KPIs Every VP of Finance Must Track
VP Finance owns the metrics that connect growth to profitability and runway: margins, cash flow, and the unit economics that determine how efficiently the business converts revenue into durable value.
Why these metrics matter
The VP of Finance is the executive who must reconcile growth with sustainability, which means owning both the profitability metrics and the efficiency metrics that determine how long the company can fund its plan. Recurring revenue (ARR, MRR) frames the top line, but the VP's core focus is what happens beneath it: gross margin and operating margin reveal how much of each revenue dollar survives the cost of delivery and the cost of running the business, while EBITDA provides the standardized profitability view boards and investors compare against. Free cash flow and burn rate translate the P&L into the reality that matters most to a growing company: how much runway remains and whether the business is trending toward self-funding. On the growth-efficiency side, CAC payback period and LTV/CAC ratio tell the VP whether revenue is being acquired profitably, and expansion revenue and NRR show whether the existing base compounds without constant reinvestment. Revenue per employee captures organizational efficiency as headcount scales. The discipline of the VP of Finance is refusing to celebrate growth in isolation: the job is to show whether that growth is being bought at a price the business can sustain, and to give the leadership team the forward visibility to adjust before a cash or margin problem becomes a crisis.
Questions you should be able to answer
If you cannot answer these, you are missing critical visibility into your function.
- How many months of runway remain at current burn, and what is our trajectory toward free cash flow positivity?
- Are gross and operating margins improving as we scale, or is cost of delivery eroding profitability?
- Is CAC payback period short enough that growth is self-funding rather than cash-consuming?
- Is NRR and expansion revenue strong enough that the base compounds without constant new acquisition spend?
- How is revenue per employee trending as we add headcount?
- Where is the largest gap between planned and actual spend, and what is driving the variance?
Your core KPIs
Every metric includes definition, formula, platforms, causal drivers, and Q&A.
How causal analysis changes the game
Explore other role guides
Each guide covers the full set of KPIs for that function with role-specific context.
Related Resources
askotter capabilities and guides that help this role act on these metrics.
Want to know which of these is costing you money?
Give us your website and we will send back the specific pages worth fixing first, and what each one is costing you. You will have it within one business day, free, with no obligation.