Sales are up. So why don't I have any cash?

Every new job, order or member costs you something up front. You buy materials, you add hours to payroll, you carry inventory. The customer pays later, sometimes weeks later. The busier you get, the wider that gap becomes, and the gap is funded out of your bank account.

A contractor we worked with grew from a four-person crew into a multimillion-dollar operation. At every stage, payroll went out weekly while invoices were paid in 30 to 60 days. Revenue rose and cash tightened at the same time. That is not a contradiction. It is how growth works.

When we sit down with an owner in this spot, it is almost always some mix of the same four things: money owed to you that has not arrived, inventory or materials sitting on a shelf, a payroll that grew faster than billing, and owner draws that were set when the business was smaller.

None of these show up as a problem on a profit and loss statement. The P&L can look great. The bank balance tells a different story because it counts timing, and the P&L does not.

The fix is rarely more sales. It is knowing, a few weeks ahead, what is coming in and what is going out. A simple 13-week view of cash, updated every week, shows you the dip before you are in it. Then you have choices: bill sooner, collect faster, slow a purchase, or arrange a line of credit while the numbers still look good to a banker.

We build that view with owners as part of ongoing work, and we sit in the monthly meeting where it gets read. The point is not the spreadsheet. The point is that the next shortfall is something you saw coming.