Revenue is up. Cash is down.
The P&L says you had a good year. The bank balance says otherwise. You're not imagining it, and it usually isn't fraud or waste. It's timing, and nobody is modeling the timing.
What's usually going on
Diagnosis, not blame. These are the causes we find most often.
— Receivables are stretching as you take on bigger customers with longer terms.
— Growth is tying up cash in inventory, deposits or work in progress before it's billed.
— Debt service and equipment payments land in lumps the P&L smooths over.
— Distributions and estimated taxes are coming out on a schedule nobody wrote down.
— Profit is real, but it's sitting in someone else's payables.
What we'd look at first
Written for the person who'll check whether we know what we're talking about.
01
Days sales outstanding by customer, not on average.
02
The cash-conversion cycle: how many days between paying for the work and getting paid for it.
03
The debt schedule laid against the next thirteen weeks.
04
Owner draws and tax payments as a line, not a surprise.
05
Whether the "profit" includes anything that isn't cash yet: retainage, unbilled work, inventory build.
What changes
What you get
A 13-week cash forecast updated weekly and a working-capital line on the monthly package.
What improves
Weeks of warning instead of days, and a collections process someone actually runs.
What you can now decide
When to draw the line, when to buy the truck, and how much you can safely distribute this quarter.
Where to go from here
Tell us what's going on. We'll tell you what we see
One conversation with Chris, no deck. He'll tell you what he sees and what it would take to fix it, including if the answer is that you don't need a CFO yet.
Chris Greco, Founder and President.
Your first call is with him, not a sales team.