How to handle months with zero clients
Extreme fluctuations between being fully booked and facing dead silence leave businesses with unpredictable income from month to month. This makes it impossible to maintain steady cash flow to pay team members during dry spells like the winter.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Pushing snow
- 2Doing brush hogging, tree work, field mowing, and hardscape projects
- 3Laying off workers so they can collect unemployment
- 4Renting out and hanging holiday lights
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“What are you doing to keep money flowing to pay guys all winter.”source ↗
“one month is fully booked, next month is dead silence. doesn't seem to matter how good the last project went. feels like there's no real middle ground, it's either too much or nothing.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 3Why is sales forecasting always so inaccurate?
- 3Why do clients take 30, 60, or 90 days to pay invoices?
- 5Why are Shopify payouts held and put on a rolling reserve?
- 5How to fix journal entries moving income to expense accounts
- 3Why are wedding invitations taking weeks or months to arrive in the mail?
- 4What are the real work hours like for a new HVAC tech?