A metric is a named, defined business number. “Net revenue is gross sales less refunds and discounts, in the currency of the order, by order date.” The definition is the point: a metric is not a column in a table, it is an agreement about how a number is computed so that everyone quoting it gets the same figure.
Metrics are where reporting goes right or wrong. A SaaS company where sales counts monthly recurring revenue at contract signature and finance counts it at invoice will bring two different growth rates to the same board meeting. A retailer whose store managers count returns in sales and whose head office does not will argue about every league table. A metric defined once and used everywhere ends those arguments; a metric defined in each spreadsheet reopens them monthly.
Metric, measure and KPI overlap. A measure is a raw numeric column; a metric is a defined calculation on measures; a KPI is a metric that has been chosen to steer the business and given a target. The rule of thumb is that a metric should be nameable in one sentence, owned by one person and documented next to the number it produces.
In Klayara, metrics are defined once as calculated fields and reused across every dashboard, scheduled report and AI answer, so a change to the definition changes every page at once. See formulas and calculations.