Business Pulse Score — Methodology

The Business Pulse score is a single 0–100 number summarising your business health. It is a weighted composite across five dimensions, each scored 0–100 independently. The composite is not a simple average — dimensions are weighted differently, and each dimension uses a normalised scoring model that accounts for your business type, sector, and historical baseline.

1. Revenue Health (25% weight)

Measures: revenue trend direction, consistency, and seasonality-adjusted growth rate.

Scoring model:

• Trend direction: positive trend = base score boost; negative trend = base score penalty
• Consistency: standard deviation of weekly revenue over 90 days (lower volatility = higher score)
• Seasonality adjustment: your revenue is compared against the same period last year, not simply against the previous period. A Christmas retailer with declining November revenue is not penalised if November is historically their slow month.
• Growth rate: compared against sector-specific benchmarks for your business type

2. Cash Flow Health (25% weight)

Measures: runway, burn rate, and receivables velocity. Requires accounting software (QuickBooks/Xero) for full scoring. Without it, this dimension is estimated from payment processing data.

Scoring model:

• Cash runway: days of operating expenses covered by current cash position
• AR aging: weighted average days outstanding for unpaid invoices
• Burn rate trend: is operating expenditure increasing or decreasing relative to revenue?

3. Customer Health (20% weight)

Measures: retention rate, churn risk distribution, and lifetime value trends.

Scoring model:

• Repeat purchase rate over 90 days
• Churn risk score distribution (proportion of customer base in each risk band)
• Average LTV trend (increasing, stable, or declining)

4. Operational Health (20% weight)

Measures: refund rate, fulfilment reliability, and supplier performance.

Scoring model:

• Refund rate as % of orders (benchmarked against sector average)
• Fulfilment speed consistency (standard deviation of delivery time)
• Supplier Scorecard average (if suppliers are tracked)

5. Market Signals (10% weight)

Measures: external signals relevant to your business — social commerce demand, export market conditions, FX risk exposure.

Scoring model:

• Social commerce demand signal strength in your product category
• FX risk exposure vs your revenue currency mix
• Export market health for your active markets

Each dimension is scored relative to your own historical baseline, not against other businesses. A business with £500k annual revenue is not compared against one with £5m — they are each measured against their own 90-day rolling baseline.

Sector benchmarks are applied as a secondary adjustment — if your refund rate is 8% but the sector average is 12%, your Operational Health score is boosted relative to what it would be without sector context.

Sector benchmarks are sourced from:

• Shopify's published commerce data (publicly available)
• Our own anonymised aggregate data across AskBiz users (no individual data is used — only aggregate distributions)
• Third-party industry reports (Statista, IBISWorld, Retail Economics)

• Free plan: Daily update at midnight UTC
• Growth plan: Every 6 hours
• Business plan: Real-time — score updates within 60 seconds of a data sync event

The score displayed always reflects the most recent calculation. Historical scores are stored and accessible for the previous 90 days (Growth) or 365 days (Business).

The Business Pulse model has known limitations we disclose openly:

• New businesses: The model requires at least 30 days of data for meaningful scoring. Scores in the first 30 days are marked as provisional.
• Highly seasonal businesses: The seasonality adjustment improves score accuracy but may lag for businesses with unusual seasonal profiles. Retailers launching in a new market may see temporarily low scores until the model builds a baseline.
• Single data source: Connecting only one source limits the model. A business with only Shopify connected will have an incomplete Cash Flow dimension. Connect accounting software for the most accurate score.
• B2B businesses: The Customer Health model is calibrated for B2C purchase frequency. B2B businesses with long contract cycles may see lower Customer Health scores than their actual business health warrants. Set your business type to B2B in Account Settings to apply B2B-calibrated thresholds.