A simple business dashboard for growing from £100k to £1m revenue

Executive overview

Without a dashboard, business owners are constantly anxious — unsure about sales, cash, and customer satisfaction. A single-page dashboard converts that noise into green, yellow, or red signals.

Seven metrics cover the essentials: urgent issues, client experience, churn, lead flow, cost per lead, cash at bank, and a 12-week cash forecast.

Knowing your numbers at a glance is what lets you switch off on weekends.

Red issues and client experience

• Red issues: urgent, important problems raised by the team — bad complaints, unexpected bills, advisor warnings
• Track progress on each open issue; the list exists to surface problems, not as a sign of failure
• Average experience score: send random 1–10 texts to clients across different touchpoints
• 9–10 = green; 7–8 = yellow (not raving fans yet); 6 and below = red, investigate immediately
• A portfolio average (e.g. 9.2) lets you spot drift before it becomes churn

Lead flow and acquisition cost

• LAPS: Leads → Appointments → Presentations → Sales — track each stage weekly
• A smooth, consistent flow through LAPS is the goal; gaps reveal where the pipeline breaks
• Cost per lead: divide weekly ad spend by leads generated (e.g. £1,000 / 100 leads = £10 CPL)
• Set an allowable CPL; monitor it so marketing spend doesn't quietly erode profit

Cash visibility

• Churn: percentage of clients who cancel; minimise it and diagnose the cause when it rises
• Cash at bank: a blunt, honest metric — watch whether it trends up or down each week
• Keep 1–3 months of run-rate expenses in reserve; below one month is a warning signal
• Expected cash in/out (12-week view): map known inflows (retainers, part-payments) against known outflows (subscriptions, payroll cycles)
• The forecast often looks negative because outflows are more predictable than new sales — that's normal; use it to quantify how many new sales you need