For Good Measure Know how to take your company's vital statistics.

As any successful business owner can attest, keeping a company on track requires constant analysis: assessing your strengths and weaknesses, understanding your financial position and evaluating the risks you may be taking.

While keeping tabs on the financial health of your business might seem daunting, doing a regular checkup isn't as complicated as it sounds. Some basic ratio analysis will help you check your business's temperature, identify potential problems, and see if your company is on the road to financial freedom or a cash-flow crisis.

And because cash flow is the single most important factor in managing a profitable business, measuring liquidity is absolutely essential. "You have to constantly know what your current ratio is--your assets divided by your liabilities--and as long as your number is one or above, at least you're afloat," says Tom Bayer, partner in Sikich LLP, an accounting and business consulting firm in Springfield, Illinois. He suggests reviewing your income statement and your balance sheet monthly and assessing your projected cash flow report monthly, or even weekly, depending on how tight cash flow is.