Here’s the most uncomfortable moment I see in small manufacturing companies: the P&L says you made $120,000 last month, and the bank balance says you have $14,000. Everyone stares at the screen. Nobody knows what to say. In one 40-person machining shop, that exact gap is what triggered their ERP Consulting engagement.
Months of Profit, Days of Cash
We found their story in three numbers. They were shipping products 11 days after production, but customers were paying at 47 days. Meanwhile, their own suppliers got paid at 31 days. That’s a 16-day hole they were financing out of their own pocket, every single month.
- Pull last quarter’s invoices and sort them by days-to-pay. Circle anything over 45 days.
- Compare that with your own supplier terms — is your money coming in slower than it leaves?
- Pick one sluggish customer each month and renegotiate payment terms in exchange for a small early-payment discount.
The biggest lever is rarely price. It’s the timeline between shipping and payment.
The 15-Minute Weekly Cash Ritual
They set up one calendar meeting. Same time, every Tuesday. Just the owner, the controller, and a single-page cash forecast for the next 12 weeks. No spreadsheets projected on screen, no 30-line grids, just three boxes: expected in, expected out, and what’s due in 7 days.
Within 12 weeks, their cash buffer grew from $14,000 to over $190,000, and not because sales jumped. Because they could see the next wall in advance and chose not to hit it.
What ERP Consulting Actually Does Here
The software doesn’t write better invoices for you. What an ERP Consulting setup gives you is a single timeline pulled from real invoices, not from someone’s memory. When the controller trusted the numbers, the Tuesday meeting stopped being detective work.
If you don’t know your own days-to-pay this afternoon, that’s your starting line. Ask your office manager for this quarter’s top 5 invoices and the dates they were paid.