Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

The Financial Metrics One Pager


In the encyclopedia of finance and accounting, this one page covers almost every metric that exists, and how and when to actually use it.

📩 Join our newsletter and get instant access 👉 yourcfoguy.kit.com/one-page-model

Let's dive into each.

➡️ BALANCE SHEET RATIOS

These to me are the most useful metrics, because they give CONTEXT.

Profitability is nice. Cash flows is even nicer. But analyzed in a vacuum, they keep you from seeing the FULL PICTURE.

My favorite metrics here:

Return on Equity → Net Income / Shareholder Equity

Net Working Capital Ratio → (Current Assets − Current Liabilities) / Total Assets

Cash Turnover → Sales / Average Cash & Cash Equivalents

➡️ CASH RATIOS

Cash is, and always will be, KING (or queen) 👑

It's the fuel to your business.

You can generate the most amazing profits in the world, but if you don't generate enough cash to sustain your operations, you'll go out of business.

There are so many useful metrics here. My favorites:

Cash Burn → Cash From Operating Activities + Cash From Investing Activities

Free Cash Flow → Operating Cash Flow + Capital Expenditures

Cash Conversion Cycle → Days Sales Outstanding + Days Inventory Outstanding − Days Payable Outstanding

➡️ PROFITABILITY RATIOS

Profitability, to me, is the heart and soul of any good business model.

Why? Because it dictates how much cash you'll eventually be able to pull out of your business.

Even if your business generates strong cash flows, that reverses eventually if your profits are negative. Profit is the starting point everything else flows from.

My favorite metrics here:

Gross Margin → Gross Profit / Revenue

Net Income → Your bottom line profit or loss

EBITDA → Net Income + Interest Expense − Interest Income + Taxes + Depreciation + Amortization

OK, I lied. EBITDA is not one of my favorite profitability metrics 🤥

Honestly, I find it overhyped and misleading. But everyone obsesses over this word, so there. EBITDA, EBITDA, EBITDA 🙌

➡️ SAAS METRICS

SaaS businesses are my favorite.

Where else do you find margins in the 90%+ range? Where else do you deliver that much value through prebuilt software alone?

No wonder SaaS startups get the highest valuations.

My favorite SaaS metrics:

- Annual Recurring Revenue → Opening ARR + New ARR − Churn ARR + Expansion ARR − Contraction ARR

- Net Dollar Retention → Net Revenue / Opening MRR (or ARR)

- Average Revenue Per User → Total Revenue / Number of Users

Those are my favorite metrics for analyzing and managing a business. There's a lot more packed into this one pager.

Got any metrics to add?

Grab it here: yourcfoguy.kit.com/one-page-model

Let us know in the comments below 👇

PS: This one's free today, but not for long. Grab it while you can.

17 hours ago | [YT] | 66

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

Learn every Excel CTRL Shortcut

I've said it before and I'll say it again…

Excel shortcuts can make you FLY ✈️

They take practice, and at first they'll feel slower than just using your mouse.

But once these shortcuts hit muscle memory, the sky is the limit.

You can be on a call with a client and turn their vision into reality instantly…

You can be on a call with your boss and impress them with your speed…

Or you can be all alone on a Saturday, playing a piano symphony with your keyboard.

I use these every single day, whether I'm building a model or presenting to a board. A lot of these shortcuts you already half know. And the rest become second nature the moment you actually practice them.

📩 Join our newsletter and get instant access here 👉 newsletter.yourcfoguy.com/ctrl-excel-sheat-sheet

Let's dive into my favorites.

➡️ THE ONES YOU ALREADY KNOW

CTRL + N → create a new workbook

CTRL + P → print your document

CTRL + S → save your workbook

CTRL + O → open a workbook

CTRL + A → select everything

CTRL + U → apply underline

CTRL + B → make text bold

CTRL + V → paste content

CTRL + C → copy content

CTRL + Z → undo action

CTRL + X → cut content

CTRL + I → italicize text

CTRL + T → add a table

CTRL + F → find text

CTRL + Y → redo action

➡️ HIGHLY EFFECTIVE SHORTCUTS

CTRL + ARROW KEYS → move to the first or last cell in a section

CTRL + PgUp / PgDn → navigate between tabs

CTRL + SPACE → select an entire column

CTRL + + → add a new column or row

CTRL + ] → select direct dependents

CTRL + 1 → cell formatting options

CTRL + [ → select direct precedents

CTRL + - → remove a column or row

➡️ LESSER KNOWN SHORTCUTS

CTRL + G → go to a specific cell

CTRL + K → create a hyperlink

CTRL + : → input current time

CTRL + ; → input current date

CTRL + H → find and replace

CTRL + Q → quick analysis

CTRL + W → close window

CTRL + E → use flash fill

➡️ THREE KEY SHORTCUTS

CTRL + SHIFT + F3 → generate a named range from the selection

CTRL + SHIFT + F6 → switch to the previous workbook window

CTRL + SHIFT + U → display or hide the formula bar

CTRL + SHIFT + O → highlight cells with comments

CTRL + ALT + V → open the paste special dialog

CTRL + SHIFT + ` → change to general format

CTRL + SHIFT + L → apply or remove filters

and several others!

===

Hang this cheat sheet up in your office and practice each one. Before you know it, you'll be a pro.

I've been living inside Excel my whole career, and CTRL shortcuts are still the fastest way I know to move through a spreadsheet.

Grab it here 👉 newsletter.yourcfoguy.com/ctrl-excel-sheat-sheet

Which shortcut is your favorite?

Let us know in the comments below 👇

1 day ago | [YT] | 81

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

22,302 hours.

That’s how much time finance professionals spent inside the Strategic Finance Summit, combined, across two days.

I’ve stared at that number more times than I’d like to admit... and I still can’t fully wrap my head around it.

So let me back up for a second.

When I started planning the Strategic Finance Summit, I told myself I wanted to build something big.

But “big” turned out to be the wrong word... because whatever I was picturing, this blew right past it.

7,543 people registered.

3,253 of them actually showed up live, from all over the world.

That’s a 43 percent show up rate... which, if you know anything about virtual events, is a little bit insane.

On average, 832 people stayed in every single session, more than three times what an event like this normally pulls.

And honestly? Those numbers are still the smallest part of what I’m feeling right now.

Because what really got me was watching thousands of finance people, from every timezone you can imagine, show up for two full days just to learn, ask questions, and geek out together over models and forecasts.

(Yes, we’re the kind of people who do that for fun. I love us.)

Then there are the speakers…

Fifteen of them gave up two full days of their own time to teach a room full of strangers, and every single one showed up with their absolute best material.

I will not forget that.

And to everyone who registered, showed up, and stuck around till the very end… thank you.

You are the entire reason this happened.

And here’s what it quietly proved to me…

there’s a real, hungry community of finance people out here who want to get better, and who show up for each other the second you give them a reason to.

Now let me get a little bold for a moment…

So if we weren’t the biggest finance event of 2026... we’re absolutely going to be the biggest one in 2027.

And we’re already planning it, because next year, we’re going even stronger.

But before any of that…

if you were there, I actually want to hear from you.

What did you love? What should we do more of next year?

Drop it in the comments. I’m reading every single one.

2 days ago | [YT] | 32

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

Here's how to get REALLY GOOD at Excel

Follow these steps to skyrocket your career 🚀

Grab 30+ Excel cheat sheets and worksheets right here: www.yourcfoguy.com/templates/33-infographics-and-e…

I used to sell this for $149. These days it's $99.

I've spent the last 10+ years binging every piece of content that I can find in Excel…

and these skills have easily been one of the biggest factors in my ability to win new clients, and become a Microsoft MVP.

People ask me all the time, how do I get really good in Excel?

Here's how I would put it:

➡️STEP 1: FUNCTIONS AND FORMULAS

It all starts with your ability to craft the right function.

Learn about formula references, and how $ signs affect your ability to drag formulas…

Then focus on formula tracking, and how you can trace dependents / precedents, evaluate formulas, do proper error checking, and create named ranges…

Here are my top 5 functions:
IF
XLOOKUP
SUMIFS
EOMONTH
INDEX / MATCH

and here are my top 5 SPILL functions:
FILTER
TRANSPOSE
UNIQUE
SORT
SEQUENCE

➡️STEP 2: DATA STRUCTURES

Getting your data in the right structure is a HUGE part of being able to manipulate and present your data effectively.

UNSTRUCTURED data is oftentimes easier to understand, where you have dates going across horizontally, and accounts going across vertically. But it's not so easy to manipulate data in this format…

STRUCTURED data can be data that appears in a columnar table, make it really easy to manipulate, but difficult to interpret.

Being able to switch between each of these views with a tool like power query will unlock huge value in your spreadsheets

➡️STEP 3: DATA VISUALIZATION

Now that you have your functions & formulas set up, and your data in the right structure…it's time to present it.

Excel has countless charts and data visualization capabilities that can take your spreadsheet from good to WOW 🤩

➡️STEP 4: OTHER EXCEL FEATURES

There are other helpful features excel offers, here are the 8 that you NEED to know
Conditional Formatting
Sort and Filtering
Custom Formatting
Paste Special
Data Validation
Page Layout
What If Analysis
Notes & Comments

===

That's my take on how to get REALLY good at excel…

The most important ingredient?

Practice practice practice.

Grab it here: www.yourcfoguy.com/templates/33-infographics-and-e…

What are your tips for growing with Excel?

Join the discussion in the comments below 👇

3 days ago | [YT] | 121

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

This is the CRAZIEST dashboard I've ever built…

and today I'm giving it away for FREE.

📩 Join The CFO Files newsletter and I'll send you this dashboard for free: yourcfoguy.kit.com/ultimate-dashboard?utm_source=s…

I spent 20+ hours researching, designing, and building this one.

It tells you all sorts of key information, like:

✅ Revenue & Gross Margin

✅ Comparison against budget

✅ Comparison against prior period

✅ Departmental breakdown

✅ Breakdown by cost type

And all of it updates with just ONE CLICK.

Here's how I built it.

→ Step 1, Design Your Dashboard

But don't make the mistake of exporting a P&L straight from your accounting software and sending that to management or investors.

Instead, invest in DESIGN. And when I say design, I mean:

🎨 a cohesive color scheme

🔡 a proper font

🔀 proper alignment and placement

→ Data Structure

Here, we have 4 departments.

👥 General & Administrative

👥 Sales & Marketing

👥 Research & Development

👥 Customer Support

So each department gets its own P&L, segmented by:

1️⃣ Section

2️⃣ Summary Grouping

3️⃣ Account

Then we have a data set for ACTUALS, and another for BUDGET.

That's 8 tabs total. 4 with actuals, 4 with budget.

→ Transform With Power Query

Now that the data's in place, it's time to TRANSFORM it so it's actually easy to MANIPULATE.

That means UNPIVOTING everything with Power Query.

And then we append all the actual tabs together, and all the budget tabs together.

→ Create Relationships In Power Pivot

Power Pivot is the big leagues of Excel. Honestly, I'm still learning a ton about it myself…

What's amazing about Power Pivot is that you can build RELATIONSHIPS between different tables, so you can mix and match when you build your pivot tables.

From there I built a bunch of MEASURES, which work like Excel formulas, except they run on something called DAX.

→ Create Pivot Tables

Now with the data structured and the measures in place, it's time to build the pivot tables.

Honestly, this part is a breeze.

→ Link Up The Dashboards

And now for the grand finale 🪄🎩

With everything else in place, linking up the dashboard is easy.

===

What I love about this one is that I can click any period, YTD, or TRAILING 12 MONTHS, and the whole thing updates instantly.

Have you ever used a Power Pivot? Think you could build a dashboard like this one?

📩 Join The CFO Files newsletter and I'll send you the full template and tutorial 👉 yourcfoguy.kit.com/ultimate-dashboard?utm_source=s…

4 days ago | [YT] | 40

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

After working with over 100 fast-growing companies…

I've realized most people overcomplicate financial reporting.

They build a forecast, email it to the CEO, and wonder why nobody reads it.

So I built what I call the Ultimate CFO Reporting System.

👍Simply Like and comment on this post, then grab the free template here: yourcfoguy.kit.com/ultimate-cfo-reporting-system

A company once hired me for $15,000 a month to get their reporting in order. They had just raised close to $20 million.

Our team worked day and night…and all of it was useless.

Why?

Three data sources. All three conflicted with each other. Before you build anything…you need to trust your data.

Once you have that, the system has three parts.

→ FORECAST YOUR REVENUE (EPN FRAMEWORK)

Break it into three buckets:

Existing customers…what you already have locked in

Pipeline customers…warm deals you're tracking

New customers…future logos you're projecting

When you blend all three into one line, you can't challenge your own assumptions.

→ FORECAST YOUR HEADCOUNT

Your biggest expense and the hardest to control.

Build a roster with start dates, salaries, and departments. Most of your operating expense lives here…get this wrong and everything else falls apart.

→ FORECAST YOUR BALANCE SHEET (BASE FRAMEWORK)

Beginning balance + Additions − Subtractions = Ending balance

That formula works for deferred revenue, AR, AP, inventory, fixed assets…all of them.

→ PRESENT IT WITH DASHBOARDS

This is where most people fail. They send a wall of numbers nobody wants to read.

Your CEO needs dashboards…not 50 of them. Five.

And the one that gets the most attention in every meeting I attend? Budget vs actuals. What you expected…what happened…and how close you were.

===

That's the Ultimate CFO Reporting System. Clean data. Three area forecast. Dashboards that tell the story.

Grab it here: yourcfoguy.kit.com/ultimate-cfo-reporting-system

What does your reporting setup look like right now?

Let me know in the comments below 👇

5 days ago | [YT] | 60

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

I usually sell my Cash Flows Dashboard for $49. Today you can have it for free.

👍 Like this post and comment below, and then grab it here for the next 48 hours 👉 yourcfoguy.kit.com/cash-flows-dashboard

Cash flow is the one thing my clients ask me to explain more than anything else.

And honestly, I get why.

You can look great on paper and still wake up to an empty bank account.

Revenue is up, the P&L looks healthy, everyone feels good about the month.

Then payroll hits, a big invoice comes due, and suddenly there's nothing left in the account.

I've watched it happen to real businesses more than once.

The problem is that almost nobody can actually see their cash clearly.

They can pull a profit number in seconds.

But ask them where the cash actually went last month, and you get a blank stare and half a day of digging through bank statements.

Profit tells you whether you made money.

Cash tells you whether you can keep the doors open.

Those are two completely different questions. And most reporting only answers the first one.

So I built this dashboard to answer the second one in about ten seconds.

It shows you where your cash started, every dollar that moved through operating, investing, and financing, and exactly where you ended up. All on one screen.

You can see the months your cash climbed and the months it quietly drained, lined up across the whole year.

You drop in your own numbers and the entire thing updates on its own. No formulas to wire up, no charts to rebuild from scratch.

What you walk away with is a view you can put in front of a founder, your board, or an investor, and they understand your cash position before you finish your first sentence.

You stop exporting data, rebuilding the same report every month, and hunting through tabs just to find one number.

And you finally get to talk about your cash with the same confidence you talk about your revenue.

It's yours free today.

Grab it here: yourcfoguy.kit.com/cash-flows-dashboard

6 days ago | [YT] | 79

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

Cheers to another year of providing Excel thought leadership content!
I’m THRILLED to be renewed as a Microsoft MVP 🥳 .

Being part of this program has been such an incredible experience. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and learn from other MVPs around the world, build relationships with members of the Microsoft team, and collaborate on new ways to help people get more out of Excel.

One of the biggest highlights was traveling to Seattle and spending time with the community in person. I’ve also loved creating YouTube videos, sharing what I’m learning, and continuing to find better ways to make Excel and strategic finance more accessible.

I’m incredibly grateful to Microsoft, the MVP community, and everyone who follows, watches, comments, and shares my content.

Excited for another year of teaching, learning, collaborating, and probably spending way too much time inside a spreadsheet 🤓

6 days ago | [YT] | 43

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

Everything you need to know about Excel Tables 👇

Excel tables are one of the most powerful features Excel has to offer. And barely anyone understands just how powerful they really are.

👍 Like and comment on this post and then grab it here: yourcfoguy.kit.com/excel-tables

→ What Is An Excel Table?

An Excel table is a STRUCTURED range. Once you activate it as a table, it unlocks a set of features you don't get with a normal range.

→ How Do You Convert A Range To A Table?

Two ways.

1️⃣ Hit CTRL + T.

2️⃣ Go to Insert > Table.

→ What's So Special About Excel Tables?

Glad you asked 😄. Here are 8 reasons.

1️⃣ Auto Extending Ranges

Add a new column to the right or left, or a new row to the bottom, and the range updates on its own. This is huge, especially for the reason coming up in #7.

2️⃣ Better Formula Readability

Tables turn a reference like this, F6, into something like this, PnL[Budget]. That single change makes your formulas dramatically easier to read.

3️⃣ Faster Range Selection

Hit CTRL + Space to select a full column. Shift + Space for a full row. CTRL + A for the whole table.

4️⃣ Consistent, Uniform Data Structures

This is how structured references get set up, which makes everything easier to use inside formulas. The more comfortable you get with this format, the more dynamic your spreadsheet becomes.

5️⃣ Convert To A PivotTable Or Load To Power Query

PivotTable 👉 Insert > PivotTable, or Table Design > Summarize With PivotTable.

Power Query 👉 Data > From Table/Range.

6️⃣ One Click Formatting

Change the whole look of your table in one click. Go to Table Design > Cell Styles.

7️⃣ Automatically Extending References

Possibly my favorite. Reference a range inside a table, and it extends automatically as you add more rows.

I especially love pairing this with a data validation dropdown 💪

8️⃣ Add A Total Row

Table Design > check Total Row. Now you can drop a sum, average, or count right at the bottom of your table.

===

As we learned from Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. And tables have their dangers too.

I only get 3,000 characters here, so I can't cover it all…

Grab it here: yourcfoguy.kit.com/excel-tables

Got anything to add about Excel tables?

Join the discussion in the comments below 👇

1 week ago | [YT] | 69

Josh Aharonoff (Your CFO Guy)

This is the MOST POPULAR function in Excel 😱

In fact, it's probably the most popular function in all of computer programming 🤯

Of course, I'm talking about the IF function…

And today we're doing a deep dive on how it works, plus every function that hangs off of it.

👍 Like and comment on this post and then grab it here 👉 yourcfoguy.kit.com/the-if-function

🟰 IF

Really simple once you see it.

IF this condition is TRUE, return the first argument. ELSE, return the second.

🟰 IFERROR

So here you set a condition to return a value if the formula would otherwise throw an ERROR.

I use this one constantly when dividing one number by another, just in case a zero sneaks into the denominator.

🟰 IFNA

Not many people know this one. It returns a value only when there's an #N/A error.

But unlike IFERROR, which catches ANY error, this one is picky. It only fires on #N/A.

===

Now we get to my favorite IF functions, the ones that actually do math.

🟰 SUMIF(S)

I use this one ALL the time.

The idea is simple. SUM the data, IF it meets a criteria. Or several.

🟰 COUNTIF(S)

Same idea as SUMIF, except you're COUNTING instead of summing, IF the criteria is met.

I use this one constantly when rolling forward a financial model, comparing two general ledgers against each other.

COUNTIF tells you how many times an account shows up on a list. Anything greater than zero means you've got a match. Nothing means it's a new account.

🟰 AVERAGEIF(S)

Same setup as SUMIFS and COUNTIFS. It evaluates your IF condition, then AVERAGES the result for you.

===

Don't stop there. There's more you can pair with an IF function.

🟰 AND

So stack multiple criteria into your IF function. You only get a result back when ALL of them are met.

🟰 OR

Same idea as AND, except you only need ANY one condition to be true to get your result back.

🟰 NOT

Think of this one as a way to flip a value. It turns TRUE into FALSE, and vice versa.

===

And while we're on the topic of conditional formulas, here are 3 TRUE and FALSE formulas worth knowing…

🟰 ISBLANK

Returns TRUE if the cell is blank. FALSE if it holds a value.

🟰 ISTEXT

Returns TRUE if the cell is text. FALSE if it's a different type, like a number.

🟰 ISDATE

Returns TRUE if the cell is a date. FALSE if it's anything else.

===

And that's a wrap on today's session on the IF function.

So did you pick up a new use for it?

Some would say the whole universe is just one big IF function, running on 1s and 0s.

Grab it here 👉 yourcfoguy.kit.com/the-if-function

Which IF function is your favorite?

Let us know in the comments below 👇

1 week ago | [YT] | 81