Your Books home page is where Mercury Books opens. It gives you your cash position, revenue, and expenses for a period you choose, so you can see where your business stands without pulling a report. This article explains what each figure means and how the date range works.
Setting the date range
Use the date selector at the top of the page to choose the period you're looking at. You can pick a preset range or set a custom one.
The charts adjust their detail to the range you choose:
- A range of a month or less plots a point per day
- A longer range groups into weeks
- A longer range still groups into months, then quarters
Hover any point on a chart to see the exact dates it covers and its value.
Note: Every figure on the page reflects the date range you've selected, not today's date — with one exception, noted under burn rate below.
Cash
Your total cash across every account in your books. Bank account balances count positively, credit card balances count against them, and payment processor balances are included — so this is your net cash position, not just what's in your Mercury accounts.
The accompanying chart shows how that balance moved over the period.
Burn rate and runway
Burn rate is your average monthly net cash outflow, calculated from your last three completed months. It deliberately ignores the date range you've selected, so the number stays stable as you move around the page.
Runway is how long your current cash lasts at that burn rate.
A few things to know:
- Burn rate appears once you have three completed months of activity in your books. Before then you'll see a message telling you when it will appear
- If your cash flow is net positive over those three months, there's no burn to report and the figure shows as unavailable
Revenue
Your total revenue for the selected period, with a trend chart and a Revenue sources breakdown split across your revenue accounts.
The breakdown lists every revenue account in your chart of accounts, so accounts with no activity in the period show as zero rather than dropping out.
Expenses
Your total expenses for the selected period, broken down by account.
Two numbers appear per category, and they measure different things:
- The percentage next to each category is that category's spend as a share of your revenue — the standard way to read an expense on an income statement
- The bar underneath compares that category to your largest expense category. Your biggest category fills the bar, and everything else is drawn relative to it
Categories accounting for less than one percent of revenue show as <1%.
Keeping the numbers accurate
These figures come straight from your books, so uncategorized transactions leave gaps in them. If a period has transactions still waiting to be categorized, the page tells you how many and links you to them.
For the full detail behind any figure here, go to Reports. See our Understanding reports in Mercury Books article.
FAQs
Why is my revenue here different from my Profit & Loss?
Check that the date range matches. If it does, the likely cause is uncategorized transactions — categorize them and both will agree.
Why don't I see a burn rate?
Either you don't yet have three completed months of activity in your books, or your cash flow was net positive across those three months.
Does the cash figure include my Treasury balance?
No. Treasury activity isn't part of your books.
Can I change which figures appear here?
Not currently. For a specific view of your numbers, use Reports, where you can set any period and filter by tag.
Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and Column N.A., Members FDIC.