Business Tools

Thirty-two calculators for the numbers a business is run on

What has to be sold before the fixed costs are covered, what is left at each of the three levels of margin, what a job should be quoted at and what a commission ladder actually pays. Then the customers: what one costs to win counting everything and not only the advertising, what one is worth against that, how fast they leave and where a funnel loses them.

Whether a purchase pays for itself and when, what a stream of cash flows is worth today and at what rate it is worth nothing, how an asset is written down three ways. How long the cash lasts, when an invoice is due and what late costs, what a gateway takes and what to charge so that it does not. What the stock ties up, how much to order at a time, what a parcel is really charged on, and what an hour of somebody's time costs once the days away are taken out.

Every one of these ratios is defined two or three ways in ordinary use, so each tool says on its own result which definition it used — and where the choice changes the answer it is a setting rather than an assumption. There is no table of industry benchmarks here and no currency is named anywhere, because both would be inventing an authority the arithmetic does not have.

Pricing and margin

Break-even point
How much has to be sold before the fixed costs are covered

Profit margin
Gross, operating and net margin, and what a target one needs

Job quote price
A quote built from materials, labour, overhead and the margin

Pricing tiers
What a price list earns once the mix of customers is counted

Sales commission
Commission band by band, and the two readings of the same ladder

Customers and campaigns

Customer acquisition cost
What one customer costs to win, counting everything and not only the ads

Customer lifetime value
What a customer is worth, and how much the answer moves with the churn

Churn rate
How fast customers leave, over which base, and what it is a year

Conversion rate
A funnel step by step, where the largest fall is, and what fixing it is worth

CPM, CPC and CTR
Budget, impressions, clicks and the three rates, from any two of them

Return on ad spend
Whether a campaign made money, which is not what its return says

Subscription metrics
Recurring revenue and its five movements, with every definition beside it

Investment

Return on investment
What came back against what went in, per year rather than in total

Payback period
When the money that went out has come back, plainly and discounted

Net present value
What a stream of cash flows is worth today, and at what rate it is worth nothing

Depreciation
An asset written down year by year, three ways

Cash

Burn rate and runway
How long the cash lasts, gross and net, and when to start raising

Invoice due date
When it is due, how late it was, and the interest on the days

Early payment discount
What `2/10 net 30` costs as a rate a year, which nobody expects

Payment processing fee
What a gateway takes, and what to charge so that it does not

Crowdfunding goal
What to raise so that the amount you need is what is left

Operations

Inventory turnover
How many times the stock turns, and what a week less would release

Economic order quantity
How much to order at a time, when to order it, and how flat the answer is

Shipping cost
Volumetric weight, chargeable weight, and why a box of pillows costs so much

Productivity
Output an hour and output a person, which are different questions

People

Employee hourly cost
What an hour of somebody's time costs, which is about twice the naive figure

Project labour cost
Roles, rates and hours added up, with overhead and contingency on top

Cost per hire
What filling a vacancy costs, including the months a new person takes

Absence and turnover
Days lost, people lost, and the factor that reads short absences differently

Full-time equivalent
Part-time contracts turned into whole ones, by department

Identifiers

SWIFT and BIC code
The format, the four parts, and the fact that there is no check digit

Crypto address
Whether the address agrees with its own checksum, and nothing more

Questions

Why do two people get different answers for the same churn rate?: Because churn is defined more than one way, and so is nearly everything else on this page. Divided by the customers at the start of the period it is one number; divided by the average of the two ends it is another, and on a growing base they differ by a quarter. Every tool here says on its own result which definition it used, and where the choice matters it is a setting rather than an assumption.
Is a markup the same as a margin?: No, and the difference is what makes a job priced for thirty per cent come in at twenty-three. A markup is measured over the cost and a margin over the price: a fifty per cent markup is a thirty-three per cent margin, and the same money. The quote tool has the base as a setting and says which it used on the result.
Why is the employee hourly cost about twice what I expected?: Because the number people reach for is the salary divided by every paid hour in the year, and it leaves out two things: what the employer pays on top of the salary, and the days nobody works. Holidays, public holidays, sickness, meetings, training and administration between them take about a third of the year, and the cost is spread over what is left rather than over all of it.
Is anything I type uploaded?: No. The tools are compiled to WebAssembly and run inside the browser tab. Nothing you type is sent to a server, and you can watch your browser's network panel while you use one to see that nothing leaves the page. That is worth more here than elsewhere: these are margins, customer lists and payroll.

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