The diagnostic
4 phases. A fixed price. Your own numbers.
The Cash Conversion Diagnostic takes your trailing-12-month financials and the people who run the work, and returns where cash is stuck, what freeing it is worth, and the workflow that keeps it moving — ranked, sequenced, and agreed with your team. You see the numbers before you decide whether it was worth the fee.
Illustration — not a client result
The readout: your cycle, your leaks, and the dollars attached to each — walked through together, not mailed over.
The four phases
You know the shape before you book.
Four phases, published up front. Most of the load is ours; the moments we need your people are marked below — four interviews, two working sessions, one readout — so you can check them against your month-end before you say yes.
Typically four to six weeks, start to readout — stated as a range on purpose, because your production calendar, month-end and holidays are real. Remote-first, with one on-site day optional where you’re local. The scheduling flexes around your calendar — the phases and what each one asks of your people do not.
- a one-hour interview — four in all
- two two-hour working sessions land in this window
- the readout — where you decide whether it was worth the fee
- unmarked phases are desk work — ours, not yours
- Phase 1about a week
Intake and baseline
Your records come in and the arithmetic gets done. Days to get paid, days inventory and WIP sit, days you take to pay — and the cycle they add up to, computed from your own financials. Five to ten recent jobs traced quote to order to invoice to payment.
Desk work. We need your files, not your floor.
- Phase 2about a week
Interviews
Four structured conversations — finance, order entry and billing, purchasing, and whoever chases payment today. One hour each. The binder says one thing; the process that actually moves your cash is the one your people run — the exceptions, the workarounds, the judgment calls. That process is the one we map.
Four people, one hour each.
- Phase 3one to two weeks
Workshops and design
Two working sessions with the people who run the work. The first puts the leak map in front of them: does this match what you live? The second designs the target-state workflow for the fixes worth making. This is why the workshops exist: a fix your own team helped design is a fix they'll actually run.
Two sessions, about two hours each. The on-site day, if we use one, belongs here. The widest phase on purpose — booking two sessions around your production calendar is where schedules actually flex.
- Phase 4a few days
Map and readout
The opportunity map is assembled and ranked, then walked through with you — not mailed over. You leave the readout knowing what to do first and what it's worth.
Ninety minutes with the owner or CFO.
Scope
Deeper, not wider.
Four phases buy more evidence and more agreement about one thing — your cash conversion cycle. They don’t buy a second subject. What’s out of scope below has always been out of scope.
- typically 4–6 weeks
- Start to readout, on the phase cadence above. A typical range on purpose — your calendar is real. What doesn't move: the four phases, and what each one asks of your people.
- One company, one entity or plant
- Multi-site groups start with the site where the most cash is moving.
- Trailing-12-month data
- The records you already keep. Nothing gets rebuilt or restated for us.
- Remote-first
- One on-site day is optional where local — useful in the workshop phase, never required.
- A fixed deliverable
- Six sections, listed below. What is not listed is not in scope.
What you bring
Records you already have, and time from people you already employ.
If your team can pull this list in a week, you’re ready. If pulling it is a struggle, that’s a finding in itself — and worth knowing either way.
- The Cash Conversion CheckDay zero, and free either way. Twenty minutes, no figures asked — it tells us which of your cash artifacts exist before day one spends time finding out.
- AR aging and AP agingCurrent, as your system prints them today.
- Inventory / WIP summaryPlus the retainage balance, if you hold any.
- Last 12 months P&L and balance sheetThe statements you already produce — no special format.
- 5–10 recent jobs, traced end to endQuote to order to invoice to payment, wherever those records live.
- Four one-hour interviewsFinance, order entry and billing, purchasing, and whoever chases payment today.
- Two working sessionsAbout two hours each, with the people who actually run the work — not only the people who manage it.
- That’s the whole list. No system access, no software install, no IT project to get started.
Before phase one starts
Three things have to be true, and all three are yours to make true. We’d rather tell you the timing is wrong than spend a diagnostic finding out.
- 01The Check, completedTwenty minutes, free, self-serve. It tells us which of your cash artifacts exist before day one spends time finding out.
- 02The intake list, in handNot promised — pulled. If it can't be assembled in a week, the diagnostic isn't the right next thing — and we'll say so.
- 03Workshop attendees, namedThe people who actually run pricing, billing, purchasing and follow-up. Named before the clock starts, because phases three and four are worth nothing without them.
What you hand over stays in a private store, is read only by the people working your Diagnostic, and is deleted after the engagement closes — the full policy is in your portal.
And if the diagnostic leads to a build, none of it moves house: the system runs in your own tenant, on your own licenses — whose account it runs in, and what leaves it.
What you get
One report, six sections, all of it yours to keep.
Every figure in it is computed from your own records, with the math shown. You should be able to hand it to your accountant and have it hold up.
- 01
Your cycle, baselined
Days to get paid, days inventory and WIP sit, days you take to pay — and the full cycle they add up to, computed from your own financials with the math shown.
- 02
The leak map
The four places cash stops moving, scored on your data: where it's actually stuck, in dollars, ranked. Not every shop has every leak — the map shows yours.
- 03
The opportunity map
Everything we found, ranked in the three lanes you already track: working capital freed, cash flow from operations, and hours returned to your people. Dollars stated as directional ranges — never false precision, because you'll check this math, and it's written to survive that.
- 04
The target-state workflows
How pricing, quoting, billing, purchasing and follow-up should actually run, drawn as processes your own team can operate. Designed with them in the workshops, so what you get back is something they've already agreed to — not something proposed at them.
- 05
The fix sequence
The top three to six fixes, ordered by cash freed against effort. Each one tagged honestly: do it yourselves, we build it, or needs a decision.
- 06
The readout
A working session of about 90 minutes with the owner or CFO, walking the numbers — plus the written report, which is yours to keep either way.
Terms
You decide at the readout whether it was worth it.
- 01A fixed feeAgreed before any work starts. No hourly meter, no change orders, and the scope doesn't stretch.
- 02The fee is at risk until the readoutYou see every number, computed from your own books with the math shown. If what we found isn't worth the fee, you don't pay it. That's the whole clause.
- 03Your first build is includedUp to ten build days, on a fix your own map named — delivered inside the partnership, which runs month to month at thirty days’ notice. No minimum term: the retainer should continue only while it earns its keep.
The fee is fixed, and you know it when you book — before any work starts and before anything is at risk. We scope it to your entity rather than publish a number that would be wrong for half the companies reading this.
Explicitly not included
The boundary is the product.
- Implementation beyond the included first build
- Software licenses or tooling
- Month-end close review
- Cash forecasting
- Anything outside the cash cycle
We don’t replace your accountants, and we won’t sell you a system before the numbers say you need one. A request that comes up in a workshop is a note for the build, not a change to this.
Which fix the included build covers
Published so you can check it against your own map rather than take our word for which fixes qualify.
- Tagged “we build it” in your fix sequence
- Sits inside one process
- Needs no new system and no ERP change
- Fits inside ten build days
Your map isn’t shaped by what’s cheap for us to build. The ranking is whatever your data says, including the fixes this rule doesn’t cover and the ones we’d have to charge you for. Bending the diagnosis to fit the free build would cost you the only thing you’re actually buying.
Know what your cycle is holding before you change anything.
Not ready for a full diagnostic? The Snapshot takes two minutes and a few numbers you already know.
Already know exactly which process is broken? The Targeted Diagnostic verifies it — typically one to two weeks.