Run the Business
The operational machinery of APB — the Cockpit (APB HQ), the numbers rhythm, and the admin backbone. The first Pilot-track pillar: where Lead runs desks and people, Pilot runs the firm.
The Bill and Lead tracks make money and grow people. P1 keeps the lights on and the firm legible: the financial rhythm, the operating systems (now consolidated in APB HQ), and the admin backbone that, if neglected, quietly becomes an existential risk — a missed BAS, a working-capital crunch, an uninsured exposure. This module documents what has historically lived in the Director's head so the firm can be run on a rhythm, not from memory.
Source-of-truth note: the live numbers, balances and obligations live in APB HQ → Finance Hub (fed from Xero). P1 teaches the discipline and rhythm; HQ holds the data. This page links to HQ — it never duplicates figures.
The repeatable machinery: operating the Cockpit, the financial rhythm, tax/compliance, tech & vendors, working-capital cover. The "is the firm healthy and on-rhythm?" question, answered weekly.
The directional calls: strategy, hiring planning, fee architecture, and the crisis playbook. The "where is the firm going and what big calls do we make?" question. See P2 Steer the Business.
Run keeps the firm alive and legible; Steer decides its direction. You do both as MD — but they're different disciplines on different cadences, which is why they're separate pillars.
Compass is the firm's execution backbone, based on the Rockefeller Habits hierarchy:
| Level | What it is |
|---|---|
| Goal | A top-level target — the firm's north-star objectives. |
| Rock | A quarterly initiative that moves a Goal forward. |
| To-Do | A recurring or one-off task. |
| Issue | A blocker or risk to surface and resolve. |
- Run it weekly: review Rocks and Issues at the weekly cadence; nothing important should be untracked.
- Tie the desk plans in: desk quarterly plans (L2) and account actions (L3) become Rocks/To-Dos so the whole firm's commitments live in one place.
- Issues get owners and dates — a surfaced Issue without an owner is just an anxiety.
Compass is canonical for project/operational state — it is never mirrored elsewhere. Open it in APB HQ.
The Finance Hub is the single place to answer "how is the firm doing financially, right now?" It's a view over Xero (the source of truth), organised into the working areas you act on:
Net available cash, the headline health view. The first number you look at.
Bank balances across accounts; the real cash on hand.
Who owes us, what's overdue, the collection stage of each invoice.
What we owe and when — bills and upcoming payments.
Plus Tax & Obligations (BAS, PAYG, super) — covered under Backbone & Admin below.
Read-only from APB OS. The Finance Hub reads from Xero and never writes financial records back. Xero is populated through its own UI and bank feeds; invoicing pushes happen only through the controlled, reviewed path. Don't treat the Hub as a place to "edit the finances."
Where L1 (People Leadership) is the craft of leading people, the People & HR module in HQ is the system of record: staff master data, leave balances and requests, weekly KPI submissions, and coaching/commission state. As MD you use it to:
- See the team's KPI actuals vs targets (the same data the desk reviews run on).
- Manage leave and the shutdown plan.
- Hold the data that performance reviews, promotions and comp run off (L1).
The leadership approach lives in L1 People Leadership; the People & HR module is where the resulting records and numbers live. Use them together.
The discipline is to watch a small set of decision-grade numbers, not drown in dashboards. The essentials:
- Cash position — daily glance.
- AR / overdue — weekly; what's owed and what's late.
- Pipeline & forecast — weekly; the desks' rolled-up forecast (from L2).
- P&L & KPIs — monthly; how the firm actually performed.
If a report doesn't change a decision, stop watching it. The point of the Cockpit is faster, better calls — not more screens.
- One source of truth per thing: Xero for money, the CRM for clients/jobs, Compass for projects, People & HR for staff. Don't fork data across systems.
- Timely entry: KPI submissions, invoice stages and pipeline updates entered on cadence — stale data breaks the forecast and the reports.
- Reconcile regularly: the monthly reconciliation (below) is what keeps the financial view honest.
Garbage in, garbage steered. A firm that doesn't keep its data clean is flying on instruments it can't trust — which is more dangerous than no instruments at all.
Every working day, look at the cash position in the Finance Hub. Not to act every day — but so a problem is never a surprise. Cash is the one thing a profitable firm can still die of.
- Net available cash — is it where it should be for this point in the month/payroll cycle?
- Anything unusual — a big expected receipt that hasn't landed, an unexpected outflow.
Daily cash awareness is cheap insurance. The cost of a 30-second glance is nothing; the cost of discovering a shortfall the day payroll runs is the business.
| Watch | The question / action |
|---|---|
| AR & overdue | Who owes us, what's overdue? Drive collections (M4) — overdue cash is your cash sitting in someone else's account. |
| Payroll cover | Is the next payroll fully covered with margin? This is the non-negotiable — see Working Capital Cover. |
| Pipeline / forecast | The desks' rolled-up forecast (from L2). Does expected billing support the cash plan? |
The weekly loop exists to catch a cash or coverage problem while there's still time to act — chase an overdue invoice, accelerate a placement, or hold a discretionary spend. By month-end it's too late to do anything but absorb it.
- Reconcile — bring the books in line so the financial view is trustworthy (data hygiene in practice).
- P&L review — revenue, costs, margin vs plan. Understand the why behind the variance, not just the number.
- KPIs — firm and desk performance for the month (the same KPI data the desks run on, rolled up).
- Obligations check — BAS/PAYG/super cycle on track (see Tax & Obligations).
The monthly close is where running (P1) feeds steering (P2): the variance and KPI story is the raw input to the strategic calls you make as MD.
- Quarter vs plan — billings, margin, cash, KPIs across the firm and each desk.
- Reforecast — update the full-year view based on actuals and current pipeline, not the original optimism.
- Set the next quarter's Rocks — in Compass; this is where running hands the baton to steering (P2).
The quarterly reforecast is the firm-level equivalent of the desk's monthly reforecast (L2). Accurate forecasting at every level is what lets APB plan cash and hiring with confidence.
| Signal | Act |
|---|---|
| Cash below the comfort line | Chase AR hard, hold discretionary spend, check payroll cover, escalate if needed. |
| AR ageing / overdue rising | Drive collections (M4 cadence); flag chronic late-payers to the desks (L3 profitability). |
| Pipeline thin vs forecast | BD push at desk level (L2); reforecast honestly. |
| Margin slipping | Investigate fee yield (L2/L3) and cost creep; act in P2 (fee architecture). |
| Obligation due (BAS/super) | Ensure funded and paid on time — never optional. |
A rhythm with no triggers is just reporting. Each loop should end with "so what do we do this week?" — or it's not earning its time.
These are the obligations that quietly accumulate and then arrive as a large, dated demand. The discipline is to fund as you go and pay on time, every cycle:
Business Activity Statement on the ATO cycle. GST collected isn't the firm's money — set it aside.
Pay-As-You-Go withholding on wages, remitted on cycle.
Employee super, paid by the due dates — late super carries real penalties and is non-negotiable.
Treat tax set-asides as money that was never the firm's to spend. The Profit-First-style discipline — allocate obligations out of cash as it arrives — is what prevents the "we owe how much BAS?" crisis.
- Year-end close — clean books, reconciled, ready for the accountant.
- Financial statements & company tax return — prepared and lodged on the annual cycle.
- The accountant relationship — APB's external accountant handles preparation/lodgement; the MD's job is clean data and timely sign-off.
APB runs on a defined stack — the CRM, comms, accounting, sourcing and internal systems. Managing it means knowing what we pay for, what it's for, and when it renews.
APB HQ (internal platform) · the CRM (Monday today → HQ CRM) · Xero (accounting) · Aircall (phone) · Google Workspace · Seek / LinkedIn / SignalHire (sourcing) · e-signature platform.
Track subscriptions, owners, renewal dates and cost. Review periodically — kill what isn't used, renegotiate what's grown. Vendor/renewal data lives in APB HQ.
The full tool list, logins and setup guides are the Operations domain → Tech Stack & Logins (a planned Codex section). P1 covers the management discipline; the detailed reference lives there.
- Business insurances — professional indemnity, public liability, and any others relevant to a recruitment firm. Know what's covered and the renewal dates.
- Registrations — company registration, ABN/GST, and any industry or state registrations kept current.
- Renewal tracking — these renew annually; a lapsed policy or registration is a serious, avoidable exposure.
Recruitment is a cash-timing business — you pay people and incur costs before clients pay invoices. Working-capital cover is the buffer that absorbs that timing gap and the lumpy nature of placements.
- Always cover payroll + obligations with a margin — this is the floor beneath every other decision.
- Hold a buffer sized to the firm's cash-timing and the volatility of billings. Know the number.
- Protect it before discretionary spend — hiring, tools and investments come after cover is secure, not before.
- Watch the leading indicators — AR ageing, pipeline thinness and forecast misses all threaten cover before the bank balance shows it.
Profit is an opinion; cash is a fact. A firm can be profitable on paper and still fail by running out of cash. Working-capital cover is the rule that prevents it — never breach it to chase growth.
| Cadence | Focus |
|---|---|
| Daily | Cash position — a 30-second glance in the Finance Hub. |
| Weekly | AR & overdue · payroll cover · pipeline/forecast · Compass Rocks & Issues. |
| Monthly | Reconcile · P&L · KPIs · obligations check. |
| Quarterly | Full review · reforecast · set next quarter's Rocks (→ P2). |
| Annual | Financial statements · company tax · insurance & registration renewals. |
Related: P2 Steer the Business (strategy, hiring, fee architecture, crisis) · M4 Billing (collections) · L2 Desk Leadership (forecast/KPIs). P1 runs the firm; the live data lives in APB HQ.