What key metrics should I be reporting on as I enter year two?

Cash position and runway come first, because they constrain everything else. How much you hold, what you burn monthly on average across three months, and how many months that gives you. A business with fewer than six months of runway is in a different decision environment from one with twelve, and knowing which you are in should precede any other planning.

Revenue and gross margin together, never revenue alone. Revenue rising while gross margin falls means you are selling more of something less profitable, which is a problem growth makes worse rather than better. Gross margin is the number that tells you whether the thing you sell is fundamentally worth selling, and it is the most under examined figure in small business reporting.

Customer acquisition cost and customer value, read as a pair. What it costs to win somebody, including the time you spent, against what they are worth in gross profit across the relationship. The ratio between them determines whether growth is affordable, and the payback period determines whether it is affordable this month, which for a business without runway is the binding constraint.

Retention or repeat rate, depending on your model. The proportion of customers who come back, or who are still subscribed, is the difference between a business that compounds and one that starts each year from zero. It is also the earliest reliable signal of whether the product is genuinely good, ahead of any review or survey.

Then one operational number specific to what you do: utilisation for a service business, sell through for retail, pipeline value for anything with a long sales cycle. That is the leading indicator that moves before the financial ones, and knowing yours is what allows you to react in the month rather than discovering it in the accounts a quarter later.

Record these on the same day each month rather than when you remember, because the value is entirely in the series rather than in any individual figure. A number produced on the fourth one month and the twenty second the next is not comparable to itself, particularly for anything cash related where the timing of a large payment moves it substantially. A fixed date and a single sheet is the whole system.