§A metric

The Kinako Score.

A single number from 0 to 100 representing the operating health of your freelance business. Six weighted components. Updated daily. Built to be hard to game and easy to glance at.

Strava has pace. Duolingo has streak. Solos didn’t have a number — until now.

Why a single number

What an experienced operator would notice at a glance.

An experienced solo can look at their business for thirty seconds and tell you what’s healthy and what’s about to bite. The pipeline is thin. Two clients are too concentrated. The invoice from March is still sitting in “sent.” The hours billable this month are tracking below last month’s.

The Kinako Score is the codified version of that glance. Six things an experienced operator would check, computed from data you already have, expressed as one number. It recomputes every time you look and a snapshot is kept daily, so the dashboard shows a trend — you can watch the number respond to what you actually did.

It is deliberately weighted across components so it can’t be gamed by any single behaviour. Proposals stop counting 90 days after they’re sent, no single proposal can carry more than half the pipeline, and every revenue figure is money received— not paperwork issued. You can’t hit 90 by sending invoices. You can’t hit 90 by closing one big client. Balance is the score.

Six components

What the number is made of.

Each component scores from 0 to 100. The total is the weighted average. Weights sum to 100%.

Pipeline Health
20%
Live proposals — sent or being read, less than 90 days old — vs. your last 30 days of money received. A healthy pipeline is roughly 2× that. Stale proposals age out, and no single proposal can carry more than half the target.
Payment Velocity
20%
Average days from invoice issued to paid, over the last 90 days. Under seven is excellent; over forty-five drags the rest of the score down with it.
Active Workload
15%
Number of active projects. Two to five is the sweet spot — fewer means the pipeline is thin, more means you're likely overcommitted.
Receivables Health
15%
Uncollected balances — including the unpaid remainder of deposit invoices — relative to money received. Everything collected is a perfect score; money sitting out past your revenue is the risk.
Growth Trajectory
15%
Money received in the last 30 days vs. the 30 before — rolling, so the score never craters on the 1st of a month. Direction matters more than magnitude.
Client Diversification
15%
Concentration risk. If one client is most of your recent revenue, the score reflects the fragility — it's a risk statement, not a grade on the work.

Five grades

Where you land.

The grade is a quick label for the number. New accounts — fewer than three invoices, or younger than two weeks — sit at Buildingand don’t show a numeric total at all. The data isn’t enough to be honest about it yet, and we’d rather show nothing than a number that lies.

Range	Grade	What it means
80–100	Elite	Operating at a high level across every component.
60–79	Strong	Healthy. Watch concentration and pipeline depth.
40–59	Good	Most components are working. Push one to strong and the rest follow.
20–39	Fair	The fundamentals are forming. Payment velocity or pipeline usually moves first.
0–19	Building	Early. Add a few more invoices and proposals — the score sharpens with data.

Raising it

How to move the number.

There are no tricks — every lever is just running the business well. The dashboard points at your weakest component and the one move that raises it. The full list:

Keep two proposals live at all times
Pipeline is a fifth of the score, and it decays — proposals age out after 90 days. Sending one solid proposal when the pipeline thins is the single highest-leverage move in the system.
Invoice the moment work ships, then chase
Velocity measures issued-to-paid, so late invoicing costs you nothing but late chasing does. Send reminders on anything past seven days — Kinako automates these.
Collect before you stack more work
Receivables scores what's still out against what came in. A deposit on every new project keeps money landing while the work is in flight.
Hold two to five active projects
Zero active projects reads as stall; nine reads as overload. Close finished projects promptly — 'done but still open' quietly drags the workload band.
Mind the 30-day rhythm
Growth compares the last 30 days of money received to the 30 before. Steady beats spiky: a deposit-plus-balance structure smooths revenue into both windows.
Add a second (and third) client
When one client is under a third of your revenue, diversification is perfect. The move isn't dropping a good client — it's pitching the next one before you need to.

One honest caveat: if a single client is most of your revenue, the diversification component stays low no matter how well everything else runs. That’s deliberate. Concentration is the classic solo fragility — the score won’t pretend otherwise.

Private by default

Your score is yours.

Your Kinako Score is computed from your own workspace data, and a daily snapshot is kept so you can see your own trend. It isn’t shared with anyone. It isn’t public. We don’t rank you against other Kinako users. It is a private metric for one person — you.

Future versions of the score may include an opt-in “Kinako-verified solo” badge for users above 80 — a credential clients can look for. That stays opt-in. Default is private.

Try the product

See your own Kinako Score.

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