Sales are up but the bank account says otherwise: what's going on
It's one of the most confusing situations for a small business owner: sales keep climbing, the business looks healthy on paper, and yet you're still juggling to cover payroll or rent. If this sounds familiar, you're not mismanaging your business. It's a classic problem, it has an explanation, and it also has a fix.
Selling is not the same as getting paid
When you issue an invoice, accounting-wise you've already "sold." But that money isn't in your account until the customer actually pays. Between those two moments — billing and collecting — a month, two, or more can pass, depending on your payment terms.
While you wait for that payment, your fixed costs (payroll, rent, utilities) don't wait: they go out every month, whether you've collected the cash or not. That's where the gap comes from: profit on paper, empty account in practice.
An illustrative case
Picture a company that bills 40 million in a month, with a healthy 25% margin. On paper, it earned 10 million. But half of those sales were agreed on 60-day terms, so only 20 million actually landed in the account that month. If fixed and variable costs for that same month add up to 28 million, the outcome is simple: the company was profitable, but ended the month with less cash than it needed to cover its commitments.
This is an illustrative example, not a fixed formula, but the pattern repeats in real businesses all the time: growing sales on credit without adjusting your cash flow is an almost guaranteed way to run short of cash.
Four signs your problem is cash flow, not sales
- You close "profitable" months on paper, but the bank doesn't show it. Your margin is correct; the timing of when cash arrives isn't.
- You keep extending more time to customers (30, 60, 90 days) without adjusting how much time you ask from your own suppliers.
- You don't know, without checking, how much your customers currently owe you or when each payment is due.
- You use a credit card or overdraft as a regular cushion, not as an exception.
If two or more of these sound familiar, your problem isn't that you're selling too little: it's that you're not tracking the time between selling and collecting.
What to do this week
- List your accounts receivable with due dates. Knowing "customers owe me money" isn't enough; you need to know how much, who, and when. Without that list, any cash plan is a guess.
- Compare your supplier payment terms against the terms you give customers. If you collect in 60 days but pay in 30, you're financing your customers out of your own pocket. In general, it's worth bringing those two timelines closer together.
- Prioritize collecting, not just selling. A timely reminder, a small early-payment discount, or simply calling before the due date can meaningfully change how fast cash comes in.
- Project your cash 30 and 60 days out, not just today's balance. Today's balance tells you where you stand; the projection tells you whether you're heading into a squeeze next week, while you can still do something about it.
How Miscostosfijos helps
With Miscostosfijos you see your updated cash projection alongside your fixed costs and real transactions, so the gap between "selling" and "collecting" stops being a surprise at month's end. It's not about selling less or wrestling with spreadsheets: it's about seeing a cash squeeze coming in time to decide with room to maneuver, instead of with your back against the wall.
Try it free for 7 days and see your cash flow with the clarity you need to sleep easy.