Five Numbers to Review Each Week
Revenue can rise while cash tightens, work runs late or customers wait longer. A weekly review should show where to ask a useful question, not produce a report full of numbers nobody acts on. Five is a workable starting limit for some owners; the right number and measures depend on the business.
Start with decisions, then choose measures
Write down the decisions you make each week: whether to follow up on enquiries, call a customer about payment, change a schedule, fix a recurring fault or protect time for overdue work. Select one measure for each decision. A measure is useful when the person responsible can define it, obtain it consistently and name a sensible next question when it changes.
The Australian government’s guidance on measurable business goals asks where the information will come from and how progress will be known. Its digital-performance guidance shows how to match a measure to a business goal. The scorecard below is an illustrative editorial design, not a government-prescribed set of five.
An example weekly scorecard
| Measure | Exact definition for this trial | Owner and source |
|---|---|---|
| New qualified enquiries | Distinct enquiries received this week that fit the service offered; count once per customer request | Front desk, enquiry log |
| Jobs completed | Jobs marked finished and ready for the customer during the week | Operations lead, job list |
| Overdue customer commitments | Open jobs past the date actually promised to the customer at Friday close | Operations lead, job list |
| Cash due soon | Unpaid customer invoices due in the next fourteen days, shown as amount and count | Owner, invoice register |
| Repeat quality issues | Jobs reopened this week because the same fault needed correction | Service lead, job notes |
Pick a period that fits the workflow. A business with long projects may need a monthly comparison; a busy counter service may want a daily operational check. “Cash due soon” is a visibility measure, not cash already in the bank. Compare sales and cash separately and ask an accountant for help when financial definitions or forecasts become material.
A fifteen-minute review
- Record the five values using the same definitions and cutoff every week.
- Compare each with a recent comparable week, and note holidays or unusually large jobs.
- Choose the one change most relevant to a decision the team can make.
- Inspect two or three underlying cases before deciding why the number moved.
- Assign one action, an owner and a date to look again.
For an illustrative four-person repair business, assume last week had fourteen qualified enquiries, eleven completed jobs, four overdue commitments, eight invoices due within fourteen days and two reopened jobs. The preceding comparable week had twelve enquiries, twelve completions, one overdue commitment, seven upcoming invoices and one reopened job. The owner would inspect the four overdue jobs before increasing marketing activity. Perhaps two waited for parts and two had missing handoff details. Those assumed numbers suggest where to investigate; they do not prove why the shift happened.
Avoid measures that only look impressive
Website visits, social followers or gross enquiries can matter for a specific goal, but they are poor substitutes for actual customer demand or delivered work if nobody knows how they relate. Raw counts also mislead when volume changes. A rising number of complaints may reflect easier reporting; a falling number may reflect silence. Pair the number with a few real examples and ask whether staff can influence it responsibly.
Keep the definitions, source and owner beside the scorecard. If someone changes how a number is counted, mark the change rather than drawing an uninterrupted trend. Do not use a weekly indicator as a replacement for proper financial statements, cash forecasting or professional advice. For the protection side of this topic, see A Basic Cybersecurity Routine for a Small Business.
Give each number a useful denominator
Twenty overdue jobs mean something different in a business handling thirty jobs a week and one handling three hundred. If volume changes substantially, pair a count with a share, such as overdue commitments divided by all open commitments at the same cutoff. Record both numbers so an improvement in the percentage cannot hide a growing absolute backlog. For rare events, a weekly count may move between zero and one at random; look over a longer period.
Make the scorecard easy to reproduce. Keep the definition, source and extraction time in a short note. For example: “Friday at closing, count open jobs whose customer-promised date has passed; exclude jobs whose new date the customer has explicitly agreed to.” Have the same owner check that rule each week. If another person cannot reproduce the number, improve the definition before making a major decision from it.
Use the review to learn, not to rank people
A measure can create unwanted behavior if staff feel pressured to make the number look good. Counting completed jobs may encourage premature closure; counting complaints may encourage staff not to record them. Ask how a number could be gamed or misunderstood, and verify a small sample against actual customer work. Explain to the team which decision the number supports and invite them to point out exceptions.
A weekly meeting should finish with a visible action: who will call customers waiting for parts, who will inspect the reopened jobs, or who will check invoices due soon. Next week, review whether the action was taken before debating whether the number improved. If the business has too little data for a meaningful comparison, collect cases and qualitative observations for longer instead of forcing a precise target.
Know when to change the five
Review the selection after several weeks. Remove a measure that nobody uses to make a decision; add one when a new bottleneck appears. A seasonal business might track upcoming capacity before its peak, while a business with long projects might track work in progress. Keep a brief record of why a measure was replaced, so a change in definitions is not mistaken for a change in performance. For tax, accounting and cash planning decisions, use proper records and a qualified adviser where appropriate; the weekly scorecard is an operating prompt.
Keep a dated note of what was changed and what the next review found. That small record helps distinguish a real improvement from an unusual week and gives another person enough context to continue the trial.
Next step: Pick one weekly decision and define the number that would make it easier. Record it for two comparable weeks before expanding to a full scorecard.
