# The 90-Day Cash-Flow Triage Plan

It is Monday morning, there is $9,200 in the operating account, and payroll of $31,000 runs Friday. You are $21,800 short with four days to close it. That is the situation this plan is built for, and the first thing to know is that it is almost always survivable without a loan, because the money usually already exists: it is sitting in your receivables and hiding in the timing of your payables.

This is the worked example throughout: Copperline Mechanical, an $850,000 HVAC and plumbing shop, with $66,500 in unpaid invoices, $22,800 of it past 60 days. The plan runs in three passes: this week you close the Friday gap, in 30 days you stabilize so Friday stops being a cliff, and in 90 days you fix the terms so the crunch does not come back.

The order of your moves matters more than any single move, so use this ladder and always pull the cheapest, least damaging lever first:

1. **Collect money already earned.** Your receivables are the cheapest cash you have, because it is yours and it costs nothing to bring in early.
2. **Slow payables without burning a supplier.** Ask for time before you take it; a called vendor gives you 15 days, a stiffed vendor puts you on COD.
3. **Cut or defer discretionary spend.** Equipment, your own draw, anything that can wait a week waits a week.
4. **Only then, outside money.** A line of credit is a bridge, not a fix, and factoring or a merchant cash advance is the most expensive money in the building. Treat those as the last two rungs, not the first.

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## This week: close the Friday gap ($21,800)

You have four days and one target: cover the $31,000 payroll. Do not try to fix the business this week. Just close the gap, using the ladder from the top.

**Move 1, collect the fast money (target $19,900).** Pull the invoices most likely to pay now, working the phone today.

- Brookfield Property Group, $9,400, only 12 days out and a payer that cuts checks on request: call and ask them to release it this week. Target the full $9,400.
- Vance Restaurant Group, $6,200 at 24 days: offer 2 percent off ($124) to pay by Thursday. Target $6,076.
- Meridian Dental, $8,800 at 33 days: ask for half now, half in two weeks. Target $4,400.

That is about $19,876 in the door by Thursday if all three come through, and you keep dialing the aged list behind them.

**Move 2, slow one payable (free $3,500).** You have a $3,500 supplier bill due Wednesday. Call the supplier today, explain you are moving cash around this week, and ask for net-45. A supplier you have paid for years will almost always say yes to 15 more days. That is $3,500 you do not have to find by Friday.

**Move 3, hold your own draw ($2,000).** Your $2,000 owner draw scheduled this week waits until the account is above payroll. It is your money, so it is the cleanest dollar to defer, and it closes the last of the gap. Collect $19,900, defer $3,500, hold $2,000, and the $21,800 is covered with room, without touching the line of credit.

## Next 30 days: stabilize so Friday stops being a cliff

You cleared this Friday. The next 30 days are about never being surprised by a Friday again. Three systems do it.

**Build the weekly cash forecast.** Every Monday, project the next 13 weeks: starting balance, expected receipts, expected outflows, ending balance. The moment you can see a shortfall three weeks out instead of three days out, you have turned a crisis into a scheduling problem. The `ar-aging.xlsx` sheet in this kit feeds the receipts side.

**Separate the tax reserve now.** If your income and payroll taxes live in the operating account, your cash comfort is a lie, because a chunk of that balance already belongs to the government. Open a second account and move a fixed percentage of every deposit into it automatically, so tax time is never the next emergency.

**Turn collections into a routine, not a panic.** Put the call ladder and the five-email dunning sequence on a fixed cadence for every open invoice, and work the $22,800 that is past 60 days down deliberately. Over 30 days, getting your DSO from about 29 days toward 20 frees roughly $21,000 of cash out of the same revenue.

## Next 90 days: fix the terms so it does not recur

A crunch that keeps returning is a terms problem wearing a cash-flow mask. In 90 days you change the terms so the money arrives before payroll instead of 45 days after it.

**Put deposits and progress billing on every large job.** No job over $10,000 starts without a deposit, and no job over two weeks bills only at the end. On a $24,000 build-out, a 40 percent deposit is $9,600 in your account before you buy a thing.

**Shorten your default terms.** Move small work to due-on-receipt with a card on file, put an early-pay discount on the rest, and add a late fee that gives your reminders teeth. The `payment-terms-templates.md` file has the language; your attorney sets the final version.

**Start the cash reserve.** Automatically sweep a fixed share of every deposit into a reserve account and build toward a floor of about eight weeks of payroll, roughly $124,000 for this business. That is a goal you build over quarters, not weeks, but the crunch stops owning you the day the reserve crosses one full payroll.

## The recurring check: the Working Capital Risk Test

Once a month, answer four questions. They tell you if the crunch is coming back before your bank balance does.

1. Are receivables growing faster than revenue? If sales are flat but A/R is climbing, you are collecting slower.
2. How long are you taking to get paid? Watch DSO; a rising number is money leaving the business quietly.
3. What share of A/R is past 60 days? Above about 20 percent is a warning; Copperline's 34 percent was the alarm.
4. Does payroll land before your collections do? If yes, you have a timing gap to fix with deposits and terms, not with more sales.

<div class="disclaimer">
<strong>Plain terms:</strong> this is general business and financial education, not accounting, tax, legal, or investment advice, and it makes no promise about your results. Every dollar figure here is an illustration, not a benchmark for your business. Decisions about a line of credit, factoring, tax set-asides, or placing an invoice for collection carry real financial and legal weight, so run them past a licensed CPA or attorney who knows your books before you act.
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