Three numbers every founder should check daily

You don't need a finance degree to run a tight ship. Three numbers, checked every morning, will tell you 80% of what you need to know about the health of your startup.

You don't need a finance degree

As a founder you're drowning in numbers, but most of them don't matter day to day. You don't need a finance background to stay in control. Three figures, checked briefly every morning, tell you most of what you need to know about the health of your startup. Here's which, and why.

1. Cash in the bank versus last week

The most basic and the most important: how much money is there, and how does that compare to last week? This single movement sums up what's happening in your business: customers paying, costs going out, a big invoice landing. If you see an unexpected drop, you want to know why right away, not at the next close.

2. New MRR versus churned MRR

For a SaaS or subscription model, this is your growth engine. How much recurring revenue was added, and how much left (churn)? Are you growing net, or is it leaking out the back door? Two companies with the same revenue can tell a completely different story once you look at these two flows.

3. Runway at your current burn

The number that puts everything in perspective: how many months can you keep going if nothing changes? Runway is your liquid funds divided by your net burn per month. As long as you know it, you can decide in time about costs, growth or funding. If you don't, you make those decisions too late.

The 10% rule: when to step in

You don't have to analyse every fluctuation. A simple rule of thumb works: if any of the three numbers moves more than 10% week over week without you knowing why, that's your signal to dig in. Adjusting small and early is always easier than fixing a problem that has already reached board level.

Why daily, not quarterly

These three numbers are only useful if they're current. Last quarter's figures tell you what happened, not what's going on now. That's why this only works with bookkeeping that's updated daily: then the morning check is a matter of seconds.

How to make it easy

At De Startup Accountant these figures sit in your dashboard in real time. You don't have to calculate or export anything; you open the screen and the three numbers are there, current every morning. That turns steering on your numbers into a habit rather than a chore.

How to calculate the three

The definitions are simpler than the jargon suggests. Your cash position is what sits in your business accounts, without adjustments. Your net burn is what goes out in a month minus what comes in, so not just your costs. And your runway is your cash position divided by your average net burn.

Calculate that burn over three months rather than the last one. An annual insurance invoice or a quarterly VAT payment turns a normal month into an outlier, and drawing conclusions from an outlier is how you get it wrong.

• Cash position: the balance in your business accounts, today.
• Net burn: spending minus income in a month, averaged over the last three.
• Runway: cash position divided by that average net burn, in months.

A worked example

Say you have 240,000 euros in the bank. Over the last three months net outflow was 52,000, 34,000 and 42,000 euros, so 42,667 on average. Your runway is then roughly 5.6 months. Looking only at the last month you would have said 5.7, and at the first one 4.6. That difference of more than a month is exactly why you take the average. The numbers here are fictional.

What the example also shows: runway is not a fixed number but the result of two things that both move. A customer paying late changes your cash position, and a new hire changes your burn. So the question is not what your runway was at the last report, but what it is today.

What these three do not tell you

They say nothing about the quality of your revenue. You can have a healthy runway and a margin too thin to ever turn profitable, or a receivable that is effectively uncollectable. For those questions you look at gross margin and outstanding items, and those belong in your monthly view rather than your daily one.

They also say nothing about seasonality. A SaaS business that invoices most annual contracts in January has a distorted cash position in February. Know that about your own company and you read your own figures better than any dashboard can.

When to look at them

• Cash position: daily, in the two minutes it takes to open your dashboard.
• Burn and runway: monthly, and before any decision that structurally costs money.
• Before an investor conversation: all three, plus the explanation of where the movement came from.

In short

• Check three things daily: cash versus last week, new versus churned MRR, and your runway.
• If one moves more than 10% without a clear reason, dig in.
• It only works with daily-current bookkeeping.
• Real-time in a dashboard makes it a habit of seconds.