7 AskBiz guides on small business finance, covering Weekly Reporting, Yearly Operations, Monthly Operations and related operating decisions for SME founders.
Looking at today's bank balance and thinking "we're fine" is dangerous. Payroll goes out Thursday (£12,000). Two large supplier payments due Friday (£8,500). Your bank balance today is £16,400. You don't have enough. You find out Thursday morning. AskBiz shows you this on Monday so you can arrange a short-term facility — not panic on Thursday.
7 min readRevenue growth and net profit tell you what happened last year. They don't tell you if the business is healthy enough to survive the next. The 7 financial health indicators — current ratio, debtor days, inventory turnover, gross margin trend, labour cost %, customer concentration, and cash conversion cycle — do. AskBiz tracks all seven.
8 min readA retail business with £80,000 in monthly supplier invoices pays everything within 7 days (worried about late fees). But most suppliers offer net-30 terms. By paying 23 days early on average, the business is voluntarily giving up 23 days of working capital — the equivalent of running a £61,000 interest-free overdraft for their suppliers.
7 min readA business with 38% gross margin loses 0.5% per month to cost inflation (supplier price increases, higher wages, increased shipping). After 12 months: 32% gross margin. On £500,000 revenue, that's £30,000 less gross profit per year — nearly undetectable month-by-month. AskBiz weekly margin tracking catches the trend in weeks, not months.
7 min readAn SMB spending £3,500/week on Meta Ads, Google Ads, and email marketing — generating £18,000 in weekly revenue — is at 19.4% marketing-to-revenue ratio. The question is: which £3,500 is working and which is wasted? Without weekly attribution, you keep spending the same mix. With it, you reallocate from the 6% ROI channels to the 380% ROI channels.
7 min readA quarterly business review should answer: Are we growing? Is growth profitable? Which parts of the business are dragging performance? What do we change next quarter? Most SMB quarterly reviews answer none of these — they list revenue, costs, and last quarter's budget variances. AskBiz turns quarterly data into the 5 decisions you need to make.
7 min readStock-outs are the most expensive retail problem — you lose a sale, potentially a customer, and can't recover the revenue. Most stock-outs are caused by supplier lead time drift that the buyer didn't notice. AskBiz tracks actual vs. expected lead time by supplier weekly, triggering reorder adjustments when lead times change.
6 min read