How to Review Runway Monthly in Thirty Minutes Flat
How to review runway monthly: one fixed day, thirty minutes, three parts. Update the actuals, interrogate why the number moved, then decide. Record the reason.
To review runway monthly, pick one fixed day and give it thirty minutes. Update the actuals, interrogate why the number moved, then decide. The movement is the signal, so write down the number and the reason every time.
How to review runway monthly in thirty minutes
Here's a test. When did you last look at your runway, and why?
If the honest answer is "when I felt nervous", you're running a smoke alarm. You check it during the fire.
A review is different. It's a date in the calendar. Same day each month. Same half hour. You do it whether the month was good, bad or boring, and the boring ones are where it earns its keep, because boring months are when slow problems hide.
It takes thirty minutes. It has three parts: update, interrogate, decide. Skip any one and you've done bookkeeping, not steering.
Before you start: make the file easy to update
If updating the model is a chore, you'll skip it on the busy evening, and then the busy month, and then the quarter.
So remove the chore. Connect the accounts so transactions arrive without retyping. It cuts the main reason a model goes stale and removes a class of typing errors that quietly corrupt a hand-kept sheet. The model that updates itself is the one you'll still trust in six months.
If you haven't built a simple model yet, do that first. How to build a runway model covers the four inputs and the categories. Don't start a review with nothing to review.
Free guide · 23 pagesKnow how long you actually have.The Runway Playbook: the number that sets every other deadline, and how to stop finding out late.Get the free guide →Part one: update
This is the mechanical bit, and it should feel like it.
Pull the actuals and set them beside what the model predicted last month. Not to feel bad about the gap. To see it. The difference between predicted and actual is the cheapest education you'll get about your own business.
Then work through the following.
- Update the forward assumptions for anything that changed.
- Put any new lumpy item on the calendar in the month it lands. Annual and quarterly payments don't smooth out in real life, even though they smooth out in an average.
- Refresh both numbers: current-burn runway and planned-burn runway.
Both. People update the comfortable one and let the other one rot. The planned number is the one that tells you whether you have a plan or a wish with a shopping list.
Part two: interrogate
This is the half hour's real purpose. Everything before it is preparation.
Write one sentence on why the number moved. One. In either direction. If you can't write it, you don't understand your own business well enough yet, and that's the finding.
Then run the checks.
| Check | The question to ask | What it catches |
|---|---|---|
| Good news | Would I be this curious if the number had dropped? | Improvements that are really postponements |
| Deferrals | Was any cost removed, or just moved to a later month? | A comfortable number that is borrowed |
| Overdue | What is late, and who is chasing it? | Earned cash sitting in other people's accounts |
| Lumps | Is every known payment on the calendar? | A survivable average that fails one specific month |
When you review runway monthly, the first row is the one nobody does. A worse number demands attention, so you investigate it by instinct. A better number feels like a reward, so you leave it alone. That is how you convince yourself you fixed something you only postponed.
Treat good news like a suspect. If it's genuine, it will survive the questions.
Part three: decide
You've updated and you've asked. Now do something with it.
Three decisions, every month.
Which band am I in? You set your lines already. Say which side of each you stand on and whether you crossed one this month. If you haven't set them, start with how to set runway alert thresholds. A review without thresholds is a weather report with no one to act on it.
Is anything I'm about to commit to priced in months? Not just in money. If a new tool, subscription or person is on the table, calculate how many months it removes before you say yes. The method is in how to price a contractor in months of runway.
Has the thing the model says I can't afford actually stopped? This one stings. It's easy to learn you can't afford something and then keep paying for it because stopping needs an email. Send the email.
Write it down, or it didn't happen
The last step is the one that turns the whole exercise into an early-warning system.
Record the number and the reason. A line in a note will do. What you're building is a history of what you said last time, because the movement is the signal, and you only see movement if you kept a record.
After a few months, patterns show up that no single month would reveal. A cost that creeps. A customer who always pays late. A quiet season that keeps surprising you. These are the early signs. Almost every serious problem shows up in the cash before it shows up anywhere else: churn rising, sales slowing, a cost compounding, payments slipping. Each moves the runway number weeks or months before it's obvious in any other report.
That's the return when you review runway monthly for thirty minutes.
Why you review runway monthly on a fixed day
"I'll look at it when I get a moment" means never. A solo operator has no finance team to nag them, no board meeting, nobody waiting for the report. The only deadline is the one you set.
So pick the day and defend it. First working day of the month, or the day your bank statement lands, whichever you will actually remember. Put it in the calendar as a meeting with yourself, with the same weight as a client call. If a client call would move it, notice that the client call will always win unless you decide otherwise.
There's a second reason. When you review on the same day every month, you compare like with like. You aren't looking after a good week or in the middle of a bad one. Your mood stops contaminating the number.
Free assessmentHow trapped are you, really?Take the Corporate Suffocation Index, the free solopreneur readiness assessment.Take the assessment →What if nothing moved?
Then write that down, and write why. "Nothing moved because income and costs landed as predicted" is a finding. It tells you the model is working.
But be a little suspicious of a month where the answer is always nothing. If the number never moves, either the business is truly steady, or the model has stopped looking at the things that change. Check that the accounts are still connected, that new costs are showing up, and that the forecast hasn't been left alone for a quarter.
A review that always says everything is fine is not a review. It's a habit of reassurance.
Sharing the number
If anyone else depends on the answer, a collaborator, a contractor, a partner, tell them in the right shape. Not raw worry, which produces fear without agency. Not silence, which leaves people deciding with no sense of the constraint. Give the constraint and the plan together: roughly how long, what the plan is, and what actually helps.
People handle a hard number far better than they handle discovering that one was hidden.
A review checklist you can paste into your calendar
- Pull actuals. Compare against last month's prediction.
- Update forward assumptions and the lumpy calendar.
- Refresh current-burn and planned-burn runway.
- Write one sentence on why the number moved.
- Examine any improvement as hard as you would a drop.
- Check for deferred costs and overdue money.
- Name your band and whether you crossed a line.
- Price anything new in months.
- Stop whatever you cannot afford.
- Record the number and the reason.
What not to do on review day
Don't rebuild the model. Review day is for using it.
Don't hunt for the second decimal. The number is a range with a direction, and you care far more about why it moved than about its precision.
And don't build scenario trees until the simple version has run a full quarter and changed a decision. Sophistication here is a respectable form of procrastination. It looks like rigour, which is why it's so tempting. A crude model that is current beats an elaborate one that is three months stale.
One more thing. If your income is lumpy, your review will be lumpy too. Make sure the forecast side is honest, with contracted and probable revenue in the base case and hoped-for revenue visible but separate. The guide to that is how to forecast income for runway. A review built on a hopeful forecast is a ritual that confirms what you wanted to hear.
Free assessmentHow trapped are you, really?Take the Corporate Suffocation Index, the free solopreneur readiness assessment.Take the assessment →Frequently asked questions
How often should I review my runway?
Review runway monthly, on the same day each month, for about thirty minutes. A fixed date beats reviewing when you feel nervous, because the point is to catch problems before they feel urgent.
What should a monthly runway review include?
Three parts: update the actuals and assumptions, interrogate why the number moved, and decide which threshold band you are in and what to stop or price in months. Then record the number and the reason.
Why investigate good news as well as bad?
Because an improvement may be a payment that slipped or a cost that was deferred rather than removed. Unexamined good news can comfort you until the problem arrives anyway, in a worse month.
Do I need a complicated model for the review?
No. Four inputs on one screen are enough: opening cash, money in, money out, and the balance projected forward. A simple model you keep current beats an elaborate one that is stale.
The full method, with the checklists, is in The Runway Playbook, a free 23-page playbook.
How trapped are you, really?
Take the Corporate Suffocation Index, the free solopreneur readiness assessment.