Cash is the Oxygen—How to Manage Liquidity in Crisis

Cash is the Oxygen—How to Manage Liquidity in Crisis

There is a moment in nearly every distressed company’s life cycle when the conversation shifts. It stops being about revenue, brand value, or even debt. It becomes one question: How much cash do we have left?

Cash doesn’t solve everything, but without it, nothing else matters. And in a financial crisis, cash is no longer just a metric—it’s oxygen. When it runs out, operations stall, decisions get reactive, and options disappear.

Imagine you’re in Florida, dealing with a New York vendor and reality hits: there is not enough cash to pay your vendor and payroll. Owners are up to 2am, checking bank balances, hoping receivables hit before checks bounces. We’ve seen how fast liquidity can evaporate, but a clear liquidity strategy can stabilize even the most chaotic situations.

Consider a hypothetical example: a mid-sized wholesale distributor in northern New Jersey was quietly losing money. Sales were still decent, but accounts receivable had stretched from 30 to 65 days. Vendor payments were slipping. Payroll was met—barely. The founder had never missed a payment in 25 years, but now he was staring at a shortfall with no warning.

His first instinct? Take a merchant cash advance. This is normally synonymous with digging your own grave.

Instead, do basic triage—but done right. Build a 13-week cash flow model, not as a spreadsheet exercise, but as a control panel. Find people that will ask the hard questions: What truly needs to be paid this week? What’s the burn rate? Where is cash hiding in the business? Is the collections process broken—or just unprioritized?

Simply shining a light—and creating accountability—can provide a company with six weeks of breathing room.

The goal of liquidity management isn’t perfection. It’s time.

Time to plan. Time to negotiate. Time to lead.

Liquidity management in a crisis is different than normal cash flow planning. It requires a shift in mindset. You’re no longer optimizing for growth—you’re preserving life. That means:

• Prioritizing obligations not by due date, but by operational necessity

• Breaking payment habits that no longer serve survival

• Communicating proactively with vendors, landlords, and lenders

Too many businesses fall into the trap of silence, hoping the numbers will fix themselves. But liquidity doesn’t improve passively. It improves when leadership becomes obsessed with visibility and control.

Often companies don’t need capital raise. They needed clarity.

That’s the heart of managing cash in crisis. Not just seeing the numbers—but trusting them. Living by them. Letting them guide every conversation, every deal, every delay.

We work with leadership teams to put strict daily cash controls in place—not to restrict creativity, but to preserve the company’s right to exist.

Cash management isn’t just finance. It’s strategy. It’s governance. It’s leadership.

And once you start breathing again—once you’ve bought time—you can begin to plan for more than just survival. You can begin to rebuild.

If your company is feeling the squeeze, don’t wait for a covenant default or a missed payroll to take action. The sooner you get your arms around liquidity, the more control you preserve.