Ask most business owners where their cash is and they’ll point to the bank balance. The bigger number is often somewhere else: on warehouse shelves, in invoices nobody has chased, or in equipment sitting unused at a site nobody has visited in months.
None of that is hidden on purpose. It’s hidden because the information lives in different systems, and no single report puts it together.
Where cash hides
Slow-moving and dead stock. Stock that sold well two years ago and hasn’t moved since. Overstock from a bulk buy that looked like a good deal. Superseded models nobody wants to write off. Your inventory system knows the quantities and your accounting system knows the costs, but the question “what hasn’t sold in 12 months, and what’s it worth?” usually needs both.
Overdue receivables. Most accounting systems show an aged debtors report. What they don’t show is which overdue customers are still ordering, which have gone quiet, and whether credit terms are being enforced. That needs sales and debtor data side by side.
Idle assets. Bins, pallets, hire equipment, vehicles and tools. If they sit at customer sites or out in the field, they’re easy to lose track of. Each one that’s lost, or parked somewhere it isn’t earning, is cash spent on equipment that isn’t working, and often a reason to buy more.
Two examples from our own work
For a pumps and tanks distributor, a financial analysis of their Cin7 Core and Xero data showed $850K of dead or overstocked inventory and $691K of overdue receivables, along with a number of dormant top-customer accounts. That’s more than $1.5M of cash tied up in the business, found in data the company already held. It gave the leadership team clear levers to free up cash, with a dollar value attached to each one.
For a metal recycler, the issue was bins. We built a bin register on the company’s data showing every bin on a map, whether it was in the yard or out with a customer, and how long it had been there. It turned up six bins the business had lost track of and five more that had been at customer sites for more than two years. With every bin visible, bin turnover improved by 12%.
Neither finding needed a new system. Both came from putting existing data in one place and asking the right questions of it.
Why the usual reports miss it
Standard reports are built for the system they sit in. The inventory system reports on stock. The accounting system reports on money. The job or logistics system reports on movements. Each one is accurate on its own terms.
The useful questions cross those lines. What is this stock worth at cost, and when did we last sell any? Which customers owe us money and are also holding our equipment? Which product lines tie up the most cash for the least margin? Answering them means joining data across systems, which is usually where a spreadsheet gets built, maintained by one person, and quietly goes out of date.
How to find your own tied-up cash
You can do a first pass on this in a few weeks. Here’s the method we use:
- List where cash can sit. Stock, debtors, work in progress, equipment in the field, deposits and prepayments. Be specific to your business.
- Find the system of record for each. Inventory in Cin7 or similar, debtors in Xero, equipment in a job system, a register or someone’s spreadsheet.
- Pull the data into one place. A simple database is better than a spreadsheet for this, because you’ll want to refresh it and join tables reliably.
- Agree the definitions. What counts as dead stock: no sales in 6 months, or 12? What counts as overdue: past terms, or past 30 days beyond terms? Write the answers down.
- Put a dollar value on each category. Stock at cost, debtors at invoice value, equipment at replacement cost. A number with a dollar sign gets attention that a list of codes doesn’t.
- Rank the levers. Some cash is quick to release, such as chasing a handful of large overdue accounts or recovering equipment. Some takes longer, such as clearing old stock.
- Act, then make it routine. Turn the one-off analysis into a report that refreshes automatically, so the problem doesn’t quietly build up again.
What to do with what you find
Dead stock is rarely solved by a single sale. Common moves include clearance pricing, bundling slow items with fast ones, returning stock to suppliers where terms allow, and changing reorder points so the problem doesn’t recur. Sometimes the right answer is a write-off, which at least gives you an honest balance sheet.
Overdue debtors usually respond to consistent follow-up. A weekly list of who to call, ordered by amount and age, often does more than any change to terms.
For equipment, visibility is most of the battle. Once the team can see what’s been out the longest, it can be collected. The recycler’s bin turnover improved by 12% once every bin was visible.
Make it a habit, not a project
The first analysis is the most satisfying, because it surfaces problems that have built up over years. The lasting value comes from keeping it running. A monthly view of stock age, debtor age and equipment location, refreshed from your systems without anyone rebuilding a spreadsheet, means the next $100K of slow stock gets noticed when it’s $10K.
Where to start
Pick the one place you suspect cash is hiding, whether that’s stock, debtors or equipment, and work through the seven steps for that alone. If you’d like help joining up the data and building the reports, see our insight and reporting and data platforms work, or get in touch.