5 financial metrics every SMB owner should check every month

Net profit for the month is the number everyone looks at first — and probably the one least likely to warn you of trouble ahead. A company can close the month "in the green" on the income statement and still run out of cash eighty days later. These five metrics are the ones that actually show where the business is headed.

1. Runway (months of cash)

How long your company can operate with the cash on hand, at the current burn rate, if revenue stopped today. This isn't just a startup-fundraising metric — any SMB should know its runway, especially if it has seasonality or depends on a handful of large clients.

2. Cash conversion cycle

The sum of your days of inventory and days of accounts receivable, minus your days of accounts payable. It's the number that explains why a "profitable on paper" company can run into serious cash problems: if you pay suppliers in 30 days but customers pay you in 90, every peso of revenue growth demands more cash, not less.

3. Contribution margin (not just gross margin)

Accounting gross margin is useful, but contribution margin — revenue minus truly variable costs — is what tells you whether each additional unit you sell adds to or subtracts from the business. It's key before making pricing decisions, volume discounts, or deciding which product line is actually worth scaling.

4. Customer concentration

What percentage of your revenue depends on your three largest clients. It's an uncomfortable number to calculate, which is exactly why many SMBs don't have it on hand — but it's precisely the kind of risk an investor or a bank will ask about, and the kind of risk that can bring down a profitable company if one large client walks away.

5. Overdue receivables (past 60 and past 90 days)

Not just how much customers owe you, but how much of that has already passed the point where the odds of collecting drop sharply. In Colombia this also intersects with the withholding and VAT calendar: if you invoiced and the tax was triggered but the client hasn't paid yet, the cash outflow to the tax authority (DIAN) can land before the client's cash inflow does. Reviewing overdue receivables alongside the tax calendar avoids nasty surprises — and it's the kind of local detail that matters wherever you operate in the region, since the specific rules change country to country but the risk is the same.

Net profit tells you whether your business works. These five metrics tell you whether you'll be able to make payroll in ninety days.

How we do this at Fluxen

In a FluxScan (our financial diagnostic) we calculate these five metrics as a starting point — along with the risk map specific to your operation — so the conversation doesn't start with "how did this month go" but with "where are we headed over the next ninety days."