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.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Pushing snowDid this help you?
- 2Doing brush hogging, tree work, field mowing, and hardscape projectsDid this help you?
- 3Laying off workers so they can collect unemploymentDid this help you?
- 4Renting out and hanging holiday lightsDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Did sales keep rising after you opened? This is my first restaurant, and every week is like a roller coaster.”source ↗
“Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I'm stressing about sales. We do like 5-600 on those days.”source ↗
“Sometimes we don't have a ticket til like 3-4pm. And we open at 11.”source ↗
“Then Friday hits and we're too busy to even keep up.”source ↗
“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?
- 2Why do service schedules always get backed up?
- 6Why do clients take 30, 60, or 90 days to pay invoices?
- 6Why are Shopify payouts held and put on a rolling reserve?
- 7How to fix journal entries moving income to expense accounts
- 3Budget projection was way off— how should I move forward?