Reading Your Business Data: What Numbers Actually Matter

A gym owner in Kigali proudly told me she has 340 registered members. I asked how many actually show up regularly. She didn’t know. I asked what her monthly retention rate was. Blank stare. 340 registered members means nothing if 200 of them haven’t visited in three months.

She was tracking the wrong number.

The five numbers that matter

1. Revenue (and revenue trend)

Not just this month’s number — the trend. Is it going up, down, or flat? A single month doesn’t tell you much. Three months shows a direction. Track by week if possible.

2. Gross margin

Revenue minus direct costs, divided by revenue. A restaurant doing RWF 10 million in revenue sounds impressive. But if food and labour costs are RWF 9.5 million, the margin is 5% — dangerously thin. Know your margin on every product or service.

3. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

How much do you spend to get one new customer? Add up all marketing and sales costs for the month, divide by new customers acquired. If your CAC is higher than what the customer spends on their first purchase, you’re losing money acquiring them.

4. Cash in the bank

Not accounts receivable. Not projected revenue. Actual cash you can spend today. Check this daily. Many profitable businesses die because they run out of cash before receivables come in.

5. Customer retention/repeat rate

What percentage of last month’s customers came back this month? Acquiring new customers costs 5–25x more than keeping existing ones. If your retention is dropping, fix that before spending more on marketing.

Numbers you can safely ignore (for now)

• Social media followers — vanity metric unless it directly drives sales
• Website visits — only matters if you track conversions too
• Total registered users/members — active users are what count
• Revenue without context — RWF 5M/month means nothing without knowing costs and margin

How to track without a data science degree

A Google Sheet with five columns (one per metric) updated weekly gets you 90% of the insight. If you want it automatic, a business dashboard calculates these from your transaction data.

The goal isn’t to drown in data. It’s to know your five essential numbers cold — so when someone asks “how’s business?” you can answer with confidence, not guesswork.