Is your small business growing fast, more revenue, more staff, more orders, and somehow still feeling tighter on cash? In this episode, Chartered Accountant Paul Sweeney explains why growth has a cash cost before it has a cash benefit, and gives you three checks to find out if your business is scaling at a pace your cash flow can actually support.

Growth is supposed to be the win, so it rarely gets questioned the way a slow month does. But fast growth often means fast-growing fixed costs, more wages, more stock, more overhead, all committed before the extra revenue it's meant to generate ever lands. That's not a success problem. It's a pacing problem, and pacing problems stay invisible right up until they aren't.

Paul walks through three checks every growing small business should run: whether cash is actually growing at the same rate as revenue, how many months of overhead the business could cover if growth suddenly stalled, and whether systems have genuinely kept pace with the size of the business, or are still running like a much smaller one. Includes a real case study of a business that scaled from $2 million to $8 million in turnover, and the systems that made that growth sustainable instead of risky.

👉 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 growth has a cash cost before it has a cash benefit, and why that cost is so easy to miss
• Three checks to find out if your business is growing faster than its cash flow can support
• How many months of overhead cover you'd have if growth suddenly stalled
• Why systems that worked at half your current size can quietly undermine fast growth
• A real case study: scaling from $2M to $8M in turnover without losing control of cash flow

📘 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.

Watching your revenue climb but still not sure if your small business is actually healthy? In this episode, Chartered Accountant Paul Sweeney reveals the five numbers that make your cash flow leak-proof, the ones that actually predict trouble, long before revenue ever does.

Revenue only answers one question, how much came through the door. It says nothing about whether you kept any of it, whether you've actually been paid for it, or whether cash is quietly tied up somewhere else in the business. That's not a revenue problem. It's a measurement problem.

Paul walks through five specific numbers every small business owner should check: your actual profit margins, how long it takes to turn sales into cash, how much cash is tied up in stock or unfinished work, the gap between your revenue growth and your profit growth, and how many weeks of cash runway your business actually has. Includes a real case study of a tradesperson whose profit grew faster than his revenue, once he finally checked the number that mattered.

👉 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 revenue alone can't tell you if your small business is actually healthy
• The five numbers that make your cash flow leak-proof
• How to check whether growth is building your business, or just making it bigger
• How your cash flow forecast turns into a single number: your cash runway
• A real example of profit growing faster than revenue, and what changed to make that happen

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.

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.