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Metrics type: Key Metrics • Category: Ecommerce Platform
A single 0-100 composite of ledger health: VAT-code completeness times smart-coding-queue cleanliness times bank-recon freshness times AR-aging. One executive number that says whether the books are in good shape.

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At a glance

One number, 0 to 100, that answers the question a finance director asks first: are the books healthy right now? It is a composite of the factors that most reliably indicate whether a Sage Intacct ledger is clean and current: VAT-code completeness (are revenue lines compliant), smart-coding queue cleanliness (is the coding backlog under control), bank-reconciliation freshness (when was the last reconciliation), and AR aging (is the receivables book current or drifting overdue). No single sub-card tells the whole story; this card multiplies them into one read that drops fast when any factor degrades. It is the card you put on the executive overview so a problem in any corner of the ledger surfaces as a falling score before it becomes a board conversation.

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Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Sage data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

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Worked example

A UK mid-market business on Sage Intacct, VAT registered, selling DTC through Shopify Plus and B2B through BigCommerce B2B, with AR running on Net-30 wholesale terms. Snapshot 23 Jun 26. Reporting currency GBP. Alert at 70. The four factors and their contribution: Five things to notice:
  1. The headline is 68 and the single reason is bank-recon freshness at 55, which is exactly what a composite score is for. Three of the four factors are healthy or close to it, but a 38-day-old bank reconciliation drags the blended score below the 70 alert line. A simple average might have let the three strong factors paper over the weak one; the multiplicative blend does not, because an unreconciled ledger genuinely undermines confidence in every other number. The card’s value is that it told the finance director “something is wrong” with one glance, and the factor breakdown told them exactly what, without a single report being run.
  2. Read the factor breakdown, not just the headline, because the breakdown is the to-do list. The score going to 68 is the alarm; the breakdown saying “bank recon: 55, last rec 38 days ago” is the instruction. The fix is concrete and owned: run the bank reconciliation, and watch the bank-recon factor jump from 55 toward 95, which alone would lift the headline back above 70. The card is designed so that the number tells you to look and the components tell you where. Pair with Days Since Last Bank Reconciliation to action the specific blocker.
  3. The AR-aging factor at 72 is the slow-burn one to watch even though it is not the alarm today. Eighteen percent of receivables in the 60+ bucket is a moderate drag, not a crisis, but it is the kind of factor that erodes quietly over a quarter as collection discipline slips. If next month the bank rec is fixed (lifting the headline) but AR aging deteriorates to 30 percent overdue, the headline could stay flat while the underlying health shifts from a recon problem to a collections problem. Reading the factor trend over the 7-day window, not just the daily snapshot, is how you catch that rotation. Pair with AR Aging 60+ Days and Days Sales Outstanding.
  4. The twelve uncoded VAT lines barely move the score today but are a compliance time bomb the score will amplify near the deadline. At 88, VAT-code completeness is only a slight drag mid-period, which is correct: twelve uncoded lines with two weeks of runway is manageable. But the same twelve lines unfixed on the eve of the MTD deadline are a different risk entirely, and a well-tuned health score weights VAT completeness more heavily as the filing deadline approaches, so the factor that is a gentle drag today becomes a sharp one if it is still there in two weeks. This is the score reflecting that the cost of a problem depends on timing, not just size. Pair with Current VAT Return Status (MTD).
  5. This is the executive overview card, and its job is to compress four diagnostic cards into one glance for someone who will not open four cards. A finance director or owner does not want to scan VAT, coding, recon, and AR every morning; they want one number that turns red when any of those needs attention, with a breakdown one click away when it does. That is the entire design intent: a single trustworthy proxy for “are the books in good shape” that fails loudly and points at the cause. When the score is green, the detailed cards can stay closed; when it is below 70, the breakdown tells you which detailed card to open. Pair with Sage Health Score component siblings listed below for the deep dives.

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Sibling cards merchants should reference together

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Reconciling against Sage

Where to look in Sage Intacct: The Sage Health Score has no single native equivalent, because Sage Intacct does not ship a composite ledger-health number. Instead, reconcile each factor against its native source:
Applications → Tax → VAT Detail Report for the VAT-code completeness factor (uncoded revenue lines). Platform Services → Smart Coding queue / review for the smart-coding-queue factor (queue depth and age). Applications → Cash Management → Bank Reconciliation for the bank-recon-freshness factor (date of last completed reconciliation). Reports → Accounts Receivable → AR Aging for the AR-aging factor (overdue bucket proportions). Interactive Custom Reports (ICRs) on each underlying data source to reproduce the inputs the score blends.
For Multi-Entity Console accounts, compute each factor per entity, because a single bad subsidiary should be visible as a low per-entity score rather than diluted in a group average. Common reconciliation pitfalls:
  • There is no native score to match. Do not expect Sage to show 68; Sage shows the four underlying datasets. Reconcile the inputs, not the headline. If the inputs match and the blend formula is understood, the score is correct by construction.
  • Weighting and normalisation are Vortex IQ choices. How each factor maps to a 0-100 sub-score, and how the four combine, is the card’s model. Two reasonable people could weight bank-recon vs AR-aging differently; the card exposes the weights so you can align them to your priorities.
  • Factor freshness differs. VAT completeness is current-period; bank-recon freshness is days-since; smart-coding is a 24-hour window; AR-aging is a point-in-time snapshot. The blended score is only as fresh as its slowest input, so a recon completed an hour ago may not lift the score until the next refresh.
Why our number may legitimately differ from what you would compute by hand: Cross-connector reconciliation: The cross-connector point is that ledger health is multi-dimensional and no single number from any one system captures it, which is exactly why this card multiplies four independent signals into one. A commerce platform can tell you sales are strong while the ledger behind them is unreconciled, uncoded, and aging; a healthy revenue chart says nothing about whether the books supporting it can be trusted or filed. Sage Intacct holds all four health dimensions in one place, so it is the only place this composite can be built honestly. The card is the executive proxy that turns four diagnostic feeds into one watched number, and the factor breakdown is the thread back to the specific card that needs action. It is the first card to glance at and the last one you want to see red.

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Known limitations / merchant FAQs

What are the four factors and why these four? VAT-code completeness, smart-coding queue cleanliness, bank-reconciliation freshness, and AR-aging health. They were chosen because they are the factors that most reliably indicate whether a Sage Intacct ledger is clean, current, and trustworthy: compliance (VAT), coding hygiene (smart coding), reconciliation (bank recon), and collections (AR aging). Together they span the main ways a ledger goes wrong, and each has a clear owner and a clear fix. Why multiply the factors instead of averaging them? Because a weak factor should drag the whole score rather than be hidden by strong ones. A ledger that is VAT-clean and well-coded but has not been bank-reconciled in three months is not healthy, and an average would let the strong factors mask that. Multiplication (or a similarly penalising blend) ensures any one degraded factor pulls the headline down, which is the honest read for an executive proxy. What does a score of 70 actually mean? Seventy is the alert line, the point below which at least one factor has degraded enough to warrant attention. It is not a pass/fail boundary in any accounting sense; it is a tuned threshold where the composite suggests something needs looking at. Above 70, the ledger is broadly healthy; below 70, open the factor breakdown and action the weakest one. The threshold is configurable per workspace. Can I change the weights? Yes. The weighting of the four factors is configurable, because different businesses prioritise differently: a B2B distributor with large receivables may weight AR-aging more heavily, while a UK retailer near a VAT deadline may weight VAT completeness more. The card exposes the weights so you can align the score to what “healthy” means for your operation. Changing weights changes the headline without any underlying data changing, which is expected. Why did my score drop when no individual card looks alarming? Because the composite catches degradation across multiple factors before any single one crosses its own alarm. Each factor can be in mildly-amber territory, none individually alarming, yet the blend drops below 70 because the combined picture is weaker. This is a feature: the score is meant to be more sensitive than any single sub-card, surfacing a broad softening before it becomes a specific crisis. Read the breakdown to see the contributing factors. Does VAT completeness weigh more near the filing deadline? In a well-tuned configuration, yes. The cost of uncoded VAT lines depends heavily on timing: twelve uncoded lines mid-period is manageable, the same twelve on the eve of the MTD deadline is a real compliance risk. A health score that weights VAT completeness more heavily as the deadline approaches reflects that the same data carries more risk closer to the line. Whether this dynamic weighting is on is configurable. How fresh is the score? It is only as fresh as its slowest input. VAT completeness and smart-coding are near real-time; bank-recon freshness updates when a reconciliation completes; AR-aging is a point-in-time snapshot on the standard refresh. So a bank reconciliation you finished an hour ago may not lift the score until the next refresh cycle picks it up. The 7-day window also lets you read the factor trend rather than just today’s snapshot, which is the better way to spot a slow-burn factor like AR aging. Should I put this on the executive dashboard? Yes, that is its design intent. The Sage Health Score exists so a finance director or owner can glance at one number each morning instead of scanning four diagnostic cards. When it is green, the detailed cards can stay closed; when it drops below 70, the factor breakdown tells you exactly which card to open. It is the compression layer that makes the detailed cards optional reading on a good day. How does it behave in a Multi-Entity Console group? The most actionable read is per entity, because a single weak subsidiary should show as a low per-entity score rather than being diluted in a group average where three healthy entities mask one unhealthy one. The card respects the dashboard entity filter, so you can view the group blend or drill to a specific entity. For multi-entity operations, watching the per-entity scores catches the quiet subsidiary that a group number would hide. What is the fastest way to lift a low score? Open the factor breakdown and action the lowest sub-score first, because the multiplicative blend means the weakest factor is dragging hardest. In practice the fastest single win is usually running an overdue bank reconciliation, since bank-recon freshness is both the most common drag and the most binary to fix. After that, clearing uncoded VAT lines and the smart-coding queue tends to give the next quickest lifts. AR aging is the slowest to move because it depends on collections. Is the score a substitute for actually reviewing the books? No. It is a proxy and an early-warning system, not an audit. A green score means the four tracked factors are healthy, which is a strong signal but not a guarantee that every number is correct; problems outside the four factors will not show up here. Use it to know where and when to look, then use the detailed cards and your normal review process to confirm. The score’s value is direction and timing, not certification.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Sage Health Score is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Sage and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.