Best month last year for my shop: $48,000 in revenue. I checked my bank app, saw $15,200, and thought I had enough to fund the next restock.
I did not. I was $8,800 negative in cashflow and had no idea.
The bank balance lies
The reason is simple. If you sell on TikTok Shop or Shopee, money comes in every day. But you also have cash parked in four places:
- Supplier AP on 1688: last order placed 15 days ago, balance still due.
- Freight in transit: paid for, not yet delivered.
- Inventory on hand: paid for, not yet sold.
- Sold orders pending payout: shipped, platform holds 7 to 14 days.
Add those up and most of what you call "cash" is sitting in one of those four buckets, not in your account.
A concrete example
Take one SKU:
- Landed cost: $3.20 per unit.
- Sell price: $7.20 per unit.
- Monthly volume: 300 units.
At a glance: $4 margin per unit, $1,200 profit per month. Clean.
But to keep that pace, you place one fresh order every 30 days at 300 units for $960 in goods. Shipping and duties add around $160. The order to warehouse cycle is 15 to 20 days.
That means you always have at least two lots hanging at once: one inbound, one selling. That is around $2,240 in dead capital for a single SKU, before anything the platform is still holding.
Run ten SKUs like that and your live capital is around $22,400. That is your real working capital, not your bank balance.
How to track real cashflow monthly
You do not need a 20-tab spreadsheet. Answer four questions:
- How much will I spend on inbound orders this month?
- How much will the platform pay me out this month from orders already sold?
- What are my fixed costs this month (warehouse, staff, platform fees)?
- After all of that, what is my ending balance?
Do that for 12 months. Peak months (October to December) require pushing stock earlier. Slow months need purchase orders spaced out.
If the ending balance goes negative in any month, adjust the purchase schedule or raise capital before that month lands, not after.
Simple rules to avoid blowing up your cashflow
- Do not scale any SKU until its 12-month cashflow is mapped.
- Keep a buffer of at least 1.5 months of fixed costs in the account.
- Reconcile actual platform payouts against your forecast at the end of each month.
- Any variance above 10% is a red flag worth diagnosing that same week.
Where Ordinex Pilot fits
The Cashflow module of Ordinex Pilot shipped last week. It answers those four questions: load in SKUs, restock schedules, fixed costs, and it draws a 12-month timeline with alerts on months below threshold.
Private beta is open. If you sell cross-border and cashflow is a current pain, drop your email at ordinex.cc and we will set you up.