, self-promotion, or "I'll deal with my books later." So — what's the one financial question you wish you could answer right now? Tell me below. 👇