A client told us: “We finally landed a big customer. This should be a great quarter.”
It was.
Need help applying this to your business?John Galt Finance offers fractional CFO support for SMBs doing $500K-$20M in revenue.Book a free 30-min consultation
On the P&L.
In cash, it was chaos.
Why? One exception.
A custom contract with:
- a deep discount “just this time”
- long payment terms
- a manual invoicing schedule
- delivery commitments that forced upfront supplier payments
The team kept saying yes because it felt like momentum.
Want a CFO to walk through your specific numbers? Book a free 30-min review - we look at your P&L, cash flow, and unit economics and tell you the top 3 things to fix.
But exceptions don’t stay isolated. They spread.
Operations started bending rules. Finance stopped trusting forecasts. Cash surprises became normal.
What we did:
- Rebuilt the deal economics
- Not revenue. Contribution margin and cash timing. We modeled the cash curve week by week.
- Locked a rule: no exception without a cost
- If a customer wants longer terms, pricing changes. If scope changes, billing changes. No free flexibility.
- Standardized billing milestones
- Deposit, mid-point, delivery, final. Automatic invoices on dates. No “we’ll handle it manually.”
Outcome: the deal became profitable in cash, not just on paper. Forecasting stabilized. The founder stopped reacting.
Founder takeaway: if everything is negotiable, nothing is scalable.