It’s an unfortunate fact of life that, generally speaking, you have to pay for stuff you need. And paying for that stuff – stock, raw materials, equipment, space, people to work for you – is part of owning a small business. Of course, you need to be able to generate enough money to meet those expenses. And to ensure you are in a position to do so, you need to understand your working capital.

Working capital is a way of measuring the short-term financial health of a business. Defined as the difference between current assets and current liabilities, your working capital position tells you whether you have sufficient cash on hand to pay off your short-term financial obligations.

On Day Zero, Cape Town’s taps will be turned off and Mother City residents will begin queuing for their H20 at 200 collection sites across the city. It’s a nightmare scenario, something you see happening in a dystopic disaster movie set in the year 2148.

The truth is, businesses everywhere are engaged in a constant battle to keep their own Day Zero at bay. For when the taps run dry and liquidity dissolves, it truly does sound the death knoll for a business. No matter what your long-term prospects are, how innovative your product or service, or how revolutionary your business model, not having ready access to cash – not being able to open the tap when you need to – will see all your best-laid plans come to naught.

“Bizcash offer a fantastic service, it’s fast, convenient and far more advanced than any other finance facility I know of. They have helped our business enormously.”

Jonathan Erskine has been trading commodities for more than 25 years. In Hong Kong, China, and the UK, he has traded everything from clothing to computers, cellphones to scrap metal, grain to cement. Now back in his native Durban, Erskine has emerged over the past decade as one of South Africa’s leading coal traders.

Cash is like water. Just like your body needs water every day to survive, your business needs cash to stay afloat. Most business owners are good at selling their services or pushing product, but are less effective at controlling their cashflow. 

Your business might be profitable on paper, but if the cash isn’t flowing in a steady stream then you may not be able to realise those profits. Without cash your profits don’t mean much.