The moment the numbers stop making sense

You closed last quarter up 18%. Your accountant confirmed it. And this morning you moved money from your personal savings to cover a vendor payment that was already three days late.

The P&L says one thing. Your bank account says something else. You have been staring at both for a month trying to understand why your business makes money but you can't pay bills. Revenue is up. Profit is positive. And you are still short on cash.

Cash flow problems in small business don't start with bankruptcy filings. They start here. With confusion. With profitable companies that can't cover routine obligations.

What Cash Pulse Measures

Most owners track profit. Profit is an opinion. Cash is a fact. You can argue about depreciation schedules, accrual methods, revenue recognition timing. You cannot argue about whether the money is in the account.

That disconnect is where businesses break. And it is why Cash Pulse exists as the first of Helcyon's Business Vital Signs.

Normal state: Cash covers 60 to 90 days of operating expenses without intervention. Receivables arrive on predictable cycles. You pay vendors on terms without shuffling. You know how much cash a small business should keep on hand in your specific situation, and you have it. You don't think about cash because there is nothing to think about.

Warning state: You start making choices. Which vendor gets paid this week. Whether to delay that equipment purchase. You check the bank balance before approving a routine expense. Revenue grows but the bank balance doesn't. Your cash flow does not match your profit, and the gap is widening. You find yourself doing mental math on receivables that haven't landed yet, counting on deposits that are technically committed but not in the account. Cash is still technically positive, but it requires your attention in a way it didn't six months ago.

Critical state: You are financing operations with future revenue. Deposits from next month's contracts cover this month's payroll. You have stopped paying yourself. Credit lines are approaching their limits. You are trying to figure out how to survive a cash flow crisis while the business still shows profit on paper. You cannot clearly calculate your cash runway. This is where failure accelerates, and it accelerates fast.

The Diagnostic Gap

Your accountant confirms the numbers are correct. They do not monitor whether your working capital formula is tightening week over week. They see you quarterly. The deterioration happens daily. Between those quarterly meetings, your largest customer switched to net-60 terms, your vendor raised prices 8%, and you hired two people to handle the growth. Each of those events changed your cash position. None of them changed your P&L in a way that would trigger a conversation.

A dashboard shows you a number. It doesn't tell you what the number means in the context of your payables cycle, your seasonal revenue pattern, and the fact that your largest client just moved to net-60 terms. A report tells you margins held at 22%. It doesn't flag that your cash conversion cycle stretched by 11 days in the same period, which means you're funding that margin with working capital you may not have next month.

Most owners don't ask why am I profitable but have no cash until they are already in the squeeze. The better question comes earlier: what were the signs of cash flow problems before the pressure started?

What Cash Pulse Monitors

Cash Pulse tracks five diagnostic dimensions. Each one maps to a specific pattern that precedes cash failure in small business.

The Profit-Cash Disconnect

Your P&L says you're profitable. Your bank account disagrees. This is the most common cash trap in small business and the one owners take longest to understand. Profit is an accounting concept. Cash is an operational one. They diverge when receivables stretch, when inventory ties up capital, when growth consumes more cash than it generates. Cash Pulse tracks the gap between reported profit and actual cash position and flags when the divergence exceeds your operating margin.

Related reading: Why Profit and Cash Diverge

Cash Runway Velocity

How many weeks of operations your current cash and receivables will fund at your current burn rate. Not a static snapshot. A trajectory. If your runway was 14 weeks last month and it's 11 weeks this month, that is a pattern with a deadline. Most owners calculate cash runway for small business as a single number. It isn't one number. It's a direction. Cash Pulse tracks the direction.

Related reading: How Much Cash Should a Small Business Keep on Hand?

Cash Forecast Accuracy

Every owner who has built a 13 week cash flow forecast knows the problem: the forecast says one thing in January and reality says something different by March. The forecast isn't wrong because the math is bad. It's wrong because assumptions about collection timing, seasonal dips, and variable costs were optimistic. Cash Pulse tests your forecast against what actually happened and recalibrates the projection in real time.

Related reading: How to Create a 13 Week Cash Flow Forecast

Collection Cycle Drift

You invoice on net-30. Your average collection lands at net-47. That 17-day gap is invisible on a P&L but it is costing you working capital every cycle. Multiply it across 40 or 50 invoices and you have a permanent cash drag that doesn't show up in any standard report. This is one of the main reasons a business is always short on cash even when sales are strong.

The problem compounds. When collections slow, you cover the gap with credit or by stretching your own payables. Your vendors notice. Terms tighten. The cash cycle gets longer from both ends simultaneously, and by the time you see it in the bank balance, the pattern has been building for months. Cash Pulse tracks your actual collection patterns against your terms and flags when drift accelerates.

Related reading: What Causes Cash Flow Problems?

Burn Rate Pattern Recognition

Your monthly burn isn't one number. It fluctuates with seasonality, growth spending, and vendor timing. A single cash burn rate small business formula gives you an average. Averages hide the months that kill you. January might burn 20% more than March. Q4 spending commitments might land in Q1 cash outflows. The number you calculated last quarter is already wrong. Cash Pulse maps the pattern across cycles and identifies when current spending outpaces the revenue trajectory that's supposed to fund it. It turns the question of how to know if I'm running out of cash in business from a gut feeling into a measured answer.

Related reading: Why Am I Profitable But Have No Cash?

Cash Flow Diagnostic Articles

Each article below addresses a specific cash problem that business owners search for when the numbers stop adding up. They go deeper on the diagnostic dimensions above.

When to Take the Assessment

If you checked your bank balance before reading this, you already know something is off.

If your profit margin looks healthy but you still moved money around this month to cover something that should have been routine, the numbers are telling you something your reports aren't designed to surface. If you've asked yourself why does my cash flow not match my profit, or you've searched for how to calculate cash runway for small business, the question isn't whether something is wrong. The question is how far along it is.

The Business Vital Signs Assessment does not require financial statements. It asks five questions about how your business operates right now. What it returns is an initial reading on which vital sign needs attention first, whether that's cash, margins, or oversight.

Cash Is Where Instability Surfaces First

Cash is the first vital sign because it is the one that kills fastest. But it rarely acts alone. Margin erosion feeds cash problems quietly, draining reserves before you notice the balance dropping. Margin Temperature tracks that slow bleed. And the businesses that catch these patterns early are the ones that have some form of monitoring layer between their accountant's quarterly report and operational reality. That's what the financial oversight question is actually about.

Helcyon's Business Vital Signs framework exists because the gap between what your accountant reports and what is actually happening is where businesses fail. Cash Pulse closes that gap.