A client came to us with a familiar complaint:
“We’re growing. The P&L looks fine. But the bank balance is always tense.”
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They were a project-based business with uneven invoices, partial prepayments, and suppliers who wanted money before the client paid.
The real issue wasn’t margin. It was timing.
So we did three things – simple, not sexy, but brutal in impact:
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- Defined the cash milestones
- Deposit, mid-project, delivery, final payment – with dates. No more “we’ll invoice later.”
- Built a weekly collections cadence
- Top 10 invoices by amount, a single owner, and one rule: every invoice has a next action and a date.
- Aligned supplier payments to client cash
- Not by begging for better terms – by changing internal scheduling and making commitments only when cash was visible.
Results: cash stopped swinging, the founder regained control, and growth stopped feeling like stress.
Founder takeaway: cash problems are usually process problems.
If your business feels “busy but fragile,” it’s time to build a cash operating system – not another report.