Making financial decisions without a cash flow forecast? In this episode, Chartered Accountant Paul Sweeney shows you the exact 5-step process to build a simple cash flow forecast for your small business, no accounting background required.

If you don't know what your cash position looks like four weeks from now, every decision you make between now and then is a guess, not a plan. Most small business owners run their entire operation this way, reacting to whatever the bank balance says today, with no idea what it's going to say next week.

Paul walks through five practical steps to build a working cash flow forecast: starting with your real cash position, listing committed outgoings, listing realistic incomings, mapping the gap week by week instead of month by month, and building in a buffer with a fixed weekly review day. This weekly forecast check isn't a separate habit to remember, it's one part of Paul's Business Planning Operating System, the weekly rhythm that connects your cash position to your priorities and your plan in the same sitting.

👉 Download the free 5-Day Cash Flow Email Course and find out which of these four drains is costing your business the most: https://courses.paulsweeneyaccountant.au/5-days-to-cleaner-cash-flow

In this episode:

• Why most small business owners never build a cash flow forecast, and why that's a visibility problem, not a complexity problem
• The 5-step process to build a working forecast in under 20 minutes
• Why mapping your cash position weekly, not just monthly, catches problems before they become a crisis
• How the weekly forecast check fits inside the Business Planning Operating System, rather than being one more thing to remember
• A simple diagnostic question for each step, to apply to your own business today

Resources Mentioned

📧 Free 5-Day Cash Flow Email Course: https://courses.paulsweeneyaccountant.au/5-days-to-cleaner-cash-flow

🌐 Paul Sweeney Accountant: https://paulsweeneyaccountant.au/

🌐 Pretium Solutions: https://pretiumsolutions.com.au/

📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulsweeneyaccountant

▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSgDcYMjHVQ9uEdZgGpvdBw

About the Host

Paul Sweeney is a Chartered Accountant and founder of Pretium Solutions, with over 25 years advising small and medium businesses. He's the host of Grow Your Business and The Business Behind Your Business podcast.

Thinking about a loan to fix your small business cash flow? In this episode, Chartered Accountant Paul Sweeney explains why borrowing doesn't fix a cash flow problem, it postpones it, and gives you four checks to run before you sign anything.

When cash gets tight, the first instinct for most small business owners is the same. Get a loan. Increase the credit card limit. Dip into personal savings. None of that fixes the reason cash was tight in the first place. It just adds a repayment on top of the original problem.

Paul breaks down four checks every small business owner should run before borrowing: what problem the loan is actually fixing, whether you've forecast the repayments against best, average, and worst-case cash flow, whether the purchase is a genuine business case or a vanity purchase in disguise, and whether you've built the business case before you've even started organising finance. Includes a breakdown of how simple interest rates can hide the real cost of a loan, and why some business credit cards and short-term lenders cost far more than they appear to.

👉 Download the free 5-Day Cash Flow Email Course and find out which of these four drains is costing your business the most: https://courses.paulsweeneyaccountant.au/5-days-to-cleaner-cash-flow

👉 Grab the free Pretium Solutions eBook, "Start Improving Cash Flow Today" for five practical steps you can start today: https://pretiumsolutions.com.au/start-improving-cash-flow-today/

In this episode:

• Why borrowing doesn't solve a small business cash flow problem, it delays it
• Four checks to run before taking out any business loan or finance
• How to forecast best, average, and worst-case scenarios before committing to loan repayments
• The real difference between simple interest and the true annual cost of borrowing
• How to tell a genuine business case from a vanity purchase dressed up as one

Resources Mentioned

📘 Free eBook — Start Improving Cash Flow Today: https://pretiumsolutions.com.au/start-improving-cash-flow-today/

📧 Free 5-Day Cash Flow Email Course: https://courses.paulsweeneyaccountant.au/5-days-to-cleaner-cash-flow

🌐 Paul Sweeney Accountant: https://paulsweeneyaccountant.au/

🌐 Pretium Solutions: https://pretiumsolutions.com.au/

📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulsweeneyaccountant

▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSgDcYMjHVQ9uEdZgGpvdBw

About the Host

Paul Sweeney is a Chartered Accountant and founder of Pretium Solutions, with over 25 years advising small and medium businesses. He's the host of Grow Your Business and The Business Behind Your Business podcast.

Think your small business cash flow problem is a sales or invoicing issue? It might actually be hiding in your day-to-day operations. In this episode, Chartered Accountant Paul Sweeney reveals four operational habits quietly draining cash from small businesses, none of which show up as a line item on your profit and loss.

If your business runs on memory, whoever's free that day, whoever remembers to follow up, you're losing cash right now, and it's invisible until you know where to look. Every delay in how work actually gets done is a delay in how fast that work turns into cash in your account.

Paul breaks down four specific operational drains on small business cash flow: undocumented processes that only one person understands, approval bottlenecks that slow everything down, manual duplicated data entry across disconnected systems, and the absence of a regular review rhythm. Includes a real case study of a $3–4 million business that fixed exactly this, and regained both cash flow confidence and hours of lost time.

👉 Download the free 5-Day Cash Flow Email Course and find out which of these four drains is costing your business the most: https://courses.paulsweeneyaccountant.au/5-days-to-cleaner-cash-flow

👉 Grab the free Pretium Solutions eBook, "Start Improving Cash Flow Today" for five practical steps you can start today: https://pretiumsolutions.com.au/start-improving-cash-flow-today/

In this episode:

• Why small business cash flow problems often hide in daily operations, not sales or invoicing
• Four specific operational habits quietly draining cash, and the exact fix for each
• A simple diagnostic question for each drain, to check against your own business this week
• A real case study: how a $3–4 million business improved cash flow visibility through better systems

Resources Mentioned

📘 Free eBook — Start Improving Cash Flow Today: https://pretiumsolutions.com.au/start-improving-cash-flow-today/

📧 Free 5-Day Cash Flow Email Course: https://courses.paulsweeneyaccountant.au/5-days-to-cleaner-cash-flow

🌐 Paul Sweeney Accountant: https://paulsweeneyaccountant.au/

🌐 Pretium Solutions: https://pretiumsolutions.com.au/

📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paulsweeneyaccountant

▶️ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSgDcYMjHVQ9uEdZgGpvdBw

About the Host

Paul Sweeney is a Chartered Accountant and founder of Pretium Solutions, with over 25 years advising small and medium businesses. He's the host of Grow Your Business and The Business Behind Your Business podcast.