One focused session to find where cash is stuck and profit is leaking.
If the business feels like it should be more profitable than it is, there's usually a clear reason. This session finds it.
- Margin by product, service or job
- Pricing, and what a rise really does
- Debtor days and how to shorten them
- Stock and work in progress
- Overheads nobody has questioned
- The order to do them in
A single session
We go through the business together in one focused session, pinpoint exactly where cash is getting stuck and where profit is quietly slipping away, and leave you with practical solutions you can act on straight away.
What's included
- One focused session, not an ongoing retainer
- A clear picture of where cash is getting stuck
- The profit leaks identified, in plain terms
- Practical solutions you can act on immediately
- No lengthy engagement required
Cashflow & Profit Improvement
A focused session identifying cash blockages and profit leaks, with solutions you can act on immediately.
Good fit if you
- Feel like the business should be more profitable than it is, but can't quite see why
- Want a single practical session rather than an ongoing commitment
- Need clarity on where cash is getting stuck before it becomes a problem
- Want solutions you can put into action straight away
Five levers, and they are not equally powerful
Every business has the same five, and owners almost always reach for the weakest one first. The session works through them in the order that pays, on your own figures.
- Price
- The strongest by a distance, because a price rise carries no extra cost with it — every pound of it lands in profit. It is also the one owners avoid hardest, usually on an assumption about what customers will do that has never been tested.
- Cost of sales
- Supplier terms, waste, buying patterns, the discount nobody has asked for in three years. Slower than price but genuinely available in most businesses, and it compounds.
- Debtor days
- Not a profit lever at all — a cash lever, and usually the fastest money in the building. It costs nothing but attention, and it is the report nobody opens.
- Overheads
- Where owners start, and the smallest of the five. Worth doing, but cancelling subscriptions will not fix a margin problem and the search for it eats the time the other four needed.
- Volume
- The one everyone means by “grow”. On a thin margin it buys more work and no more money, which is why it comes last rather than first.
What one per cent is worth, on the same business
A £500,000 business at a 45% gross margin with £180,000 of overheads. The same one per cent, moved in three different places.
£500,000 turnover, £45,000 net profit
Sales £500,000, cost of sales £275,000, gross profit £225,000, overheads £180,000. Net profit £45,000 — a 9% net margin, which is ordinary.
- Put prices up 1%, lose no volume
- +£5,000
- … as a share of net profit
- +11.1%
- Cut cost of sales by 1%
- +£2,750
- … as a share of net profit
- +6.1%
- Sell 1% more at the same margin
- +£2,250
- … as a share of net profit
- +5.0%
- Price is worth more than volume by
- 2.2×
A one per cent price rise is worth more than twice a one per cent increase in sales, and it takes an afternoon rather than a quarter. Even losing 2% of customers, the price rise is still ahead — which is the calculation almost nobody does before deciding they cannot raise prices.
An illustration on round numbers so the arithmetic is easy to follow. The session runs it on yours, where the margin and the overheads are whatever they actually are.
Profitable businesses run out of money for four reasons
Profit and cash are different questions and the session treats them as such. If the business is profitable and still tight, it is almost always one of these.
- You are the bank
- On £500,000 of sales, every day of debtor days is about £1,370 tied up. Getting from 62 days to 45 releases roughly £23,000 — cash you have already earned, sitting in somebody else’s account.
- Stock bought on optimism
- Every pound of stock is a pound of cash on a shelf. In a product business this is usually the largest single hiding place for money, and it grows quietly because nobody is measured on it.
- Growth itself
- Growing consumes cash before it produces it: stock and wages go out before the invoice comes in. A business growing fast on thin margins can be profitable and insolvent at the same time.
- Tax kept in the current account
- VAT and PAYE collected but not set aside are somebody else’s money that feels like yours. A separate account and a standing transfer on the day it is collected removes the problem permanently.
Questions about the session
What does the session cost, and what do I get for it?
A fixed fee agreed in writing before we start — ask on the discovery call. What you get is one focused working session going through the business together, a clear picture of where cash is getting stuck, the profit leaks identified in plain terms, and practical actions you can start on immediately. There is no retainer and no ongoing commitment attached to it. If the answer turns out to be that you need ongoing reporting or a forecast rather than a one-off session, we will tell you that.
Where does the profit usually turn out to be going?
Four places, in roughly this order of frequency. Pricing that has not moved while costs have. Gross margin drifting by product, job or customer, invisible in a blended figure. Overheads that accumulated one subscription and one service contract at a time and nobody has audited in three years. And discounting or scope creep on delivery that never makes it onto an invoice.
And where does cash usually get stuck?
In the working capital cycle rather than the profit and loss. Typically: invoices raised days or weeks after the work is done, payment terms nobody enforces, aged debt that has quietly become normal, stock or work in progress sitting longer than it needs to, and supplier terms that are worse than they should be because nobody has asked. A profitable business can have several months of profit sitting in debtors and stock. Freeing part of that is usually faster and less painful than borrowing.
What do I need to have ready?
Your last set of accounts, current-year figures if you have them, and an aged debtors list. If you can add a breakdown of sales by product, service or customer, the session gets considerably sharper, because most of the interesting findings are hidden inside blended averages. If the bookkeeping is badly behind, say so when booking — the session can still work from the last filed accounts and your knowledge of the business, but you should know that the findings will be directional rather than precise, and that fixing the records may be the first real action.
How is this different from ongoing advisory?
This is a single diagnostic session with no retainer behind it. Management accounts and cashflow and budgeting are ongoing services that keep the picture current month after month. The one-off session suits owners who suspect the business should be more profitable than it is and want to know where the problem sits before committing to anything. Some people take the session, act on the findings themselves and never need more. Others discover the reason nobody spotted it earlier is that nothing is being measured monthly, and that leads somewhere else.
What if you do not find anything?
Then you have a well-run business and a written confirmation of it, which is worth something on its own — it stops you chasing a problem that is not there and redirects attention to growth instead. It is uncommon but it happens, usually in businesses where the owner already watches margin closely and the real constraint is capacity or demand rather than leakage.
