Free tool · Business Health Score
Business financial health scorefrom five readings.
Enter nine figures from your books. The calculator scores five dimensions from Helcyon's published Business Health Score framework and combines them so the weakest reading sets the number, the way a doctor reads a panel of results rather than averaging them.
Your numbers
Cash
Cash Runway
Bank balances you can use. Leave out credit lines.
Cash out minus cash in. Zero if you are not burning.
The claim on cash that cannot slip.
Margin
Margin Trajectory
Percent, latest month.
Percent, same measure.
Customers
Revenue Concentration
Collections, last 30 days
Collection Efficiency
Payments received from customers.
What you billed in the same window.
Growth
Growth Quality
Percent. Negative numbers are fine.
Nothing you type leaves this page.
helcyon — health score
Example figures
Business Health Score
39
/ 100Weighted composite of five readings. Weakest: Margin Trajectory.
Weak 35 to 54
At least one dimension is well below its midpoint and is pulling the composite down. This is where profitable businesses sit before the cash problem becomes visible.
The five readings
Each scored 0 to 100
Cash Runway
weight 30%
3.2 months
55
Margin Trajectory
weight 25%
-8.1%
27
Revenue Concentration
weight 20%
46% from top three
33
Collection Efficiency
weight 15%
0.92 collected per $1
85
Growth Quality
weight 10%
+11.0%
83
Dangerous combinations
None present at these readings.
First move: Margin Trajectory
Price analysis, a cost audit, and a product-mix review.
Published framework, simplified. Not Helcyon's production engine.
How it is built →What moves the score
The paper's treatments, one applied per card
Restore gross margin to where it was
49 / 100
Bring the top three under 35% of revenue
44 / 100
Add one month of runway
41 / 100
Based on published research
This calculator implements the Helcyon Business Health Score as published in Cadence and Construction: A Monthly Diagnostic Framework for Small Business Financial Distress (April 2026, SSRN, DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6661538), a working paper by Helcyon's founder Lukas Swid. The paper describes the framework as a diagnostic, not a prediction, and labels its weights and thresholds as informed estimates pending validation.
The method
How a business financial health score is built.
Five readings, each scored 0 to 100, combined so that the weakest one sets the tone. The dimensions, weights and penalty rules below are the paper's.
Cash Runway
weight 30%
Cash ÷ the larger of net burn and payroll
Runway against the most binding monthly claim on cash, so payroll-driven failure shows even when net burn looks mild.
Under 60 days of runway is the action level in the paper.
Margin Trajectory
weight 25%
(Gross margin now − gross margin 90 days ago) ÷ gross margin 90 days ago
The direction of gross margin over a quarter. Margin usually moves before cash does.
A falling trajectory is the signal, regardless of the level.
Revenue Concentration
weight 20%
Revenue from the top three customers ÷ total revenue
Dependence on a few customers. One departure can take the business with it.
Above 40% the paper treats concentration as a binary risk.
Collection Efficiency
weight 15%
Cash collected ÷ revenue invoiced, rolling 30 days
Whether customers are paying. Sustained weakness reads as a weakening customer base, not a billing problem.
Below 0.85 for two consecutive months is the paper's warning level.
Growth Quality
weight 10%
Revenue growth × (1 − |margin change|) × cash position
Growth that arrives with margin compression or cash drain is penalised. Fast growth can be the failure mode.
Negative growth quality is the signal, even when revenue is rising.
Step 1 · Normalise
Each raw reading becomes a 0 to 100 score.
Score = 100 ÷ (1 + e^(−k(x − μ)))
An S-curve rather than a straight line, so a reading does not fall off a cliff at a threshold. The paper sets the midpoint by industry. This calculator uses general-business midpoints: midpoint 3 months of runway, midpoint 40% of revenue from the top three customers, the paper's threshold, midpoint 0.85 collected per dollar invoiced, the paper's threshold.
Step 2 · Combine
The weakest reading dominates.
H = (Σ wᵢ × Sᵢ^p)^(1/p), p = −2
A weighted negative power mean. With the exponent at minus two, low scores pull the composite down far more than high scores lift it. Four strong readings and one critical one score closer to the critical one than to the average. That is deliberate: a strong margin should never hide a dangerous cash position.
Step 3 · Penalise combinations
Some weaknesses are worse together.
P = 1 − Σ δⱼ, capped at 0.40
- Short runway with concentrated revenue: −20%
- Falling margin with weak collections: −18%
- Short runway with falling margin: −15%
- Poor growth quality with concentrated revenue: −12%
What the score is built to catch
Three ways a healthy-looking business fails.
The paper describes three pattern signatures. Each one passes a profit and loss review and fails the score.
A
The profitable failure
Revenue holds and the income statement shows a profit, while gross margin erodes, concentration creeps up and cash decays. Margin Trajectory deteriorates first, then Revenue Concentration, then Cash Runway. The owner reads the income statement and sees health; the score reads the trajectory and sees decline.
B
Growth outrunning capital
Common in construction and contracting. Revenue grows, runway compresses, collections slip and Growth Quality turns sharply negative while margin looks stable. Ratio analysis reads this as healthy. The weakest-reading rule and the Growth Quality dimension are built to surface it.
C
The recovery
Acting on the weakest dimension first. Recovery curves are slower than deterioration curves, because structural change compounds over months while deterioration takes weeks. The score is designed to read that asymmetry correctly rather than reward a one-month bounce.
Reading the result
What your score means, and what to do first.
The bands are the calculator's, for a first read. The treatments are the paper's: it maps each weak dimension to a specific move, because a score that does not tell the operator what to do is diagnosis without treatment.
75 to 100
Healthy
No dimension is dragging the composite. Keep reading it monthly, because the score is built to move before the income statement does.
55 to 74
Watch
One or two readings are below where they should be. The weakest dimension names the first job.
35 to 54
Weak
At least one dimension is well below its midpoint and is pulling the composite down. This is where profitable businesses sit before the cash problem becomes visible.
Under 35
Critical
Several readings are weak at once, or a dangerous combination is present. The paper's treatment order applies: fix the weakest dimension first.
Weak reading, first treatment
As published
| Dimension | Signal | Treatment |
|---|---|---|
Cash Runway | Under 60 days of runway is the action level in the paper. | Accelerate collections, delay payables where terms allow, and secure a credit line before it is needed. |
Margin Trajectory | A falling trajectory is the signal, regardless of the level. | Price analysis, a cost audit, and a product-mix review. |
Revenue Concentration | Above 40% the paper treats concentration as a binary risk. | Customer prospecting and contract diversification. |
Collection Efficiency | Below 0.85 for two consecutive months is the paper's warning level. | An accounts-receivable ageing review and a collection-process audit. |
Growth Quality | Negative growth quality is the signal, even when revenue is rising. | Pause growth spending and run the unit economics before adding volume. |
Where a calculator stops
A score typed in once is a snapshot.
The paper's point is the cadence.
The framework exists because annual statements are too slow for how small businesses fail. A calculator gives you the method. It cannot give you the monthly reading.
01
It uses general midpoints
The paper sets each dimension's midpoint by industry, because 35% gross margin is healthy for a contractor and a concern for software. The calculator uses one set of midpoints for every business.
02
It is one reading
The score is designed to be taken monthly and read as a trajectory. A single number says where you are. It cannot say whether you were at 60 last quarter or at 40.
03
It trusts nine typed numbers
Concentration, collections and margin are easy to estimate kindly. The production engine reads them from the transactions, so there is nothing to estimate.
What Helcyon does with the same method
Read from the transactions, every month, against your own baseline.
Helcyon connects read-only to your accounting system, reads the underlying transactions rather than nine typed figures, calibrates each reading to the business's own history, and grades the evidence behind every finding. The result arrives as a plain-English Intelligence Brief across the five Business Vital Signs, with critical alerts in between.
Connects with the tools you already use
Questions
Business financial health, answered plainly.
What is a business financial health score?
A business financial health score is a single number, usually 0 to 100, that summarises how well a company is positioned to keep operating. A useful one is built from several readings taken from the books, such as cash runway, margin direction, customer concentration and collections, rather than from one ratio. The Helcyon Business Health Score, published as a working paper on SSRN in April 2026, scores five such dimensions monthly and combines them so the weakest reading dominates.
How do you check the financial health of a business?
Read the cash first: how many months the business can run at its current burn or payroll. Then read direction, not just level: where gross margin is heading over the last quarter, how much revenue depends on the top few customers, whether invoices are turning into cash, and whether growth is arriving with its margins intact. A profit and loss statement alone will miss most of these, which is why profitable businesses still run out of cash.
How is the Helcyon Business Health Score calculated?
Five dimensions are each scored 0 to 100: Cash Runway, Margin Trajectory, Revenue Concentration, Collection Efficiency and Growth Quality. They are combined with a weighted negative power mean, which is dominated by the lowest scores, and then reduced by a penalty factor when dangerous combinations appear together, such as a short runway alongside concentrated revenue. The published weights are 30%, 25%, 20%, 15% and 10%. The method is described in full in the paper Cadence and Construction (SSRN 6661538).
What is a good business financial health score?
On this calculator, 75 and above reads as healthy, 55 to 74 as watch, 35 to 54 as weak and under 35 as critical. Those bands are the calculator's, not the paper's. The more useful reading is the weakest dimension, because the score is designed so that one weak reading pulls the whole number down. A business at 70 with everything even is in a different position from one at 70 carried by strong collections while its runway is short.
Why does one weak reading pull the whole score down?
Because that is how small businesses fail. A simple average lets a strong margin hide a dangerous cash position. The paper uses a negative power mean with an exponent of minus two, which weights low scores far more heavily than high ones without collapsing to the single lowest value. A business with four strong readings and one critical one scores closer to the critical one than to the average.
How is this different from a business credit score or an Altman Z-score?
A business credit score measures repayment behaviour for lenders. The Altman Z-score and similar models were calibrated on large public companies using annual statements. The paper argues those models do not transfer to small businesses: the cadence is too slow and the data is the wrong data. The Business Health Score is built for monthly accounting data from systems like QuickBooks and Xero, and it is a diagnostic, not a prediction.
Is this calculator Helcyon's diagnostic engine?
No. It is the published framework, simplified for the web: the paper's dimensions, weights and penalty rules, with a general-business normalisation in place of the paper's industry-specific one. Helcyon's production engine reads the underlying transactions, calibrates each business against its own baseline, grades the evidence behind every finding and uses its own values. The paper itself labels its weights and thresholds as informed estimates pending validation.
Does this calculator save or send my numbers?
No. The calculation runs in your browser. Nothing you type is stored or sent to Helcyon.
Have the five readings taken for you.
The calculator shows the method once. Helcyon reads it from your books every month and tells you which reading moved.