Cash Flow Management & Forecasting
You can be profitable on paper and still miss payroll. That’s the part nobody warns founders about — revenue is up, the P&L looks fine, and yet the bank balance keeps shrinking. Cash flow management is how you close that gap. At DMW Advisory, we give you a clear, forward-looking view of every dollar moving in and out of your business, so you always know the one number that matters: how many weeks of runway you have left.
Why Profitable Companies Still Run Out of Cash
Profit is an accounting concept. Cash is a survival concept. The two move on different clocks.
You book revenue when you send the invoice. You get the cash 30, 60, sometimes 90 days later. Meanwhile payroll, rent, and vendors are due now. Grow too fast and that timing gap widens — you fund more inventory, more headcount, and more receivables before a single new dollar lands. We call this the cash conversion cycle, and it’s why fast-growing companies fail more often than slow ones.
Rule of thumb: if you can’t say — today, in one sentence — how many weeks until you run out of cash, your business is being run blind. We fix that first.
What Cash Flow Management Looks Like With DMW
We don’t hand you a spreadsheet and wish you luck. We build and run the system.
A 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast
The 13-week forecast is the operating tool that turns “I think we’re fine” into “we have 11 weeks of runway and a $180K gap in week 9 unless we collect the Acme invoice.” Updated weekly, it shows you payroll coverage, the timing of every major inflow and outflow, and exactly when cash gets tight — early enough to do something about it.
Collections & Working Capital
Most cash crunches aren’t a revenue problem — they’re a collections problem. We tighten payment terms, fix the invoicing process, and shorten the time it takes customers to pay (your DSO — Days Sales Outstanding, basically how long your money sits in someone else’s bank account). Freeing up cash you’ve already earned is the cheapest financing there is.
Scenario Planning
What happens to runway if your biggest customer pays 30 days late? If you hire three people next quarter? If revenue drops 25%? We model the downside before it happens, so a bad month is a plan — not a panic.
Who This Is For
You’re doing $5M–$50M in revenue. You’ve outgrown your bookkeeper but you’re not ready for a $250K full-time CFO. Maybe you’re growing fast and cash feels tighter the bigger you get. Maybe a lender or board just asked for a forecast you don’t have. Either way, you want to stop guessing about cash.
Do This Monday (free, takes 30 minutes)
- Pull your current bank balance and list every payment due in the next 14 days.
- List every dollar you reasonably expect to collect in the next 14 days — and be honest about which customers actually pay on time.
- Subtract. If the number is uncomfortably close to zero, you don’t have a profitability problem — you have a visibility problem, and it’s fixable.
If you want a real forecast instead of a back-of-the-envelope one, that’s what we do.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What’s the difference between cash flow management and accounting?
Accounting tells you what already happened. Cash flow management tells you what’s about to happen. Your bookkeeper records the past; we forecast the future and manage runway so you can make decisions before the money runs out.
Q: What is a 13-week cash flow forecast?
It’s a rolling, week-by-week projection of every dollar coming in and going out over the next quarter. Thirteen weeks is long enough to see problems coming and short enough to be accurate. It’s the single most useful cash tool for a growing company, and it’s the first thing we build.
Q: How fast can you set this up?
For most companies we have a working 13-week forecast live within the first two to three weeks of engagement, often sooner if the books are clean.
Q: Do you only do forecasting, or do you manage cash ongoing?
Both. Cash flow forecasting is the tool; ongoing cash flow management — collections, runway monitoring, scenario updates — is the service. We can do a one-time build or run it for you every week as part of fractional CFO or FP&A support.
Q: We’re growing fast but cash is always tight. Is that normal?
It’s common, and it’s dangerous. Growth consumes cash. The faster you grow, the more cash you tie up in receivables and inventory before new revenue lands. That’s exactly the situation a forecast is built to manage.
Stop guessing whether you can make payroll.
Book a free 30-minute call and we’ll walk through your cash position together.
Book a Free Consultation →Struggling with cash flow? Our financial turnaround and restructuring services can help stabilize your business.