You’ve been running the business for fifteen years. Sales are steady, the work keeps coming, and the P&L says you made a profit last year. So why does the bank account feel tight every single quarter?
That gap — between what the reports say and what the bank balance does — is a cashflow problem. And it’s rarely explained in plain English. Here it is.
Cash isn’t profit. Profit isn’t cash.
Profit is an opinion formed at year end. Cash is what’s actually in the account when wages run on Thursday.
You can be profitable on paper and still miss payroll, because profit counts the invoice the day you send it — cash only counts it the day your customer pays. If your customers take 45 days to pay and your suppliers want their money in 14, you’re funding that 31-day gap out of your own pocket. Every month. That’s why growing businesses often feel the squeeze hardest: more work means more of those gaps to fund.
The three levers you actually control
Most cashflow advice overcomplicates it. There are only three levers:
Money in, sooner. Know your debtor days — the average time customers take to pay you. Most owners we sit down with can’t name this number, and it’s usually worse than they’d guess. Invoice on completion (not month end), make payment easy, and follow up at day 7, not day 60.
Money out, on your terms. Use the full payment terms your suppliers offer — paying early is generosity, not good management. Question the subscriptions and standing orders nobody has reviewed since 2023. Time big outgoings away from BAS quarters.
A buffer that buys you thinking time. A cash reserve isn’t lazy money. It’s what lets you make decisions from a position of knowledge instead of pressure — and it’s what stops one slow-paying customer becoming a crisis. Start with a target of one month’s overheads. And put tax aside from every sale into a separate account, so the ATO’s payment dates are non-events.
What “in control” actually looks like
Not a 40-tab spreadsheet. Three things:
- You know your debtor days, this month, without looking them up.
- You can see the next 13 weeks of cash — what’s coming in, what’s going out, and the weeks that will pinch.
- Nothing on the calendar — BAS, super, insurance renewals — arrives as a surprise.
That’s it. That’s the whole game. The numbers already exist in your file; they just haven’t been put in front of you in a form you can act on.
Where we fit
Most accountants stop at producing the numbers. We produce them — then make sure you can act on them, so you’re using them to decide, not just to comply. A 13-week cashflow view, your debtor days on one page, and a forward plan for the pinch points: that’s a foundation piece of the work we do under our Clarity pillar.
If the business can’t run without you watching the bank account, let’s change that. Get in touch →
Cyre Partners — Empowering Smarter Business Choices.