A full assessment of your business, kept live

Getting started: one afternoon to a first assessment

There are two ways in. If you're trading, start from your records: bank exports, invoices, your pipeline and job records, brought in as CSV or spreadsheet files with column maps you save once. Your numbers come from your own books, and the file itself isn't kept.

If you're starting out, start from the discovery ladder: problem interviews, the commitments you've earned at each rung, and stop rules you set yourself. It helps you work out your go-to-market: which customers first, which channel, what price and which partners, tested before you spend.

Not trading yet and not sure you should be? Start with "Should I start this?"

Your business on one map, in your own words

The business sits at the centre with ten systems around it: customers, rivals, suppliers, channels, rules, lenders, people, tools, community and you. Every connection reads as a sentence, so you see the whole business, and what it depends on, before deciding what to change.

The same map gives you a one-page Lean Canvas, each cell showing its claims and how well they're evidenced, so you get your business model on a page without filling in a template again.

How your map is built, step by step

What it connects to

Bring in what you already keep: CSV and Excel files, documents, OneDrive, Companies House facts about any company, and any system you run through its web API, read-only. Research comes from the web, cited, on a schedule you set. Xero and FreeAgent are coming, with QuickBooks and Sage after them.

• Spreadsheets: CSV and Excel
• Documents and images
• OneDrive
• Companies House
• Any web API, read-only
• Web research, cited
• Email a named person a question
• Xero Coming
• FreeAgent Coming

Just Good Business reads your books. It never writes to them.

What it connects to, in full

Every claim graded by its evidence

Each load-bearing claim is marked by analogy, from research, from data, or backed by a paying customer. A section is only as sure as its weakest claim, and every open section names the one step that would raise it. So you know which parts of the assessment are solid, which are a hunch, and what to do next.

Anything the AI suggests stays "proposed" until a person confirms it. Nothing a machine writes becomes a fact about your business without your yes.

Scores come three ways and are never blended: the maths from your stocks and flows, your own placement on anchored scales (with what your records show beside it), and audit bands that say what the next band needs.

Your cash, tested before it runs short

The cash budget runs month by month under worst, base and best cases drawn from your own history. See what happens if customers pay later or sales dip, and how many months you have before cash runs out. Runway is a standing number you can watch, so you know what breaks first and when.

Your finances stay private: money is visible only to you and the people you name, such as your accountant or a co-founder. Everyone else on your team sees "the owner's figure", so you can use the whole assessment with them without sharing your accounts.

Busy, or actually profitable?

Contribution per job, and per hour of whatever you're shortest of. Break-even, your margin of safety and where break-even moves when you hire. Concentration, so you can see how much rests on one customer.

On the operations side, demand against capacity, the bottleneck found from your own job records, and your fixes put in the order that frees it. Your pipeline by stage, the cost to win a customer, how long they stay, and the loops that compound growth or drain it.

Your market, sized from buyers you can count

The count of buyers you can actually reach sits beside the published market figure, with what separates them, so you know which number to plan against. Rivals, their prices and the value your customers get sit in one grid, every cell sourced, with a positioning map on three axes you choose.

Research on your market, rivals, demand, rules and funding routes arrives as cited proposals you accept, edit or reject. The outside world enters your model on your say-so, and it's kept current on a schedule you set.

Growth options, ranked on time and on money

Options along the lines the business already has, each ranked with every part of the ranking shown. For each one: the weeks to a first paying customer, to break-even and to cash back, beside what it earns per unit of what you're shortest of. Rank by time or by money, whichever matters more to you right now, and flip it whenever you like.

Each option can be run through your cash under worst, base and best cases, so you see the cash trough before you commit. The top three are attacked before you spend: the demand they need, the break-even volume, what would prove them wrong, and the smallest honest test.

Pivot warning signs are checked on a schedule, so if the shape of the business can't win, you see it early, while it's still a choice.

Stress tests: know what breaks before it breaks

What if your biggest customer leaves? What if one order swallows the business, or everyone pays a month late? Stress tests run through your cash and your operations, link by link, so you can see the knock-on effects and what to do about them now.

A plan, not a report

Every finding lands as a small business case with a first action, an owner, a date and a priority, and the three that matter most are picked out. Options sit in Now, Soon and Later, in the order their prerequisites allow, each with its reason.

You get the full assessment document and a one-page summary that shows the whole business, exported to Word, PDF or a spreadsheet for your adviser, lender or buyer.

Also included: tax-relief condition checks (each condition met, not met or not known, always with "take advice before relying on this"), an IP register, a filing calendar built from your own dates, sector rules for your trade, and an innovation radar.

Reassessment: see exactly what moved

Each assessment is kept as a snapshot. Come back with fresh numbers and it re-runs, showing target, model and actual on every measure and exactly what changed since last time. A measure drifting from plan comes back as a finding with a next step. A reminder arrives at six weeks, then quarterly, so the plan stays live.

You stay in charge

• Every figure comes from your own records or a number you typed. The AI explains and cites its sources; it never invents a number.
• Nothing the AI proposes becomes part of your assessment until you confirm it.
• No single overall score and no verdict. You see the evidence, and the decision stays yours.
• More than fifty specialised AI agents, running on SOSX, do the research, checking and drafting, so your hours go into the decisions.