Bookkeeper Metrics – Page 2

Free Cash Flow (FCF) is the cash a business generates after paying for operating expenses and capital expenditures — the money available to reinvest, repay debt, or return to shareholders.

Full-Time Employees are permanent staff members who typically work more than 30 hours per week or four days weekly, depending on your organisation's definition and local labour standards. Unlike temporary, seasonal, or contract workers, full-time employees represent your core workforce with ongoing employment relationships. In most jurisdictions, full-time employees are entitled to comprehensive benefits including healthcare coverage, vacation pay, statutory holidays, and other employment standards protections as defined by local labour laws.

Full-Time Equivalents (FTE) is a standardised workforce measurement that converts all employee types—full-time, part-time, contractors, interns, and temporary workers—into equivalent full-time positions. This calculated metric provides a unified view of your total workforce capacity by expressing everyone's contribution as fractions of a standard full-time schedule (typically 40 hours per week or 5 days). Unlike simply counting heads, FTE gives you the true picture of your organisational capacity and enables accurate cross-company comparisons regardless of employment structure.

Inventory Quantity is the currently available stock for each product variant a retail location or e-commerce store has available. Keeping track of inventory quantity is important to ensure that there are enough goods in stock to meet customer demand. Businesses should identify the optimal stock level for each product variant and adjust accordingly. If inventory levels are too low, customers may not be able to purchase a desired item or find an alternative solution elsewhere. On the other hand, if levels are too high, it can lead to an overstocking of products and wasted resources.

The Invoices metric counts the number of invoices you have sent to your customers. It is helpful to track Invoices to keep a tab on what is owed to you.

Net Cash Flow is the difference between all cash inflows and all cash outflows for a given period, showing whether a business generated or consumed cash.

Net Income is the profit remaining after subtracting all expenses, including COGS, operating costs, taxes, and interest, from total revenue. It appears at the bottom of the income statement and is one of the most direct measures of a business's profitability. Also called the bottom line, Net Income is used by investors, analysts, and management to evaluate financial health and guide strategic decisions.

Non-operating expenses are the sum of all costs unrelated to a company's core business operations, such as interest payments, asset disposal losses, foreign exchange losses, restructuring charges, and one-time write-downs. These expenses are typically non-recurring and do not arise from day-to-day business activities.

Operating expenses (OPEX) are the costs a business incurs through normal operations that are not directly tied to producing goods or services. Per QuickBooks, OPEX represents the Expenses section on the Profit & Loss statement, excluding cost of goods sold (COGS) and other expenses. Common examples include sales and marketing costs, administrative salaries, and research and development expenditures.

Payouts are the funds a payment processing platform transfers to your bank account after collecting customer payments on your behalf. The deposited amount reflects gross sales minus processor fees, refunds, and chargebacks, delivered on a schedule you configure.

Refunded Charges is the total value of payments returned to customers within a defined period. It measures how much revenue you are reversing and helps identify product, service, or fulfilment issues driving refund volume.

Return Rate measures the share of units sold that customers send back and your team accepts within the policy window. It focuses on item counts, not dollars. Use it to surface fit issues, fragile packaging, misleading product details, and fulfilment mistakes that drive avoidable returns. Track it by SKU, variant, size, and channel to see where problems cluster.