If you run a business and you can't tell me how it did last week within 60 seconds, you don't have a control system — you have hope. Most small-business owners track everything (Excel dashboards with 47 cells) and end up tracking nothing (none of those cells get read on Monday).
Five numbers. Five minutes. Every Monday morning. Below is the minimum dashboard set every SMB owner needs.
Section 1 of 6
1. Lead pipeline (the leading indicator)
New enquiries this week vs. last week vs. 4-week average. If this drops two weeks running, your next 90 days are going to hurt — leads convert with a lag, so a drop today is a revenue cliff next quarter.
- New leads this week — total count, broken down by source (Google / Meta / referral / direct).
- Lead-to-call rate — what % of leads got a human response within 24 hours?
- Pipeline value — sum of open quotes / proposals.
Section 2 of 6
2. Cash position (the survival indicator)
Bank balance + receivables due in 30 days minus payables due in 30 days. The number that tells you whether you can pay salaries next month without panic.
- Cash in bank today (across all accounts).
- Receivables due ≤30 days — money you'll collect.
- Payables due ≤30 days — money you'll owe.
- 30-day runway = (Cash + 30d receivables - 30d payables) / monthly burn.
Section 3 of 6
3. Delivery health (the broken-trust indicator)
Are you delivering what you sold, on time? Late deliveries kill referrals, generate refund requests, and quietly destroy your brand.
- Active projects / orders in flight — count.
- On-time-delivery rate (last 30 days) — % delivered by the promised date.
- Open complaints / open tickets — count, with average age.
- Net Promoter Score — if you ask for it (you should).
Section 4 of 6
4. Customer health (the future-revenue indicator)
Existing customers spend 5x more than new ones. If existing customers are leaking out, no amount of new acquisition saves you.
- Active customers (last 30 days) — anyone who's bought, booked, or engaged.
- Repeat-purchase rate — % of last quarter's customers who bought again this quarter.
- Churn signals — customers who haven't engaged in 60+ days but historically did monthly.
- Reviews collected this week — Google reviews matter for compounding inbound.
Section 5 of 6
5. Marketing efficiency (the scale-or-not indicator)
Money in vs money out per channel. If one channel produces ₹10 for every ₹1 spent and another loses money, you scale the first and kill the second — but only if you're measuring.
- Total ad spend this week (Meta + Google + others).
- CAC by channel — spend ÷ customers from that channel.
- ROAS by channel — revenue ÷ spend.
- Organic vs paid mix — % of new customers from each. Healthy SMBs have 60%+ organic by year 2.
Section 6 of 6
How to build this without spending a rupee
You don't need fancy software. A Google Sheet with the right cells, refreshed every Monday in 10 minutes, beats every BI tool you'll never look at. Even better: pin it as your browser's Monday-morning tab.
When you outgrow a sheet (usually 50+ customers or 5+ team members), graduate to a simple CRM or BI like HubSpot free / Notion / Metabase. Don't graduate before you actually use the sheet.
Five numbers. Every Monday. Ten minutes. The owners who do this run businesses; the ones who don't are run by their businesses. The numbers might be ugly the first time you look at them. They get better when you start steering by them.
Next step
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About the author
Written by Sundaravadivel.S for Valarvom. Operator-led digital growth advice for SMBs in India and other emerging markets. New articles every Tuesday and Thursday.