What this tool does
You enter your numbers, the tool does the math instantly, then calls on my coaching benchmarks to grade each ratio. After the grades appear, it writes a straight read of where your business stands, pulling everything together the way I would if you handed me these numbers across a table.
Nothing is stored. Your numbers stay in your browser and go nowhere except to generate the read. Run it once a quarter and you will start to see the patterns that matter.
The seven required fields
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Time period
Pick the period you are measuring: a single month, a quarter, or a full year. Use the same period every time you run the tool so your numbers are actually comparable.
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Total revenue
All money collected from clients during that period. If a job was shot last quarter but paid this quarter, count it when the money arrived, not when you pressed the shutter.
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Qualified leads
Real prospects you pursued or who came to you with genuine interest. This is not your follower count, your mailing list, or the number of people who clicked your website. It is people you actually identified as potential clients: researched, reached out to, or fielded a real inquiry from. If you would not put them in a spreadsheet as a prospect, they do not belong here.
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Real conversations
A genuine back and forth with a prospect. A phone call, a video meeting, a detailed email exchange where both sides are actually engaged. A one-line reply to a contact form is not a conversation. If you did not discuss the work, the budget, or the timeline in some form, it does not count.
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Clients booked
Unique clients who paid you during this period. One client who booked three sessions counts as one client here, not three. The tool is measuring relationships, not job volume.
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Repeat clients
Of the clients booked above, how many had worked with you before, in any prior period. If someone hired you last year and booked again this quarter, they are a repeat client.
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Revenue from repeat clients
The dollar total paid by those returning clients during this period. Pull it from your invoices. If a repeat client paid you $4,200 and another paid $3,800, enter $8,000.
The optional fields
These are not required but each one unlocks a specific calculation. If you have the numbers, use them. They make the read considerably more specific.
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Prior period revenue
Revenue from the same length period immediately before this one. If you are measuring this quarter, enter last quarter. This unlocks your revenue growth rate.
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Prior period clients booked
Same logic: unique clients from the prior period. Combined with prior period revenue, this shows whether your revenue per client is moving up, down, or flat.
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Total expenses / overhead
Everything you spent to run your business during this period: gear, software, insurance, studio costs, marketing, travel, subcontractors. If you are not sure of the exact figure, a close estimate is still worth entering. This unlocks your profit margin, which is one of the numbers that matters most.
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Total hours
Every hour you worked on the business during this period: shooting, editing, client communication, marketing, admin, everything. This unlocks your effective hourly rate, which is shown as a number but never graded since what counts as good varies too much by market and specialty.
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Price change this period
If you raised or lowered your prices during this period, note the direction and percentage. The read will connect it to what happened with your bookings, whether the change held, pushed clients away, or did not seem to move the needle.
Reading the output
The numbers panel shows every computed ratio with a grade pulled from the benchmarks. Sienna tones are low, neutral tones are mid, olive tones are strong. Then the written read pulls everything together. It does not grade in isolation: it looks at where your funnel is actually breaking, how your retention connects to your repeat revenue, whether your growth rate is something to build on or a strain signal.
If a number lands low, the read will tell you what to check before treating it as a verdict. A weak conversion rate in a niche specialty in a small market means something different than the same rate in a major metro. The read is calibrated for that.
These benchmarks come from over twenty years of coaching commercial photographers and creative entrepreneurs. They are a target, not a universal standard. Run this tool at the same interval every period and the trend matters more than any single score.