The Friday-morning cash list.

Most cash problems in a small business aren’t really money problems — they’re surprise problems. The shortfall itself is rarely fatal; finding out about it three days before payroll is what does the damage. By the time you’re staring at the ceiling doing arithmetic at 2 a.m., your options have already narrowed to the expensive ones.

The fix costs ten minutes a week. Every Friday morning, before the phone starts, make a list with three columns for the next four weeks:

1. Coming in. Every dollar you actually expect to land — not what’s been promised, what will land. The insurance job that pays on completion counts when it completes.
2. Going out. Every dollar leaving — and put the immovable dates on first: payroll, loan payments, HST. Those three never negotiate. Fuel and materials flex; the 15th does not.
3. When. The week each one hits. Cash flow isn’t about how much — it’s about when. A great month on paper can still contain one brutal week.

Keep it deliberately dumb

Paper on a clipboard. The notes app. A whiteboard in the shop. The format doesn’t matter and software isn’t the point — the ritual is. Ten minutes, same morning every week, so the week you skip it isn’t the week it mattered.

If you run on a season — landings in eight weeks, bills in fifty-two — the list matters more, not less: the “coming in” column empties for months at a time, and the game becomes making the in-season weeks carry the calendar.

This habit has an industrial-grade version: the 12-month rolling cash-flow forecast that anchors the Controller plan — same idea, kept current before every working session. But the Friday list is free, and it catches most of what matters.

Notes like this are general information, not advice on your specific situation — that’s what the kitchen table is for. — Dominic