The 15-Minute Weekly Check-in That Fixes Cashflow

Your accountant calls with the good news.  "Great year!  Revenue's up 30%."
You should be celebrating.  Instead, you're staring at your bank account wondering where all the money went.
You worked harder than ever.  Said yes to every job.  Barely took a day off.  Revenue was up - way up.  But your bank balance tells a different story.

Sound familiar?

If someone asked you right now whether you're profitable this month, could you answer with confidence? Most service business owners can't. They're guessing. And guessing is not a strategy.

The good news: there's a simple fix. It takes 15 minutes a week. And it starts with five things you probably already know but aren't doing consistently.

Why Most Service Businesses Fly Blind

Most service business owners aren't bad with money.  They're flying blind.

They know roughly what came in last month.  They have a vague sense of what went out.  But ask them to put a number on their cash position for the next fortnight and you'll get a long pause followed by "I think we're okay."

That pause is the problem.

Without a weekly rhythm, cashflow gaps show up as emergencies instead of decisions you could have made two weeks earlier.  Tax time becomes a panic.  BAS months feel like ambushes.  And growth decisions - hiring, buying equipment, investing in marketing - get made on gut feel instead of real numbers.

82% of small businesses that fail cite cashflow problems as the cause.  Not lack of sales.  Not bad products.  Cashflow.  The money was there - it just wasn't there at the right time.

For a deeper look at why revenue doesn't equal profit, read our guide to making profit a habit.

Five Steps in 15 Minutes

Here's what a weekly financial check-in actually looks like.  No accounting degree required.  No complex spreadsheets.  Just five steps you can do with a coffee on Friday morning.

1. Check your bank balance.
Not what your accounting software says.  Not what's invoiced.  What's actually in the account right now.  This is your starting position for the week.  It takes 30 seconds and it grounds everything that follows in reality.

2. Check what's coming in.
Look at your outstanding invoices.  Who owes you money?  When is it actually due?  And here's the important bit - be honest about when you'll really get paid.  That invoice due on Friday from the client who always pays three weeks late?  That's not money arriving this week.  Split your expected income into two categories: money you're confident about and money you hope will arrive.  The confident number is the one you plan with.

3. Check what's going out.
Bills due this week.  Bills due next week.  Subscriptions.  Supplier invoices.  Rent.  Insurance.  If you have staff, wages and super.  If it's BAS week, your GST obligation.  Write them all down - the ones you know about and the ones you've been avoiding.

4. Put the picture together.
Starting balance + what's coming in − what's going out = your cash position for the next one to two weeks.

This is cashflow forecasting.

If you've already done steps 1–3, you've already done the hard part.  You've probably just never written the numbers down in one place, been genuinely honest about when money will really arrive, or thought about all of the expenses at once.  That's all forecasting is - taking what you already know and putting it where you can see it clearly.

If you'd prefer a ready-made template for this step, our free Cashflow Forecast tool walks you through the process and does the maths automatically.

5. Make one decision.
This is the step that makes the other four worth doing. Based on what you can now see, make one deliberate call:

• Chase that overdue invoice today.

• Delay that equipment purchase by a fortnight.

• Approve the marketing spend — because you can see the cash is there.

• Move money into your tax account before you spend it on something else.

The point isn't to react to a crisis. It's to make a calm decision while you still have time.

Depending on the Week

Depending on your pay cycle and the time of the month, you might also process a pay run, lodge super, or reconcile receipts.  BAS preparation becomes dramatically easier when you've been checking your numbers weekly instead of scrambling at the end of the quarter.  These tasks layer on top of the core rhythm above - but the five steps are your non-negotiable foundation.

A Note About Bookkeeping

This check-in is not a replacement for keeping your books in order.  Bank reconciliation, receipt filing, and accurate record-keeping matter enormously - and if you're weeks behind on any of those, you already know it.  The longer you leave them, the worse they get.

But this post isn't about catching up on bookkeeping.  It's about building a 15-minute weekly habit that gives you financial visibility right now, even if your books aren't perfect yet.

Start the rhythm first. Fix the foundations in parallel.

The Post-It Method

The physical version of this check-in is beautifully simple.

Grab three colours of sticky notes.  Green for income you're confident about.  Yellow for income you expect but aren't certain of.  Pink for expenses.  Write dollar amounts on each note and sort them by week into separate piles.  Add up the green and yellow.  Subtract the pink.

That's your cash position.

It sounds basic because it is.  Post-it notes and kitchen-table maths.  But it works because it forces you to write the numbers down, be honest about what's really coming in, and see the full picture instead of carrying it around in your head.

Once you've done this manually a couple of times, you'll want a calculator.  We've built a free Cashflow Forecast Tool that does the maths for you - it includes the step-by-step process, a Simple Calculator for quick weekly check-ins, and a Detailed Calculator with built-in charts.

Start This Week

One check-in might only shift your decisions by a small margin.  Do it 52 times and you'll reshape how your business handles money.

The business owners who build this habit don't just get financial clarity.  They get the confidence to invest in growth, hire with intent, plan a holiday without dread, and answer their partner's "Are we doing okay?" with a real number instead of "I think so."

The alternative is another year of the same guesswork.  Same tax-time panic.  Same "I think we're profitable."  Same Sunday night anxiety about whether you can cover next week.

That doesn't have to be you.

Ready to Start?
Download our free Cashflow Forecast Tool and run your first 15-minute check-in this week.

When you're ready for the full rhythm - priorities, metrics, and peer accountability - the Accountability Program brings it all together.

Related post: Four Principles That Make Profit a Habit