The CFO Weekly Metrics Pack: 12 Numbers, Zero Analysts
A copy-paste playbook for the 12 metrics every finance leader should see weekly — with the exact plain-English questions to generate each one, no analyst required.
Most finance leaders fly with either too little instrumentation (a month-old board deck) or too much (a 60-tab workbook nobody reconciles). This playbook is the middle path: 12 metrics, reviewed weekly, generated automatically.
Each metric below includes the exact plain-English question you’d ask in Datalytics to produce it. Adapt the wording to your own stack — the point is that none of these require SQL or an analyst.
Cash & runway (the non-negotiables)
1. Cash position — every account, one number, with week-over-week delta.
“Total cash across all bank accounts, this week vs last week”
2. Net burn (3-month average) — single-month burn lies; smooth it.
“Average monthly net burn over the last 3 months”
3. Runway — cash ÷ smoothed burn. Watch the trend: runway shrinking faster than time passes means burn is accelerating.
“Months of runway at current 3-month average burn”
Revenue quality
4. MRR / ARR with movement breakdown — the headline matters less than the mix beneath it.
“MRR this month broken down by new, expansion, contraction, and churn”
5. Net revenue retention — the single best health indicator of a SaaS base. Above 100%, the business grows even with zero new logos.
“Net revenue retention for the last 12 months”
6. Gross margin — especially if you carry usage-based infrastructure costs that scale with customers.
“Gross margin by month for the last 6 months”
Every question on this page is a real query you can run on your own data.
Collections & obligations
7. AR aging — revenue you billed but don’t have. Watch the 60+ bucket like a hawk.
“Accounts receivable grouped by aging bucket: 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 90+ days”
8. DSO (days sales outstanding) — rising DSO predicts cash crunches months before they land.
“Average days from invoice to payment, trailing 90 days”
9. Upcoming obligations (4 weeks) — payroll, large vendor payments, debt service. No surprises.
“All payments due in the next 28 days over $10,000”
Efficiency
10. CAC payback — months of gross profit to recover acquisition cost. Under 12 is strong; over 24 means growth burns cash.
“CAC payback period by quarter for the last year”
11. Burn multiple — net burn ÷ net new ARR. The capital-efficiency number your next investor will compute anyway; know it first.
“Net burn divided by net new ARR, by quarter”
12. Revenue per employee — crude but honest, and board decks love it.
“Revenue per full-time employee, trailing 12 months”
Make it automatic or it won’t survive
The pack only works if it costs you zero willpower:
- Connect sources once — accounting system, billing/Stripe, bank feeds, CRM.
- Pin the 12 answers to one dashboard — this is the whole dashboard. Resist additions; every extra tile dilutes the twelve.
- Schedule a Monday 7am digest — the pack arrives in your inbox or Slack before your first meeting.
- Set deviation alerts on the big four — cash, burn, MRR movement, DSO. “Alert me if DSO rises more than 15% above its 90-day average” is a complete alert configuration in plain English.
The Monday ritual (15 minutes)
Scan the digest for anything red, ask one follow-up question per anomaly (“which three customers drive the AR 90+ bucket?”), and forward one insight to the exec team. That’s it — instrumentation that fits inside a coffee.
A version of this pack used to be a week of analyst time per month. Now it’s a connect-and-ask afternoon. Start with the free plan and build metric #1 today.
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