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Free tool

Capacity Calculator

Sales creates revenue, operations delivers it, finance funds it. Each one has a ceiling in dollars of monthly revenue, and the lowest of the three caps the whole business. This works out which one is yours.

What you will need

  • Average monthly revenue, last three months
  • Close rate and average sale, or one honest sales ceiling
  • What you can deliver in a normal month
  • Cash, unused credit, gross margin, and the days you wait to get paid

Rough numbers are fine. Nothing leaves your browser.

Work out your capacity

Current throughput

Start with what the business does today. Use the average gross revenue for the last three months.

Gross revenue is the top line number: how much money the business actually brought in overall.

Add the last three months and divide by three. Rough is fine.

Sales: create the revenue

How much business could your sales system reasonably produce each month? Not in a perfect world: what your current people, processes, and habits actually support right now.

Aim high, but keep it honest. If the team is coasting at $100,000 a month, $150,000 is fair. If they are flat out every day and still land at $100,000, then $100,000 is the number.

Qualified means people who could buy and have reached the point where your sales process has to work them. Not raw leads.

What the sellers could work properly at current staffing. If 30 come in and 5 get skipped every month, you handle 25.

The percentage of qualified opportunities that become customers. Enter a percent, like 30.

Or give us the number directly

Plenty of businesses do not track a qualified-opportunity funnel at all. If yours does not, leave the four questions above blank and answer this one instead.

The same honest ceiling, stated as one figure. If you answered the questions above, we use those and ignore this.

Operations: deliver the revenue

Pick your own unit of delivery, then answer for a normal month. Sustainable means month after month without overtime, delays, quality problems, or adding people. A heroic month is not capacity.

At current staffing, equipment, and processes. Not your best month ever.

Finance: fund the revenue

How much business can your cash carry? Bookkeeping speed is a different problem. Growth eats cash before it pays: you fund the work first and get paid later.

The undrawn part of a line of credit or similar.

The floor you never want to go below.

Enter a percent, like 40. The remainder is what each new dollar of work costs you in cash.

AR is accounts receivable. Paid upfront is 0. Weekly payroll with customers on Net 30 is often 30 to 45. Construction can run 45 to 90.

Start the conversation

Want the constraint named properly?

Thirty minutes on the phone. Bring your three numbers and we will tell you what moves the ceiling first.

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