Calculating ProfitWhat comes back after you send

Before any calendar

We read the month as closed, or we say it is still open. If it is closed, the four words get named in the only order they work, and cash gets its own line. If a word cannot be named from what you sent, the reply says which one.

A margin widget does not show up in that reply, and neither does a slice of the sales offered as a finished answer. Sending the month is about the order, including the last word, the one about what you can take.

After the reply you can book a time, or you can stop. Stopping is allowed. The month you sent is still yours, either way.

What you leave holding

You leave with the words named, or with a plain statement that the month is still open. Both are worth having. A time on a calendar is a later choice. It is not the price of having the month read.

If a loan is what lifted the bank, the reply says so, and it says that the words did not have to move with it. If a draw is already drafted, the reply says whether the last word has been spoken yet.

By the time a fall question arrives, summer may already be locked and only the remaining months can still move. We read what is closed. We name what is not. An open stretch stays named as open. We will not dress it up as a forecast.

A deposit is not a word

Money a customer paid before you did the work can sit in the bank and still be theirs until the work happens. The reply labels that as a deposit, not as gross. Counting it as a sale makes the first word early, and it makes a later month look worse than it was, once the work is done and the cash has already been counted.

Work you already finished, still waiting on a check, can count as a word while the bank stays quiet. The reply names that gap. Anyone who has waited on a slow payer knows the feeling. The word and the bank may land in different months, and the reply is where that gap gets a name.

The next word in the order