Advisory · cash flow
Profitable on paper, tight in the bank.
Cash-flow model, published price from $2,500
A cash squeeze can sink a business that shows a profit. When the cause is timing rather than failure, it is fixable. Visibility first, then a working forecast, then the levers. Steady, no panic.
Operational cash-flow work on reconciled books — not lending, tax, or investment advice. Scoped individually, fixed fee in writing.
Reviewed before delivery: reports go out only after the accounts behind them agree with their statements and every open question is listed for you. What the review checks.
Quick answer
Profit and cash are different clocks: the P&L counts revenue when it's earned, but cash arrives only when customers actually pay, and inventory or loan principal can eat what profit shows. Cash-flow advisory starts with your true position from reconciled books, then forecasts weeks ahead and works the real levers — collections, payables timing, billing cadence.
Profitable but broke
Four mechanisms put profit where you can't spend it.
A business can run out of cash while its P&L shows a profit — being profitable doesn't prevent it. Not because the owner did something wrong; because four ordinary mechanics were running unwatched.
The timing gap
You pay for labor and materials this month; the customer pays you next month. Every growing job or order widens the stretch — growth itself consumes cash before it returns it.
Receivables lag
The P&L counts the invoice as revenue the day you send it. The bank counts it the day it's paid. When customers drift from 30 days to 50, you're lending them the difference — interest-free.
Inventory absorption
Cash spent on stock isn't an expense yet — it's an asset on a shelf. The P&L looks unchanged while the bank account funds every unit waiting to sell.
Debt service vs the P&L
Only the interest on a loan shows as an expense. The principal leaves your bank every month and never touches the P&L — a business can show profit while loan payments quietly outrun it.
None of these is a moral failing, and none shows up on the P&L, the statement owners reach for first. That's the whole case for managing cash as its own discipline — on top of accurate books, not instead of them.
The work, in order
Visibility → forecast → levers.
1 · Visibility
Your true cash position — reconciled bank balances, real receivables, real payables — not the bank-app number minus a guess. This alone replaces the 2 a.m. arithmetic with a number you can trust.
2 · The forecast
A rolling weekly view of cash in and cash out — thirteen weeks in our standard build, long enough to see trouble coming, short enough to stay real. The tight week stops being an ambush.
3 · The levers
Operational moves, prioritized: invoice sooner and follow up systematically, re-time payables honestly, right-size inventory buys, smooth the billing cadence, build the reserve the model needs.
A word on the 13-week forecast, since the term gets waved around like a wand: it's not magic and it's not proprietary — it's a discipline. Week by week, what's genuinely due in, what's genuinely due out, updated as reality lands. Its only power is honesty at a useful horizon. We'll build yours in whatever tool you'll actually keep using, because a forecast nobody updates is a spreadsheet, not a forecast.
Figure data as a table
| Mechanism | On the P&L | In the bank |
|---|---|---|
| The timing gap | The job's revenue and costs, when earned | Labor and materials paid this month; the customer pays next month |
| Receivables lag | Revenue the day the invoice is sent | Cash the day the customer actually pays |
| Inventory | No expense until the stock sells | Cash out the day the stock is bought |
| Debt service | Only the interest | Principal and interest, every payment |
The load-bearing wall
A forecast on drifting books is fiction.
Every week of a cash forecast inherits the books beneath it. If the receivables list includes invoices that were actually paid, if the bank balance in the books doesn't match the real one, if months of transactions sit uncategorized — the forecast is confidently wrong, which is worse than no forecast at all.
That's why our cash-flow work sits on books that are reconciled to source, closed monthly, and reviewed before delivery. If your books need that foundation first, the engagement starts there, and we'll say so in the first conversation. How the monthly close works →
When you probably don't need this
Customers pay at purchase
No invoicing lag means the biggest timing gap never opens.
Steady margins, no inventory
Little absorbs cash between earning and banking it.
Light debt, a real reserve
Clean monthly books plus a sensible cushion already cover you — and we'll tell you exactly that, free.
Scope, stated plainly
Operational cash management — and exactly that.
We make your cash position true, visible, and forecasted, and we work the operational levers with you. We do not arrange or broker financing, give investment advice, advise on personal finances, or provide tax strategy — we keep books, and we are neither a CPA firm nor a lender, per the same boundary as our disclaimer. If the numbers say a banking conversation is coming, you'll walk into it with a forecast a lender can respect — and the conversation itself stays yours.
Engagements are scoped individually after a conversation about your business — fixed fee, in writing, like everything we do.
Owners are rarely reckless with cash. The trouble is that they can't see it: the P&L says one thing, the bank says another, and nobody has shown them why both are true. Once the gap has a name and a date, it stops being fear and becomes a plan.
Cash-flow FAQ
The questions stressed owners actually ask.
Related: financial reporting advisory · a controller on a part-time basis · the advisory hub.
Stop doing 2 a.m. arithmetic
Put a date on the gap — free strategy call.
Bring the bank balance and the worry; leave with a clear read on which kind of cash problem you have — timing, margin, or structure — and what managing it would look like, scoped in writing.