CFO Services
There is usually a reason, and it is usually measurable. Most of it is the distance between when you pay and when you get paid.
Where the money goes
Most owners pay their vendors faster than their customers pay them. One company I worked with was paying in about twelve days on thirty day terms while collecting in over thirty. Nobody decided that. It accumulated.
Every day between money going out and money coming in is a day your own cash covers the difference. That is working capital, and in most businesses it is the single largest use of cash the owner never sees on a report.
How long your money stays tied up can be measured. So can what closing part of that gap would put back in your account. Neither one requires a forecast or a guess.
The first look
A short working session, about forty-five minutes, at no cost. Bring a list of what your customers owe you and what you owe your vendors. If those are not handy, bank statements will do.
One figure: roughly how much of your own cash is currently financing your customers and your vendors. Not a range, not a category, a dollar amount you can hold against your own bank balance.
Nothing, and no preparation. There is no proposal at the end of it and no obligation. If the number turns out to be small, that is a useful answer and the conversation ends there.
The Cash Diagnostic
Contractors carry a version of this problem that does not show up in the company totals. Pay-when-paid terms push the whole gap down to the job, so the diagnostic reads it at the job level as well.
The fee is credited toward the continuing work if you decide to go on.
What we work from
Most owners assume their numbers have to be in good shape before anyone can look at them. They do not. What you already have determines how fast the answer comes, not whether there is one.
Fastest, and the most precise result.
Exports from whatever system you run. More than enough.
Slower to work through, and still produces a real answer.
Continuing work
Some owners take the findings to their own accountant and handle it from there. Others want somebody in the chair.
That work means building the measurement that is not there yet, reporting against it every month, and sitting down at board level each quarter to talk about what the numbers are actually saying. Most businesses this size have oversight that is thin rather than absent, and the useful measures only become obvious once somebody has learned the company.
Not the monthly close, not reconciliations, not journal entries. That work belongs with your bookkeeper or your accounting firm. My job is to set the standard it has to meet, not to take their seat.
Why this sits beside the exit work
A buyer pays for what a well-run business produces. Cash conversion, customer concentration, management depth and clean reporting are operating improvements and value drivers at the same time.
So this is not a detour. It is the same financial record, read for a different question. Today's question is what your numbers are telling you now. The other one is when that record will hold up to somebody buying the business.
About forty-five minutes. Bring a list of what your customers owe you and what you owe your vendors, or just your bank statements. You leave knowing how much of your own cash is out working for somebody else.