This EOFY, some of the most valuable conversations you can have with clients are about cash flow, and where finance sits within the way their business runs.
Heading into EOFY, the conversations brokers are having with clients keep circling back to one pressure point: cash flow. The best way to understand it is through a business living it day to day.
We recently sat down with one of our customers – a family-owned transport operator with roots going back to the early 1970s, moving chilled freight up and down Australia’s east coast. Today it runs depots in six cities and carries for some of the country’s biggest poultry and dairy names — a solid, established business, and like a lot of transport operators right now, running hard into rising costs and the cash flow strain that follows.
Fuel is the sharp end. The business goes through around 850,000 litres of diesel a month, so when prices spiked, the hit was immediate. It recovers fuel through a levy passed on to customers, but the levy is set on historical data, so there’s always a lag before it catches up. In between, the business wears the difference — paying for fuel on the spot or on seven-day terms, then carrying the freight, invoicing, and waiting weeks to be paid. As the company’s managing director puts it: “By the time we’ve paid for our expensive fuel — which we pay on the spot, or on seven-day terms — then adjust our levy, carry the freight, invoice the customer and wait for them to pay, it’s that holding cost over a three-to-six-week period that really knocks us around cash flow wise.”
All up, the fuel spike meant carrying almost $2m in extra cash – money tied up purely in the timing between paying suppliers and getting paid. For a lot of businesses, a hit like that is what tips a profitable year into a stressful one.
What kept the business steady was something it had put in place long before the crunch: headroom, ready to go. “We always make sure we’ve got headroom so we can go through the ups and downs. We might have a new contract that starts — we have the cost outlay up front, and by the time we invoice the customer and get paid, you’re managing that gap. That’s what we use the facility for.”
That headroom comes from a deliberate setup — a debtor finance facility that turns unpaid invoices into working capital, alongside an equipment line to fund the fleet. Both sit ready, so the business can absorb a shock or take on a new contract without scrambling for funding each time. It helps that the relationship runs deep. When fuel costs spiked, Moneytech came to them, not the other way around.
That’s the difference a strategic finance partner makes. The business has been with Moneytech for years, and that familiarity means its managing director can pick up the phone, flag an opportunity or a pressure, and get a quick answer from a partner who already knows the operation.
For brokers, that’s the real story worth sharing with clients this EOFY. The businesses that handle pressure best treat finance as part of their strategy — set up while things are calm, kept ready, and used as a lever for growth and resilience.
It’s a point Moneytech’s Group Head of Sales & Distribution, Reece Ketu, sees play out constantly. “Cash flow is the heartbeat of any business. The operators who handle pressure best build funding into their everyday planning, so it’s there as part of how they run — ready for the gaps, and ready for the opportunities. EOFY is the perfect time to step back and make sure that structure is right for the year ahead.”
The managing director, for one, is already looking ahead. In a tough climate, he knows some operators won’t make it — and he intends for the business to be ready when they do, “There’ll be companies that find it very tough and might go out of the industry. There’ll be opportunities that come out of that — so we want to make sure we’re ready, willing and able.”
That’s the mindset to put in front of your stronger clients heading into FY27. Businesses with finance behind them are often the ones that grow through a downturn, picking up ground while others pull back.
At Moneytech, we work with brokers to help clients put the right finance in place before they need it – debtor finance to manage the gaps, equipment finance to fund growth, and the headroom to back an opportunity when it comes. If you’ve got a client who’d benefit from thinking about cash flow more strategically this EOFY, let’s talk.