If your books say you're profitable and your account still comes up short, your money is getting spent too early. The tax money ends up paying for materials, and the payroll money covers some other bill.
The fix is cash flow management software that moves each payment into its own account the moment it lands.
Let's say you run a roofing company with a crew of five. You've already done what the software lists tell you to do:
QuickBooks shows a $41,280 profit for the quarter. The week Gusto pulls payroll, the account shows $3,912.
Your forecast flagged that shortfall six weeks ago. You watched it arrive.
Your budgeting app tells you materials ran over again, and all you can say is, great, I'm broke.
A business banking platform with sub-accounts would split your deposits, once you move all your banking there. Your truck loan and your cards still sit somewhere else.
So you float the crew on a credit card and skip your own paycheck again. Every one of those tools did its job. The tax money still sat in the same account as the supply house bill, because nothing moved it when the payment landed.
I've spoken to thousands of owners in this exact spot. The fix starts with getting each dollar where it needs to go the moment it lands.
Money-movement tools
Money-movement tools do the one job the rest of your stack doesn't: they get each dollar where it needs to go as it lands, before anything else can reach it. If the tax money keeps paying for materials, this is the kind you're missing.
There are two ways to do it. A business banking platform with sub-accounts, like Relay, Mercury or Found, has you open an account there, move your deposits over and set transfers between its accounts. A plan that runs on the banks you already have is what we built Sequence to do. I'll start with Sequence, because for an owner-operator like the roofer above it's the one I'd set up first.
Sequence
Sequence moves your money the moment it lands, across the accounts you already have. You keep your checking account at your bank or credit union, connect it, and add Sequence accounts for the jobs your money has to do: taxes, materials, payroll, your pay and profit. Every Sequence account has its own account and routing number, so each job's money has its own balance. It's the same idea behind Mike Michalowicz's Profit First: split every dollar when it comes in.
You point your QuickBooks Payments deposits at a feature called an income source: an account inside Sequence with its own account and routing number. Think of a person standing at it who decides where each dollar goes the moment it walks in. In Sequence, each move is an automation. You set it up with a rule that says when it runs, what it checks first and where the money goes. I walk through pointing Jobber and QuickBooks payouts at Sequence in the contractor setup post.
Here's the roofer's next $22,500 job payment with a plan running. The numbers are illustrative.
Step | What happens to the $22,500 |
|---|---|
1. Taxes | 15% goes to a Taxes account: $3,375. Your accountant gives you the real share. |
2. Materials | 35% goes to a Materials account that the supply house gets paid from: $7,875. |
3. Payroll | The Payroll account had $8,620 left from the last payment, so it tops up by $6,240 to $14,860, the amount Gusto pulls for each payroll. |
4. Owner pay | 10% goes to Owner Pay: $2,250. A scheduled automation pays you $3,500 every other Friday from it. |
5. Profit | 5% goes to Profit: $1,125. |
6. Checking | The last $1,635 lands in your checking account for fuel, insurance and everything else. |
I made those numbers up. Don't do the math. But the point is that the $1,635 left in checking is spendable money, because everything else already went where it needs to go.
The tax money stops paying for shingles. A share of every payment goes to Taxes before it ever shows up in checking. The supply house invoice for the next job comes out of Materials, so it can't reach the tax money. When the quarterly payment comes due, your accountant still tells you what you owe. The difference is that the amount is already sitting in Taxes.
Payroll week stops being the week you check the balance twice. Give Gusto the Payroll account's routing and account numbers instead of your business checking. The account tops up to $14,860 from each payment until it's full, so when Gusto pulls for payroll, it pulls money that was put there for that one purpose.
You stop being the last one paid. On my calls, the owner's paycheck is the one that slips when cash gets tight. A scheduled automation pays you $3,500 every other Friday from Owner Pay, which filled up as the job payments came in. You get paid on a date, out of money that was already set aside for you.
The truck loan and the card come into the plan. Your truck loan and your business card live somewhere else, and that's fine. A scheduled automation tops up the account the loan pulls from to $1,137.42 on the 1st, before the payment comes out on the 3rd. Sequence can also pay the card's statement balance when it's due. Neither one has to move.
You keep your bank. Owners come over to Sequence from sub-account platforms for two reasons. A, they didn't want to move all their banking in the first place. B, their truck loan, their cards and their investment account all live somewhere else, and they want those in the same flow as everything else. Sequence works on top of the bank or credit union you already use.
A big job doesn't break the plan. "What if a re-roof needs more for materials than the account holds?" Then you move the difference over that week, or set the Materials account to top up to a floor before anything goes to Profit. You can change any automation whenever you want.
Your bookkeeper keeps working the same way. "So do I drop QuickBooks?" No. You can add Sequence accounts to QuickBooks like any checking account, and every transfer is recorded where you and your bookkeeper can review it. One trades owner put it this way: "It's one thing to have an account in QuickBooks, but actually have a physical account to be able to divert those funds over at the time of earning money."
You decide what runs on its own. Nothing moves that you didn't set up or allow. You choose which moves run on their own and which wait for your approval.
Moves between your Sequence accounts are instant. Sending money from Sequence out to another bank goes same-day ACH, depending on the receiving bank's cutoff. Pulling money in from another bank takes 2 to 3 business days. That's why I point the deposit at the income source directly: the money starts its trip already inside the plan.
Relay
Relay is the one most tied to Profit First. It's the official banking platform for Mike Michalowicz's method, and its built-in Profit First preset sets up the accounts in minutes. If you're opening a business account for Profit First from scratch, it's a good place to start.
Where it falls short for most owners is the timing of the split. Relay's auto-transfer rules run on a schedule, daily, weekly or monthly, so a payment that lands on Monday waits for the next scheduled transfer, and a bill can get there first. It also means moving your deposits and your banking over to Relay.
Sequence splits each payment the moment it lands, on the bank you already have. Some owners run both: a Relay account and Sequence on top of it.
Mercury
Mercury is strong if you want banking, invoicing and bill pay in one place. Its AI assistant, Command, can set up and manage auto-transfers from a chat, like a daily transfer that tops checking back up from savings when it drops below a set amount, and it acts only once you approve.
The gap for an owner-operator is that it all happens inside Mercury. You move your banking there, and Command works in your Mercury account.
Sequence runs on top of the bank or credit union you already have, and splits every deposit across taxes, payroll, materials and your pay the moment it lands.
Found
Found suits a self-employed owner who wants taxes and bookkeeping handled in one app. It does your bookkeeping, gives you real-time tax estimates, saves for taxes automatically in a Taxes Pocket, and on its paid plans lets Schedule C filers pay quarterly taxes in the app. Sequence doesn't do bookkeeping or tax estimates.
Where it stops short for most owners is everything besides taxes. Once a business has a team, a lease or a loan, its money has more jobs than one tax pocket: payroll, materials or inventory, rent, loan payments and the owner's own pay. Found's site leads with taxes and bookkeeping for the self-employed. Sequence is built to send each deposit to every one of those jobs the moment it lands, on the bank you already use.
Accounting software
Accounting software tells you the quarter was profitable after the money is already gone.
The roofing company from earlier earned that $41,280. Every job payment drops into the same checking account, and that account is also where everything else pulls from. Gusto pulls $14,860 for the crew a few days before every other Friday's payday. The truck loan takes $1,137.42 on the 3rd. The supply house gets paid when the shingles show up. Let's say a $22,500 job payment lands on a Monday, and the supply house invoice for the next job takes $9,814.66 of it on Wednesday. By the time Gusto pulls for payroll, the balance is $3,912.
QuickBooks shows all of this correctly. It'll tell you the quarter was profitable, and your accountant uses those books to work out what you owe in taxes. That's its job: tell you where the money is so the books stay clean. Most accounting tools also pay bills, but paying a bill you approved is a payment out. Getting the tax money into its own account before the supply house reaches it is a different job.
QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks comes up on my calls more than any other tool. It syncs your bank transactions, lets you collect invoice payments by card or bank transfer, and pays bills by ACH. Keep it. You can add Sequence accounts to it like any checking account, so your bookkeeper sees every move in one place.
Xero
Xero does the same core job. Its plans include bank reconciliation, invoicing, bill pay and real-time reports, plus a short-term cash flow forecast I cover below. If your bookkeeper already works in Xero, there's no reason to move.
Forecasting software
A forecast shows you the shortfall coming, and then you watch it arrive. Forecasting software reads your invoices and bills and tells you what your balance will be in a few weeks or months. It's built for a business with someone who sits down and plans, and it's good at answering "can I afford a second crew in the spring?" Setting money aside to cover the gap it shows you is a different job.
Float
Float connects to Xero or QuickBooks Online, pulls in your invoices and bills, and builds a rolling forecast you can view by week, by month or in 13-week blocks. You can switch income and costs on and off to see what a second crew would do to your cash before you commit.
The forecast inside Xero
If you're already on Xero, you may not need a separate forecasting tool. Xero's plans include a cash flow forecast that looks 30 days ahead on the entry plan and up to 180 days ahead on the top plan.
Budgeting apps
A budgeting app tells you that you overspent after you overspent. Budgeting apps connect your accounts, categorize every transaction and compare your spending against a budget. On calls I put it this way: the app tells you that you overspent, and all you can say is, great, I'm broke. A budget is a decision about where money should go. When the money stays in one account, the decision has nothing holding it in place.
Monarch
Monarch connects your bank accounts, cards, loans and investments in one place, categorizes every transaction and tracks spending against a budget. Its site describes reading and syncing your accounts and doesn't describe moving money between them. A lot of owners keep it anyway. One Sequence customer runs Sequence as the backend automation and Monarch as the dashboard. An owner who runs a company alongside a nonprofit uses Sequence to get money to each place, then checks Monarch to make sure it got there.
YNAB
YNAB asks you to give every dollar a job before you spend it, which is the right idea. It reads your account data the same way Monarch does, and its site doesn't describe moving money between your accounts either. The dollars get their jobs on screen. The truth is, those envelopes need to be real accounts, and in Sequence they are.
Match the symptom to the kind you need
Your symptom tells you which job is broken. Start there before you look at any feature list.
Your symptom | The broken job | The kind you need | Where Sequence comes in |
|---|---|---|---|
The tax money, payroll money or your own pay keeps getting spent on something else | Moving | A money-movement tool | Sequence splits each payment into its own account the moment it lands |
Your books are three months behind and tax season is a scramble | Recording | Accounting software, or a bookkeeper who runs it | Taxes, payroll and materials each sit in their own account, so your bookkeeper sees them separately in QuickBooks |
You can't tell whether you can afford a second crew in the spring | Predicting | Forecasting software | Payroll, taxes and your pay are already set aside, so the forecast only has to plan around what's left in checking |
You have no idea where last month's money went | Tracking | A budgeting app | Every dollar's job is decided when it lands, and every transfer is recorded |
Your symptom can point at more than one row. That's normal. Whichever row you're on, the cash still lands in one account until something moves it, so Sequence belongs underneath whatever else you run.
Clean books, a useful forecast and a budget you can stick to all get easier once taxes, payroll and your pay sit in their own accounts.
Five things to check before you pick one
If the moving job is the broken one, these are the five questions I'd ask of any tool before you sign up.
Does it work with the bank you have? A sub-account platform asks you to move your banking there. A plan on your existing banks doesn't. Neither is wrong. It depends on whether your current bank is worth keeping, like a local credit union with a loan you're happy with.
Does it run when money lands? Some tools move money on a schedule, daily, weekly or on the 10th and 25th. Others run the moment a payment arrives. With lumpy job payments, running on arrival means the split happens before the supply house invoice does. Relay does it daily, weekly and monthly transfer schedules. Sequence runs on arrival, on a schedule, or both.
Does it handle cards and loans? Your truck loan, your equipment financing and your business card all need money. Check whether the tool can fill the account a loan pulls from, or pay the card's statement balance, instead of leaving those for you to do by hand.
Does it feed your accounting software? Your bookkeeper needs every account in QuickBooks or Xero. If the tool's accounts have their own routing and account numbers, they connect like any other checking account.
Can you approve and see every move? You set the plan, so you should be able to see it on one screen and change any automation whenever you want. In Sequence, nothing moves that you didn't set up or allow, and every transfer is recorded where you and your bookkeeper can review it.
Where to start
Whatever your symptom, start with the money-movement layer. Every other tool works better once each dollar is already where it needs to go. Keep QuickBooks, keep your forecast or your budgeting app if you use one, and add Sequence underneath them.
Start with one automation: send a share of every job payment to Taxes, and watch a cycle or two come through. A common next step is the payroll top-up, then your own paycheck. From there, the plan builds out to fit how your business runs. If you want a hand mapping your first automation, book a call with us and we'll look at your setup together.
FAQ
What is cash flow management software? Cash flow management software is any tool that helps a business record, predict, track or move its money. Accounting software records it, forecasting software predicts it, budgeting apps track it, and money-movement tools like Relay or Sequence move it to where it needs to go as it lands.
Do I need cash flow software if I already use QuickBooks? QuickBooks records where your money went and keeps the books clean. If your cash still runs short on payroll week or at tax time, you need a tool that moves the money as it lands. You can add Sequence accounts to QuickBooks like any checking account, so you keep using both.
What's the difference between cash flow forecasting and cash flow management software? Forecasting software, like Float, predicts your cash weeks or months ahead from your invoices and bills. Cash flow management software is the wider category. It covers recording, predicting, tracking and moving money, and the moving part is what covers the shortfall the forecast shows.
Is there software that moves money for taxes automatically? Yes. Money-movement tools can send a share of every payment to a separate tax account the moment it arrives. Found builds tax estimates into its business account, and Sequence sends a share of each payment to a Taxes account while you keep the bank you already use. Ask your accountant what share is right for you.
Can I keep my current bank? It depends on the kind of tool. Business banking platforms with sub-accounts, like Relay or Mercury, ask you to open accounts with them. Sequence connects the bank or credit union you already have and moves money across it and your Sequence accounts, cards and loans.