Runway, burn and revenue trend for your business

Say you run a design studio in its own ledger and want to know how long your cash will last. Ask your AI for a founder dashboard on that ledger. One answer gives you cash on hand, monthly burn, runway, a month-by-month revenue trend and your top expenses. If your business doesn't have its own ledger yet, start with run several businesses in one account.

How to do it

1. Keep the business in its own ledger. Burn, revenue trend and top expenses come from one ledger, so mixing home and business spending muddies them. See workspaces and ledgers.
2. Ask for a founder dashboard and name the ledger. The dashboard always covers one ledger. If you don't name one, it uses the ledger your AI is working in. See choose which ledger your AI works in.
3. Say how far back to look. You can pick from 1 to 24 months. Without a period, it covers the last 6 months.
4. Ask follow-up questions for detail. For money in and out month by month, ask for a cash flow report. To see what's inside a category, ask for a spending breakdown. See get any report by asking your AI.

What you'll see

Your AI reports five things:

• Cash on hand: the balances of the ledger's checking, savings and cash accounts.
• Monthly burn: the money that went out of the ledger each month, plus the average.
• Runway: cash on hand divided by the average monthly burn, in months.
• Revenue trend: a figure for each month. Your AI may call it MRR.
• Top expense categories: up to five, ranked by money out.

For the first prompt, Studio's most recent month shows a burn of $379.99: $350 of Rent and $29.99 of Software. That month's revenue trend figure is $2,020.01, and Rent is the largest expense category.

For the second prompt, your AI divides Studio's own cash by Studio's average monthly burn. If the ledger's checking, savings and cash accounts are in more than one currency, cash comes back as one figure per currency and the dashboard gives no runway number.

The web app has no founder dashboard page. Ask your AI for it.

Good to know

• Everything comes from one ledger. Cash on hand, burn and runway all use the same ledger, so your personal accounts don't stretch the business's runway. To see cash across all your ledgers, ask for your account balances without naming a ledger. See see your accounts and balances.
• Burn is money out, not net. Burn counts only what left the ledger. Money coming in doesn't reduce it, so runway assumes no new income.
• The revenue trend is net cash, not subscription revenue. Each month's figure is the ledger's money in minus money out, and it never goes below zero. A month where you spent more than you took in shows 0. It doesn't pick out recurring revenue or customers.
• Months at the edges are partial. The dashboard counts 31 days per month back from today and runs up to today. The month in progress counts only the days so far, and the oldest month may be cut short. Both can make burn and revenue look low.
• Months with no transactions are skipped. A month with no transactions in the ledger has no entry and doesn't count toward the average burn.
• Transfers are left out. Burn, the revenue trend and top expenses skip transactions linked as transfers or categorized as Transfer. See link the two sides of a transfer.
• Runway needs one currency. Runway appears only when the ledger's cash and burn are in the same currency. The dashboard doesn't convert between currencies. See accounts and totals in more than one currency.
• It's a snapshot. Cash on hand uses today's balances. For everything you own and owe, see check your net worth.