Business problems/Cash
“Will the money be there when I need it?”
Profit is an opinion formed once a month. Cash is a fact that arrives every week. Profitable businesses run out of money on a Tuesday because a quarterly bill landed next to a payroll run — and the monthly accounts never showed it coming.
What you are looking at
A constructed business: $150,000 a month, growing 2%, customers paying in 45 days, payroll every second week and a $35,000 quarterly bill due in week 6. Comfortably profitable on paper.
Change anything on the left — especially the two sliders nobody thinks of as cash decisions: growth and days to get paid.
How an engagement runs, in five steps.
The business below is constructed so its figures can be shown openly. The sequence, the files requested and the deliverables are exactly what a real engagement involves.
Growing 2% a month, profitable on paper, and the owner kept being caught out by weeks where the account looked frighteningly empty. The monthly accounts never showed it coming.
The aged debtors list, the open invoice list with terms, the payroll calendar, a list of committed costs and standing orders, and the current bank balance. Five files, all exports.
What is on this page: thirteen weeks of cash projected week by week, the exact week that gets tight, the shortfall against their own safety floor, and every available option priced against it.
Everything below this section is that analysis, live. Change any assumption and every figure and conclusion moves with it.
In the example: one quarterly payment moved, chasing started at day 30 instead of day 60, and a hire delayed by six weeks. About $50,000 of headroom, without borrowing anything.
This page is roughly 5% of that engagement — the slice that can be published, because the business is invented. The rest is at the bottom of this page.
What a real engagement hands you
Not a web page. Working documents built on your own figures, in whatever form is easiest to actually use:
- A written findings report — what was found, what it costs, what to do, with every calculation shown
- Charts and tables built for the specific decision, not a standard template
- The underlying schedules, so anyone on your side can check or take over the work
- Interactive versions where a decision has assumptions worth testing yourself
- PDF and Word files you can forward to a bank, a partner or your accountant
- A ranked action plan with an amount, an owner and a date against each item
All of it on your real data, and yours to keep.
Cash in the bank, week by week
13 weeksMoney in and out, each week
The pattern matters more than the total. Payroll weeks and the one-off bill create the dips — which means most cash problems are solved by moving a date, not by finding money.
The schedule you would actually use
| Week | Money in | Suppliers | Payroll | Overhead | Other | Net | Closing cash |
|---|
This is the page an owner takes to a supplier, a bank or a customer — with a specific request attached to a specific date, rather than a general worry.
Your options, and what each one is worth
Cash released by each action, against the shortfall you actually need to cover (the dashed line). Most owners reach for the last option on this list first.