Payroll as % of Burn

Annualized fully-loaded payroll cost based on current employee compensation — wages plus employer-paid taxes, benefits, and typical equity refresh allocation. Used as the dominant input into `hr.payroll_as_pct_of_burn` and the projection for `hr.fte_metrics`. Common pitfall: reporting base-salary-only and missing employer payroll taxes, benefits, and bonus accrual — this can understate true cost by 15–30%. Document the loading convention (typically wages × 1.20–1.30 for US fully-loaded) and apply consistently.

Average monthly cash outflow before any inflows are netted off — essentially the company's monthly cost base in cash terms. Tracked alongside net burn because net burn alone can mask a structural problem when revenue is masking high cost. The board reads gross burn to understand the absolute cost commitment (mostly payroll, infra, COGS, sales spend) regardless of revenue mix. Common pitfall: founders often optimize the net burn narrative ("we cut burn 30%") via a one-time inflow without addressing the gross-burn cost base — the next quarter without that inflow re-exposes the underlying spend. Always present gross and net side-by-side.

Average monthly net cash outflow over the reporting period — total cash spent minus total cash collected, divided by the number of months in the period. The headline survival number for venture-backed startups: it pairs with `finance.total_cash_in_bank` to produce runway, and pairs with revenue growth to produce the Bessemer "burn multiple". Common pitfall: net burn is volatile — large quarterly bills (annual SaaS renewals, employer-tax true-ups), enterprise prepayments, and FX swings can mask the underlying trend. Smoothing over a trailing 3-month average is standard board practice. Equally important: do not silently include one-off cash events (acquisitions, settlements, large prepayments received) without flagging them — boards prefer a "core burn" and "headline burn" pair when the period is noisy.

Total number of employees (W-2 / direct-employment equivalents) across all departments at period end. The base denominator for nearly every other HR ratio — turnover rate, revenue per FTE, payroll as % of burn — so getting the snapshot date and the FTE-vs-headcount convention right matters. Common pitfall: mixing headcount (people) with FTE (capacity) — they diverge whenever part-time, contractor, or shared-services arrangements exist. Document the convention (typically "FTE-equivalent, employees only, end-of-period") at the board level once and apply consistently.

Annual Recurring Revenue divided by total FTE-equivalent workforce — the canonical SaaS workforce-productivity ratio anchored to the SaaS Capital Annual Survey methodology (revenue per employee benchmarks). A high-signal denominator for "are we over- or under-staffed for our revenue scale?" Common pitfall: choosing different ARR conventions (ending vs average, GAAP-reconciled vs raw) without locking in a board-level standard. Best practice is to pair this with `sales.arr` so the numerator is unambiguous and to disclose whether contractors are included in the FTE denominator.