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.

Looking for simple ways to improve cash flow in your small business? In this episode, Chartered Accountant Paul Sweeney breaks down three invoicing habits quietly draining cash from small businesses, and the exact fixes that stop it, starting this week.

If you finish a job and invoice it "at the end of the month," you're already losing money. An invoice you haven't sent isn't neutral, it's cash you don't have, and every day it sits unsent is a day you're funding your own business out of pocket for no reason at all.

Paul walks through three specific invoicing habits costing small businesses real cash: invoicing on a schedule instead of on completion, vague or missing payment terms, and having no follow-up system for anything overdue. Includes a real case example of a business that brought its debtor days down from 424 days to 45, without changing a single thing about their sales.

In this episode:

• Why small business cash flow management often comes down to invoicing habits, not sales performance
• Three specific invoicing habits quietly draining cash, and the fix for each one
• A simple diagnostic question for each habit, to check against your own invoices this week
• A real example of debtor days dropping from 48 to 14, and what actually changed

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

📧 The Business Planning Operating System: https://courses.paulsweeneyaccountant.au/business-planning-course

🌐 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.

Struggling to understand why a great sales month left your small business with less cash, not more? In this episode, Chartered Accountant Paul Sweeney breaks down exactly why sales growth puts pressure on cash flow, and the five specific ways growth quietly drains a business, even when the sales themselves are genuinely good.

Every sale is funded before it's paid for. You cover materials, wages, and resources before you deliver, before you invoice, and before the customer actually pays. That gap is normal, but when sales grow fast, it grows with them, and most small business owners don't see it coming until the cash is already gone.

Paul walks through the five real costs of growth, stock tying up cash, overlooked pricing and margin, resource availability and cost, timing and what's actually in your control, and the cost of rushed delivery, and includes a real client case study showing how a business scaling from $2 million to $8 million in turnover got ahead of exactly this problem.

In this episode:

• Why sales growth puts strain on cash flow, and why that's normal, not a discipline failure
• The five specific ways growing businesses quietly lose cash during a strong sales period
• A simple diagnostic question for each cost, to check your own last big sales month
• A real case study of a business that scaled from $2M to $4M in turnover, and the systems that made that growth sustainable

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

📧 The Business Planning Operating System: https://courses.paulsweeneyaccountant.au/business-planning-course

🌐 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.

Struggling with cash flow management for your small business? In this episode, Chartered Accountant Paul Sweeney breaks down the real root causes behind poor cash flow, and why cutting costs or chasing more sales rarely fixes the problem on its own.

Most small business owners blame the wrong thing when cash flow gets tight. They cut costs, they chase more sales, and six months later they're right back where they started. That's not a sales problem. It's a root cause problem.

Paul walks through the four most common causes behind poor cash flow, receivables sitting too long, stock or work-in-progress tying up cash, mismatched payment terms, and quietly growing overhead, and gives you a simple diagnostic question for each one, so you can find out which one is actually costing your business, instead of guessing.

In this episode:

• Why cutting costs and chasing sales often don't improve cash flow, even when they seem like the obvious fix
• The four real root causes behind small business cash flow problems
• A simple diagnostic question for each cause you can apply to your own numbers this week
• A real example of a profitable small business that was short on cash every month, and the one cause behind it

Resources Mentioned

📘 Free eBook — Start Improving Cash Flow Today: 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

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.

Your profit and loss says you're making money. Your bank account says you're not. Sound familiar?

In the first episode of the relaunched Grow Your Business Podcast, Chartered Accountant and business adviser Paul Sweeney tackles one of the most common questions business owners ask:

"If my business is profitable, why does it feel like I'm always short of cash?"

Paul explains why profit and cash flow are not the same thing, where the gap between the two comes from, and why so many business owners feel under financial pressure despite growing sales and healthy profits. He shares practical insights from working with owner-led businesses and introduces the framework that will underpin this 10-part cash flow series.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why profitable businesses can still run out of cash
• The key differences between profit and cash flow
• Where cash flow pressure really comes from
• Why many cash flow problems are visibility problems, not discipline problems
• What to expect from the rest of this special cash flow series

If you've ever looked at your financial reports and thought,"I'm making money, so where has it gone?", this episode is for you.

Topics Covered

Cash Flow Management • Small Business Finance • Profit vs Cash Flow • Business Cash Flow Tips • Financial Clarity • Cash Flow Forecasting • Business Growth • Small Business Accounting • Cash Flow Planning • Australian Business Owners

Resources Mentioned

🌐 Visit Paul Sweeney and Pretium Solutions
https://paulsweeneyaccountant.au/
https://pretiumsolutions.com.au/

🎙️ Follow the Complete Cash Flow Podcast Series
https://courses.paulsweeneyaccountant.au/cash-flow-podcast-series

📘 Download the Free Cash Flow Guide
5 Steps to a Healthier, More Cashed-Up Business

https://pretiumsolutions.com.au/start-improving-cash-flow-today/

📧 Join the Free Email Course
5 Days to Clearer Cash Flow

About Grow Your Business

Grow Your Business is the podcast for owners who want a business that is easier to run, more profitable and less dependent on them. Hosted by Chartered Accountant and business adviser Paul Sweeney, each episode delivers practical strategies, real business insights and straightforward advice to help you make better decisions and build a better business.

How do we make it easier to create, implement and manage the actions for your business plan?

We have developed a solid process that is easy to follow AND becomes a useful tool. We want you to create an effective business plan to help your business grow. We want you to identify the strategy, the key outcomes and the key results for your business. This clear process makes sure your business plan creation is efficient and effective.

In this series, we have been looking at this idea of why just having a business plan is not enough. We identified five reasons why your business plan will fail.

We will identify and closely examine these reasons that business plans fail. And we're going to look at what you can do to overcome these reasons for failure. Once we have identified the reasons, we'll explore the steps you need to take to achieve your goals by creating an achievable plan of action for your business.

Series Outline:

• Overview of why you need a business plan to be successful
• Business Plan Failure Reason #1
• Business Plan Failure Reason #2
• Business Plan Failure Reason #3
• Business Plan Failure Reason #4
• Business Plan Failure Reason #5
• What Should be in a Business Plan?
• A Successful Approach to Business Planning

Want to find out how Pretium Solutions Chartered Accountants and Certified Business Advisers can help your business? https://pretiumsolutions.com.au/

Get the MAUS Business Planning and HR Pack here.

Check out The Business Behind Your Business Podcast. Join your host Paul Sweeney and our team of expert advisers as we take a deep dive into the problems (and solutions) faced by business owners.

In our 15 minute podcasts, we’ll discuss information and advice from qualified, experienced professionals to help you create a great business.

Running a business is hard. And no matter how experienced you are in your business you’ll run into unexpected issues. Whatever is happening to your business now, it has likely happened to plenty of business owners before.

The Business Behind Your Business will be bringing the team of expert advisers to you, sharing their experience, tips and case studies to help you run a great business.

www.thebusinessbehindyourbusiness.com

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