Eleventh Tenet

Eleventh Tee on Scarlet, Ohio State University How much golf is enough? I had a client retire, and after three months of golfing "at will", said that he had played enough. I like what Dr. Robert Schuller said, "I played golf until it threaten my religion!" Purple Curve Effect Tenet #11: "Only by fixing cashflow can most businesses survive long enough to find and fix the true weakest link." What are you doing that threatens your cashflow? Near the start of my computer consulting days (circa 1980's), I computerized a lot of manual accounting systems, using the great software from Open Systems Accounting Software (OSAS). It just worked. And the source code was included (hence the term 'open'). One client had the best approach to cash management that I have seen in 20+ years of working with small privately held firms: The Cash Inventory Ledger As in, "cash" as an inventory item. As in, "how much cash do we have today?" Why did it increase? Or, why did it decrease from the day before? Now, you see why I love the Open Source movement. We had to make a lot of modifications and write a lot of new code, to properly computerize this component of the old manual system. The gentleman had been through a bankruptcy a number of years prior, and learned the hard way that "cash is king". He realized after the fact, that if he had only tracked his cashflow better, he could have survived. The cash factor is twice as important to the startup. Jeff 'SKI' Kinsey, Jonah www.ThroughputPress.com tag: cashflow