Make your numbers make sense.

A bank, a landlord, or a seller asks for a pro forma and most owners start from a blank spreadsheet. Start from your last twelve months instead, add the one change you're asking about, and check the number the lender will check first.

Moving a supplier from net 15 to net 45 is an interest-free loan you can arrange in one email. Here's what those thirty days are actually worth, when an early-payment discount beats holding the cash, and how to ask without damaging the relationship.

Adding a salary raises the sales floor you have to clear before you make a penny - and by more than the salary, because you only keep the contribution margin on each sale. Here's the number to run before you make the offer.

Losing customers shows up in your growth rate months after it shows up in your bank account. Here's why churn is the most expensive number in a subscription or repeat-purchase business, and the ceiling it quietly sets on how big you can get.

If four months carry your year, annual averages will mislead you about every decision you make in the other eight. Here's how to plan, staff, and hold cash when the calendar is lumpy - and how to tell a bad month from a normal one.

Four times a year a large payment leaves your account and it appears on no budget, no P&L line, and no forecast. Here's why the tax bill catches profitable businesses off guard, and the simple mechanism that stops it.

Inventory is cash you've already spent and can't use yet. Turns tell you how fast it comes back - and the gap between your best and worst SKUs is usually where a working-capital problem is hiding.

A quarter is long enough for a trend to be real and short enough to still do something about it. Here are the six things worth looking at when a quarter closes, and the one question that turns the review into a decision.

Loan applications rarely fail on the pitch. They fail on four ratios the bank computes in about ten minutes from statements you already have - and every one of them can be improved in the quarter before you apply.