You’re growing. Revenue’s up. Orders are flying.
But your bank balance? Still stuck.

You're not alone. Many product-based businesses look profitable but struggle to keep cash in the business.

Why? Because systems that should be giving you clarity are silently draining your capital.

As Fiskal CEO Jaco Roets puts it: “Growth sucks cash.”

When sales scale, so does everything else: inventory, receivables, production runs. If your operations and financial systems don’t talk to each other in real time, your cash flow reality never shows up on paper.

Why profitable product businesses still feel broke

The hidden cash flow drain: systems that don’t sync

Shopify. Cin7. QuickBooks.
All powerful on their own, but when they’re out of sync, they don’t just slow down your team… they hide financial reality.

When systems fail to communicate, the impact spreads quietly through your business. Manual patches become the norm, data gets questioned, and your team spends more time reconciling than strategizing. You’re left making decisions based on numbers that never seem to line up, and by the time the “real” figures emerge, the moment to act has already passed.

Fix it with:

• Automated syncs between Shopify → Cin7 → QuickBooks

• Error audits and alert triggers

• Real-time dashboards for cash and inventory visibility

• Clean COA mapping between operations and accounting

“Our inventory and accounting data never matched until we cleaned up the Cin7-QuickBooks sync. Now we trust our numbers and can plan with confidence.”

— Fiskal Client, D2C Apparel Brand

When your systems stop telling the same story, teams fall back on manual fixes, most often in spreadsheets. And that’s where the next cash flow trap begins.

Spreadsheet planning: the illusion of control

Spreadsheets feel familiar, until they cost you thousands in missed POs and hours of manual cleanup.

They’re easy to open, easy to tweak, and deceptively satisfying. But as your product line and supplier base grow, what once felt like control turns into chaos. Every formula, every linked tab becomes another potential failure point, and one small error can cascade through your forecasts and inventory counts without warning.

What manual planning really costs:

• Hours wasted updating inventory and chasing data

• Burnt-out teams and late-night reconciliation sprints

• Stockouts and delayed vendor orders, right when demand spikes

One beverage brand learned this the hard way. Their team spent over ten hours a week maintaining spreadsheets, only to discover product mismatches and vendor delays during peak season. When they finally switched to Cin7’s Forecast AI, automated purchase orders, and role-based dashboards, everything changed. Teams stopped firefighting and started forecasting. Replenishment errors dropped by 40%, and confidence in their data returned overnight.

When you rely on spreadsheets, you end up planning based on illusions instead of insight. But when data starts talking to you in real time, the conversation shifts, from manual reaction to proactive decision-making. And nowhere is that more crucial than when it comes to understanding your margins.

Why your margins are misleading you

Your P&L says your margins are strong. But are they telling the full story?

If you're applying COGS as a flat average, or skipping per-SKU costs like freight, duty, or seasonal discounts, your profitability looks better than it really is. And that can skew critical decisions during promos, restocks, and planning.

When COGS mapping is off, your numbers tell comforting lies. Margins appear inflated, true costs stay buried, and forecasts crumble under real-world conditions. The result? You’re making strategic calls on misleading data, and those “good” margins can lead you straight into a cash shortfall.

Fix it with:

• Landed cost tracking tied to specific POs

• Updated Bills of Materials (BOMs)

• COA mapping that matches how you actually operate

“Once we applied landed costs to actual POs in Cin7, our margins dropped, but our decisions got 10x smarter.”

— Fiskal Client, Specialty Importer

When profitability looks perfect on paper but cash feels tight, it’s time to look beyond the numbers. And few stories illustrate that disconnect better than Safety First’s.

One of Fiskal’s clients, a growing distributor, was riding a wave of strong sales and expanding accounts. On paper, everything looked great, their P&L painted a picture of success. But beneath the surface, reality was very different. Their bank account kept shrinking, even as their revenue grew.

What they didn’t realize was that inaccurate COGS mapping and poor system communication were masking where their cash was actually going. Inventory delays piled up, vendor miscommunications became routine, and end-of-month reports turned into a guessing game. Every week felt like a scramble to figure out what went wrong, instead of planning for what came next.

Fiskal stepped in to rebuild their COA, clean up the Cin7 → QuickBooks workflow, and implement live forecasting.

The result:

• Weekly 13-week forecast across teams

• SKU-level COGS visibility

• 30% fewer stockouts

• Real-time dashboards founders could trust

Case study: from sales highs to cash flow chaos

Your chart of accounts: the control panel you’re ignoring

Most founders treat their COA like an accounting requirement. But for product-based businesses, it’s far more than that, it’s the financial cockpit that shows how every operational move affects cash. Unlike service businesses, product companies juggle raw materials, manufacturing, logistics, and fulfillment. A well-structured COA turns that complexity into clarity. It connects each stage of the supply chain to financial outcomes, giving founders a real-time view of profitability and liquidity.

How to structure a COA that drives clarity:

• Separate raw materials, WIP, and finished goods for clearer inventory staging

• Break out COGS by product line so you can see what's profitable (and what’s not)

• Distinguish inbound freight from fulfillment costs to catch cost overruns early

One client moved from three generic inventory accounts to a structure that reflected real supply chain flows, instantly revealing $120K in tied-up stock.

Why growth sucks cash: the real workflow gap

Scaling sales means spending before you earn.

And here’s what you need to fund up front:

• Bulk supplier payments

• Long lead time production

• Receivables that stretch 30, 60, even 90 days

The problem is that each of these inputs creates a lag between when you spend money and when you get it back. Inventory sits on shelves, cash is tied up in transit, and your financial reports are always a few weeks behind reality. The faster you grow, the bigger this gap becomes, because every new order requires upfront investment in materials, manufacturing, and fulfillment before a single dollar hits your account.

That’s why growth often feels like it drains cash even when you’re profitable. The issue isn’t just spending, it’s timing and visibility. Without integrated inventory accounting, you can’t see those gaps until they start hurting your working capital.

Align financial workflows to scale smart:

• Automate landed cost + PO syncs in Cin7

• Connect Shopify, Cin7, and QBO for real-time cash tracking

• Forecast inventory spend against cash runway

Cash flow isn’t a spreadsheet. It’s a system.

Cash flow isn’t a static report, it’s a living system that mirrors how your business actually moves. Spreadsheets only capture snapshots in time, but cash is dynamic. It flows daily, shifting with every sale, purchase, and operational cost. To manage it effectively, you need a framework that updates in real time, aligns across teams, and guides decisions, not just records them.

That’s why every growing product business should implement a 13-week cash flow forecast. It’s not about predicting the future, it’s about creating a rhythm for your decision-making. Each week, you can see what’s coming in, what’s going out, and how long your cash runway really is. Over time, it becomes the pulse of your business, the bridge between finance and operations.

What to include in a 13-week forecast:

• Receipts: Channel-based sales forecasts that reflect seasonality and promotions

• Purchases: POs with supplier terms and landed costs to predict actual spend timing

• Production: BOMs and production schedules to align manufacturing with demand

• Opex: Upcoming operating expenses, mapped by week, to manage runway proactively

Sync this weekly across teams, sales, supply chain, finance, so everyone operates from the same source of truth.

“Forecast, evaluate, update. It’s not a spreadsheet, it’s a decision-making system.”

— Jaco Roets, CEO, Fiskal

Action checklist: are you system-ready?

✔️ Accurate inventory by SKU
✔️ BOMs, MOQs, lead times updated
✔️ POs entered in Cin7, not buried in email
✔️ AR/AP tied to real-world terms
✔️ COA structured to match operations

Ready to stop flying blind?

Fiskal helps product businesses:

• Build and maintain a 13-week cash flow system

• Sync Shopify, Cin7, and QuickBooks for total visibility

• Restructure COAs for full cost traceability

• Train teams to own financial clarity

📞 Or call us directly: (954) 415-7895

Watch my full webinar about Cash Flow for Product Businesses here

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