Blog / The weekly business review: what to track and how to run it
The weekly business review: what to track and how to run it
By DashViz Team · 2026-05-08
Reviewed by the DashViz editorial team for SMB operators.
The weekly business review (WBR) is the single most important meeting at most small businesses — done well it drives decisions, done poorly it's data theater. The right format: a 30-minute meeting at the start of the week with 5-8 metrics, a what-changed-and-why discussion, and one decision per metric that warrants one. This guide covers a practical template for SMBs.
TL;DR
- •30 minutes, same time every Monday.
- •5-8 metrics max. More than that and decisions don't happen.
- •For each metric: what changed, why, what we'll do.
- •End with action items and metric targets for next week.
- •If you can't say what decision came out of the WBR, the WBR isn't working.
Methodology note
Benchmarks and healthy ranges are directional planning ranges, not financial, accounting, tax, or legal advice. Use DashViz to compare them against your own source systems before making operational decisions.
The agenda (30 minutes)
Minutes 0-5: Headline numbers. Revenue, customers, and one efficiency metric (e.g., margin or AOV). Just numbers vs. last week and target.
Minutes 5-15: Drill into anything off-target. For each metric that's red or unexpectedly good, ask:
- What changed?
- Why?
- What do we do about it?
Minutes 15-25: Forward-look. What's coming this week that affects the numbers? Marketing campaigns, product launches, one-time events.
Minutes 25-30: Action items. One owner, one due date, one outcome per item. Capture in writing.
The metrics
For most SMBs, 5-8 metrics is the sweet spot. Examples by vertical:
- Retail / e-commerce: revenue, AOV, repeat customer rate, return rate, top product velocity.
- SaaS: MRR, new MRR, churned MRR, NRR, trial-to-paid conversion.
- Professional services: utilization, billable revenue, A/R aging, top customer concentration.
- Field services: jobs per tech, average ticket, recurring revenue %, cancellation rate.
Pick metrics that change weekly and where a 10% move warrants a discussion.
Common WBR failure modes
Too many metrics. 20+ metrics means no decisions. Cut to 8.
No "what we'll do" step. Reviewing metrics without acting on them is theater. End every metric discussion with an action or an explicit "no action this week."
Same content every week. If the WBR is identical every week, it's stopped being a decision meeting and become a status meeting. Mix in a deeper-dive on one metric per week.
Data assembly takes longer than the meeting. This is the biggest waste. If preparing the WBR takes 90 minutes, the meeting itself isn't paying for the prep cost. A dashboard that shows the WBR numbers automatically eliminates this.
What "good" looks like
After the WBR, you should be able to say:
- The headline numbers and how they compare to target.
- One thing that surprised us, with a hypothesis why.
- Two-to-three action items with owners and dates.
- One number we'll watch this week.
If you can't say all four of those after the WBR, the WBR isn't working.
Try it on your own data
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