Which financial metrics belong on your Scorecard
A Scorecard should give an absolute pulse on the business. Here are the financial measurables worth tracking weekly — and the ones to skip.
The Scorecard is meant to be a handful of numbers that, week to week, tell you whether the business is healthy. Financial measurables belong there — but the wrong ones create noise, and numbers nobody trusts create doubt. The goal is a short list of leading, trustworthy financial signals.
Good financial measurables share three traits
- Leading, not just lagging. They hint at where things are going, not only where they've been.
- Weekly-meaningful. They move enough week to week to be worth watching at that cadence.
- Trustworthy. They come from a reliable process, so the team believes them.
Measurables worth considering
Depending on your business model, strong candidates include: cash position, weekly revenue or bookings, accounts receivable (especially aging), gross margin trend, and a forward cash figure such as projected balance in 13 weeks. The right set is specific to how your business makes and collects money.
What to keep off
Avoid lagging numbers that only update monthly, vanity metrics that always look fine, and anything the team quietly disputes. A measurable that provokes "well, that number's not really right" every week does more harm than good.
If a financial number on your Scorecard triggers a debate about whether it's accurate more than occasionally, the problem isn't the metric — it's the close underneath it. Fix that first.