Metronomics builds cash clarity into the growth system itself. The Cash System — one of the seven — gives your leadership team a rolling 12-month cash forecast, a cash conversion cycle you actively manage, and the Power of One: knowing exactly which small lever moves cash most.
A company can be profitable on paper and still run short on cash because profit is an accounting opinion and cash is a timing fact. As you scale, the gap between when you spend (payroll, inventory, delivery) and when you collect widens — so growth itself consumes cash. That's the cash conversion cycle, and it's why growing $5M–$100M companies are almost universally cash-stressed even in good years.
The fix isn't more revenue; it's a cash system: forecast cash first, shorten the cycle, and pull the Power of One levers — where a 1% or 1-day improvement in price, cost, receivables, inventory, or payables compounds dramatically.
You check the bank balance before approving normal expenses.
Receivables are growing faster than revenue.
Every growth spurt triggers a cash crunch 60–90 days later.
You forecast profit monthly but cash never — or only when it's tight.
Payment terms are whatever the customer asked for.
The line of credit is permanently drawn, not seasonal.
Nobody on the leadership team owns a cash number.
The paradox of scaling: the faster you grow, the tighter cash gets. Most growth-stage companies manage by bank balance — and get surprised, quarter after quarter, right when they need capital most.
Cash isn't a finance-department problem. It's a leadership-team system — and it has to be connected to strategy and execution, or the plan and the bank account drift apart.
A rolling cash forecast built widgets-first — the team forecasts the things it controls, then the dollars — so you see the position months ahead and growth decisions are funded on purpose, never a scramble.
How long a dollar takes to come back home — measured, owned by the leadership team, and shortened deliberately quarter over quarter.
What a 1% price change, one day of receivables, or 1% of COGS does to cash — so the team knows exactly which small lever moves it most.
Because it's one of the seven connected systems, cash ties directly to your 3HAG and quarterly execution — and lives in the software where the whole team sees it, not in a spreadsheet somewhere.
Because profit is an accounting opinion and cash is a timing fact. As you scale, the gap between when you spend and when you collect widens — growth itself consumes cash. The fix is a cash system: forecast cash first, shorten the cash conversion cycle, and pull the Power of One levers.
Three moves, in order: forecast cash weekly on a rolling basis (before profit, not after), shorten the cash conversion cycle (invoice faster, collect faster, negotiate terms), and run the Power of One across price, volume, cost, receivable days, inventory days, and payable days. Most teams find weeks of cash inside their own cycle without borrowing a dollar.
The Cash System builds a rolling 12-month forecast, an actively-managed cash conversion cycle, and Power of One analysis into your quarterly rhythm — owned by the leadership team, visible in the software.
A simple analysis of what a 1% or 1-day improvement in each cash driver — price, volume, COGS, receivables, payables, inventory — does to your cash position, so the team focuses on the lever that matters most.
Widgets are the non-fiscal things that flow through your business — units, projects, tickets, placements — that team members actually own and control. Forecasting widgets first, then attaching fiscal assumptions, produces cash forecasts your team believes in and can act on.
Cash is one of the seven connected systems — your 3HAG sets the destination, quarterly priorities move toward it, and the cash forecast tells you whether the plan is funded. Nothing drifts apart because it's one system.
The assessment scores your cash system alongside the other six — five minutes to a clear picture.
