A spreadsheet full of numbers is not the same as knowing how your month went. Most of the time you only need three of them, and you need them to be the right three: the ones that answer a question you would otherwise worry about.
Here they are, what each one is for, and how to read them together.
1. What actually came in
Not what you quoted. Not what you are owed. What has landed.
This is the number that matters most, and it is the one that is easiest to get wrong, because there are two things that look like it. A fee is what a job is worth. Income is what has landed. A job with a €1,800 fee, of which you have received the €900 deposit, has contributed €900 to your income so far, not €1,800.
If your income looks lower than the sum of your fees, that is not a mistake in the maths. It is the gap between “agreed” and “received”, and it is exactly the thing you want to see.
2. What is still to collect
The second number is the mirror image of the first: everything you have earned, or agreed, that has not yet arrived. Deposits you are waiting for, and balances that fall due when you deliver.
Read on its own, it can be alarming or falsely reassuring. A big number here feels like security, but it is only security if it turns into income. Read it next to the first number and it becomes useful:
- Low income, high to-collect. The work is there and the money is not. This is a chasing problem: invoices to send, deposits to ask about, deliveries to complete so the balance falls due.
- Low income, low to-collect. The pipeline is thin. This is a different problem, and chasing will not fix it.
- High income, high to-collect. A healthy month with more on the way.
- High income, low to-collect. A good month that has used up what was owed. Make sure something new is lined up.
3. What is left
The third number is the one most people skip, and it is the one that says whether the first two are enough. Start from the income you expect, take away your fixed costs (the recurring monthly things that are not subscriptions: taxes and pension contributions, rent, an accountant), take away your subscriptions, and what remains is what is left.
Subscriptions count once. If a tool is a subscription, it belongs in your subscriptions and nowhere else. Entering it as a fixed cost as well would count it twice and make the number gloomier than the truth.
Put them together
Take an illustrative month. €1,950 has come in. €4,400 is still to collect, across a handful of open jobs. Fixed costs are €1,348 a month and subscriptions come to about €85, so the month’s costs are about €1,433.
Read left to right: what has landed already covers the costs, with about €517 to spare, and most of the month’s money, the €4,400, has not arrived yet. The right response is not to relax and it is not to worry. It is to look at which payments make up the €4,400, which of them fall due soonest, and what has to be delivered for them to fall due.
Three numbers, and a decision follows from them.
A five-minute monthly habit
Once a month, on a day you can predict, look at the three numbers in this order and write down one sentence for each:
- Came in. How does it compare with last month?
- To collect. What is the one payment worth chasing this week?
- Left. Is anything in my costs that I would cancel if I saw it fresh?
That is the whole ritual. It takes five minutes, and it turns a folder of figures into something you can act on.
Where these live in Kreativo
The Dashboard shows the first two front and centre: earnings this month against your target, and money still to collect. Earnings breaks the first one down by payment, and it is where you mark a deposit or a balance as received, which is what moves the numbers. The Budget section holds the third.
The Dashboard: this month against your goal, and what is still to collect.