Break-Even & Payback Module
Break-Even & Payback
See exactly when your business — or a venture you’re just planning — starts paying for itself, with a chart of the whole trajectory and NPV/IRR for a rigorous, accountant-grade view.
Start here
1Before you start
This tool is part of the opt-in Profitability Assistant — the same switch that powers the coaching insights on your Dashboard. If it isn’t already turned on, opening Break-Even & Payback shows a one-click prompt to enable it.
Turning on Profitability Assistant here also turns on the Dashboard’s own loss/overdue/stale-entry coaching insights, and vice versa — it’s one on/off decision for the whole coaching feature, not two separate ones.
Once it’s on, you’ll see two modes at the top of the page: Use My Actual Numbers and Plan a New Venture. Switch between them anytime — nothing you enter in one affects the other.
2Use my actual numbers
This mode reads your company’s real monthly income and expenses straight from Accounting (or Reports, in Simple mode) — nothing to type in for the numbers themselves. It shows you, based on how the business has actually been trending, when cumulative cash flow has turned (or will turn) positive.
| Field | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Monthly income & expenses | The same Profit & Loss / Income vs. Expense figures Accounting and Reports already show you, for the last 12 months. |
| Investment / Starting Cost | Defaults to your company’s total Fixed Assets book value — edit it if the real number you’re measuring against is different (e.g. cash actually put in, not just equipment on the books). |
If your company is brand new with little or no income/expense history yet, this mode won’t have much to show — log a few entries first, or switch to Plan a New Venture to model it forward instead.
3Plan a new venture
Thinking about a new product line, a piece of equipment, or a whole new business? This mode needs no history at all — just your own assumptions.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Initial Investment | What it costs to get started. |
| Fixed Costs / Month | Rent, salaries, subscriptions — costs that don’t change with how much you sell. |
| Variable Cost / Unit | What it costs you to produce or deliver one unit. |
| Price / Unit | What you charge for one unit. |
| Expected Units Sold / Month | Your best estimate of monthly volume. |
From these five numbers, it projects 36 months forward at a flat monthly rate and shows you the same break-even/payback picture as Actual mode — plus a break-even volume figure (how many units/month you need to sell just to cover fixed costs), which only applies here since it’s a unit-economics calculation.
If your price per unit isn’t higher than your variable cost per unit, the venture never breaks even no matter how much you sell — the tool will tell you this directly instead of showing a break-even volume.
4Reading the results
Both modes show the same three things, once there’s enough to calculate from:
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Break-Even Point
The first month cumulative net cash flow reaches zero or above — the point where, overall, the business (or venture) has stopped losing money.
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Payback Period
The first month cumulative net cash flow reaches your Investment / Starting Cost figure — when that money is fully recovered. This is always at or after the Break-Even Point.
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The chart
A running line of cumulative net cash flow, with a green marker at Break-Even and an amber marker at Payback, so you can see the shape of the whole trajectory, not just the two headline numbers.
For a deeper look
5Advanced: NPV & IRR
Break-Even Point and Payback Period ignore one thing: money today is worth more than the same money a year from now. Click Show Advanced to bring in a real capital-budgeting view.
| Term | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Discount Rate | Your assumed annual cost of capital or required return — defaults to 10%, edit it to match your own situation. |
| NPV (Net Present Value) | The value today of every future month’s cash flow, discounted back at your chosen rate, minus the investment. Positive means the venture is worth more than it costs, in today’s money. |
| IRR (Internal Rate of Return) | The annual return rate at which NPV would be exactly zero — a single percentage you can compare against your discount rate, or against other opportunities. |
Both recompute instantly as you change the discount rate or any input, so you can see how sensitive the picture is to your assumptions.
Reference
Break-even vs. payback vs. NPV/IRR
Quick way to keep these straight: Break-Even asks “when do I stop losing money?” Payback asks “when do I get my original investment back?” NPV/IRR ask “is this actually a good use of capital, accounting for the fact that money today beats money later?” All four numbers come from the exact same underlying cash-flow projection — they’re just different lenses on it.
What this tool doesn’t do
Plan a New Venture projects the same monthly net cash flow forward for all 36 months — it doesn’t model growth, seasonality, or a ramp-up period. For a business with real, uneven history, use Actual mode instead.
It projects break-even/payback based on your trailing 12-month trend continuing, not on a separate forward forecast.
This is a live calculator, not a record-keeping module — there’s no history of past calculations to look back on. Change an input and the results update immediately; nothing persists once you navigate away.