There’s a woman in Nairobi running a solar distribution business that she started from scratch. She just closed her biggest contract ever with 300 units & some real money on paper. Yet, she can’t make payroll Friday. This story is not limited to Nairobi. This happens in Houston. In Manchester. In every city where someone is building something real from ground up, and watching their P&L tell a completely different story than their bank account.
Truth is, profit is a story an accountant tells. Cash is the one the stakeholders believe.
The gap between those two? That’s a timing problem, not a business problem.
This can be fixed, once business owners see it coming. That’s exactly what a cash forecast does. It maps the cash position, week by week, three months ahead. So that you have zero surprises or pre-payroll panic. Just a clear picture of what’s arriving, what’s leaving, and when.
Most growing businesses depend on their accountant to do it, but it’s often much outside their scope. So here’s a quick 3-week guide on building one before you hire a CFO.
1) Week one
You start mapping. Include invoices, bills due, payroll date between now and 90 days from now on. You put it in a spreadsheet. Ugly is fine. The point is to get it out of your head and onto a page where you can see it.
2) Week two
You look for the gaps. A gap in week four is a problem you can solve today. A gap you find on Thursday when it’s already week four? That’s a crisis. Same money. Very different outcome.
3) Week three
You start making decisions. Maybe you offer a 2% early payment discount on your biggest outstanding invoice. Maybe you call your supplier and negotiate on materials you’ve been paying on delivery. These are levers. You only know to pull them when you can see the gap coming.
Circling back to the woman in Nairobi, she definitely had the margin, what she didn’t have was three weeks’ visibility. With a forecast, she could have seen the payroll gap the day she signed the deal, and had time to line up a bridge facility and time the order differently. Dreams of small businesses flourish with a small change.
It can be overwhelming to do it all alone. A CFO finds these gaps 70 days before.