The request
From Laura Bennett, Head of Finance
“Catherine wants a proper monthly business review from now on, starting with the latest month. December is still settling, a lot of its last-week orders are pending. Can you put the review together? Same KPIs every month, so we can compare. Leadership meets on Thursday.”
Your goal
Choose the version of the review you would agree with Laura before touching the data.
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What Laura gets, and why
The lesson
Why framing comes first
“Send me the monthly numbers” sounds simple, but every word hides a choice. The checklist most analysts use to make those choices is SMART:
- Specific: which month and which KPIs. Here: November 2025; net revenue, completed orders, average order value, buyers (new and returning), refunds issued and web conversion.
- Measurable: each KPI has one definition, written down. Revenue is net line revenue on completed orders, without shipping. A new buyer is someone whose first completed order falls in the month. Refunds are counted on the day they are issued.
- Achievable: is the month complete? November is. December still has orders marked pending, most of them from its last ten days.
- Relevant: what does leadership do with it? The review should end with the one or two changes worth acting on, not a wall of numbers.
- Time-bound: ready for Thursday, and repeated every month the same way.
Compared with what?
A KPI on its own means little. A monthly review shows two comparisons side by side:
- Month over month (MoM), November against October. It shows the latest direction, but for a retailer it is dominated by the season: November always beats October.
- Year over year (YoY), November 2025 against November 2024. It removes the season, so it is the fairer test of whether the business is growing.
Even YoY can mislead when the calendar shifts. Thanksgiving was on November 28 in 2024 and November 27 in 2025, so the Black Friday weekend does not fall in exactly the same days of November in both years. A careful review notes that before reading too much into a few percent.
What the plan looks like
| Step | What you do | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Check | Count orders by status per month, find where pending orders sit | a status table |
| Analyse | The KPIs for November 2025, October 2025 and November 2024 | a 3-row KPI table |
| Explain | Drill into the KPI that moved the wrong way | a small breakdown |
| Recommend | The headline and the caveats | three or four sentences |
Interview note
“Which KPIs would you put in a monthly review for an online store?” comes up in most analyst interviews. A strong answer names a small set (revenue, orders, average order value, customers new and returning, returns, conversion), defines each, compares with last month and last year, and mentions that the month has to be closed before it is reported.
Lantern lit!
Practised: smart goalproblem framingkpi definitionmomyoy
- Solved
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