How many weeks could your business survive?

Ask a busy tradesperson how their business is doing and most will point to the diary. Booked out for the next six weeks, jobs lined up, phone still ringing. That feels like the answer to "is the business okay," but it is actually answering a different question. It tells you how much work is coming. It says nothing about what happens if that work suddenly stopped.

Runway answers the question the diary cannot. Not how busy are you, but how long could you actually keep going.

Why a full diary is not the same as a safe business

Booked work can fall through. A big job gets postponed, a customer changes their mind, a slow month arrives out of nowhere the way they always seem to. None of that is a crisis on its own, unless the business has nothing behind it to absorb the gap. Runway is that absorption, measured honestly, in weeks rather than a vague sense of "we'll be fine."

A worked example

Say you have $8,000 sitting in the business, plus $2,000 owed to you from a reliable customer due any day. Your monthly overheads, rent, insurance, vehicle, your own wage, come to $4,500:

Roughly two and a bit months. Not disastrous, but not a huge cushion either, especially if that $2,000 turns out to be less reliable than expected. Seen as a number, it is a useful thing to know before you need it, not after.

Why unpaid invoices are a grey area

Money genuinely owed to you does extend your runway, but only the money you can actually count on. A reliable customer's invoice due next week is fair to include. A vague promise from someone who is already dragging their feet is not, and including it anyway just gives you a false sense of security exactly when you cannot afford one.

What counts as a healthy runway

There is no single right number, but under a month tends to feel tight for most trade businesses, while two to three months gives real breathing room to ride out a quiet patch, an unexpected bill, or a slow-paying customer without it turning into a crisis. Seasonal trades, or ones with genuinely lumpy income, are usually better off aiming toward the higher end.

What to do if your runway is short

• Look at both sides of the equation. Overheads that are not earning their keep can be trimmed, and cash can sometimes be brought forward through deposits or faster invoicing.
• Chase anything genuinely overdue. A late payment sitting uncollected is doing double damage: it is not helping your runway, and it cost you something in the meantime.
• Hold off on new fixed costs. Adding a new overhead while your buffer is thin makes the next quiet patch worse, not better.

Frequently asked questions

The takeaway

A full diary is a good sign, but it is not a safety net. Work out your real runway once, and you will know exactly how much room you actually have before a quiet patch turns into a genuine problem, rather than finding out the hard way.