Finance.

The framework

1. 01

   Stage one — where the dollar is decided.

   The dollar begins as a customer's decision, and this module hands you a row of instruments for that moment alone. Value-based pricing decides what you were entitled to ask in the first place, because cost-plus quietly hands that decision to your suppliers. Pricing psychology decides how the number is presented, since the anchor beside it and the way it is framed move the answer without moving the price. The price waterfall decides how much of your list price actually lands, once rebates, terms, freight and the discount that never got logged have taken their cut. Elasticity tells you how much volume a rise can afford to lose before it costs you. Acquisition payback says how many months pass before that customer has handed back the money you spent winning them. Cohort lifetime value says whether the horizon you're counting on is real or borrowed from a spreadsheet. And the revenue bridge splits last month's movement into the only three things that can have caused it: what you charged, how many you sold, and which blend of them went out the door. Write them all on the page. Most owners can produce the list price and guess at the rest.

2. 02

   Stage two — what the dollar meets on the way down.

   Now follow it down through the cost base. Cost to serve tells you which customers paid for themselves once the shared costs were allocated by what actually drives them. Contribution, from Day 35, tells you what one more sale is worth. Unit economics puts those together and asks the blunt question sitting under this whole page: does one unit, sold to one customer you had to pay to win, make money at all. Break-even names the volume at which the bet stops losing, and the gap between that volume and the one you actually did is your margin of safety. Operating leverage tells you how violently contribution swings when volume moves, in both directions. And the profit ladder tells you which of the five profits you've quietly been quoting to yourself, which for most owners turns out to be whichever rung reads highest. Name the rung you stand on, then write the two beneath it.

3. 03

   Stage three — what actually arrives, and when.

   Profit is a claim. Cash is a fact, and the distance between them is where businesses die while trading well. The monthly tie-out walks net profit down to the closing bank balance and refuses to let the remainder go on being called timing. Day 36's conversion cycle gives you the days your money spends locked between paying suppliers and being paid. Free cash flow gives you what is left after the capital spend you don't get to choose. The balance sheet holds the position all of it lands in: what you own, what you owe, and whether the difference would carry you through a bad year. The quality-of-earnings dials tell you whether profit moved because the business did or because an accounting choice did. A rolling forecast keeps the picture running forward rather than expiring each March. Then the ten questions go to whoever owns your numbers, in the same order, opening on the bank. One page, run end to end, and the bank balance stops surprising you.

4. 04

   Stage four — where it goes next, and the discipline of the same order.

   What survives to the bottom gets redeployed, and the module's last instruments do that work. Return on invested capital says whether growth is creating value or consuming it, and the DuPont split says which of margin, turnover and leverage produced that number, which is how you tell an earned return from a borrowed one. The hurdle rate sets the bar every use of money must clear. Discounted appraisal prices the individual bet. The slate ranks the five homes for the next spare dollar. The sustainable growth rate names the speed this machine can fund from its own cash. Once a year, one slice of the discretionary cost base goes back to zero and applies for its money again, because nothing else removes a cost that no living person chose. Then run the map monthly, in this order, inside the operating review you already hold. The order matters: abandon it and you'll begin with whatever is loudest.