Best Practices for Cash Management, Receivable Financing, and Working Capital

Lessons from Enduring Planet & Friends’ October 2025 Community Event

Founders are navigating slower pay cycles, tighter credit, and longer fundraising timelines, and every week brings new pressure to extend runway without losing momentum.

At our most recent community event - Best Practices for Cash Management, Receivable Financing, and Working Capital - we convened founders and financiers to cut through the noise, and have an honest conversation about managing liquidity, cash extension options and how to think about them when making hard trade-offs as cash gets tight.

Speakers:

• Hannah Friedman, Venture Partner at Planeteer Capital (moderator)
• Dimitry Gershenson, CEO at Enduring Planet
• Will Turner, Global Head of Global Payment Solutions at HSBC Innovation Banking
• Sam Calish, CEO at Copper
• Jeremiah Leong Guang Hao, VP - Head of Capital Markets and Corporate Development at Sunstone Credit

Tools for Day-to-Day Money Control

Founders often obsess over fundraising rounds — but the quiet discipline of treasury management is what determines survival.

Track what matters, daily. Dimitry shared that even with just a few hundred thousand in the bank, founders should operate with clear dashboards: cash on hand, burn rate, accounts payable/receivable, and top expenses. “Variance is where truth lives,” he noted — comparing model vs. actual performance helps reveal early warning signs before runway becomes a crisis.

Create a treasury policy early. Will emphasized that treasury policies aren’t just for big companies. Even a $500K round deserves structure: how much to keep in checking vs. treasuries vs. other money market accounts, when to automate transfers, and how to refresh policies annually. It’s a simple step that signals professionalism to banks and investors alike.

Build redundancy in treasury relationships - they’re worth their weight in gold. The panel agreed that founders should diversify banking relationships before they need to. “You don’t want to meet your banker for the first time when you’re asking for a lifeline,” Will said. Multiple accounts across multiple banks, clearly mapped approval flows, and fraud controls (like confirming wire instructions by phone) are all part of good financial hygiene. Having some diversification between established, institutional banks and tech-savvy fintech-forward banks can be helpful, especially ahead of considering venture debt.

Don’t hire your way into a crunch. Jeremiah cautioned that the biggest cash missteps often happen right after a raise. “Every headcount decision is a runway decision,” he said — urging founders to structure compensation carefully and avoid fixed costs that shorten flexibility.

Creative Cash Extensions: Venture Debt and Receivables Financing and Revolvers — Oh My!

Creative financing and laser-focus on cost of capital can make or break deployment timelines, and not just for capital-intensive climate and infrastructure startups.

Receivables financing is maturing fast. Dimitry noted a growing appetite for grant and receivables financing, especially as non-dilutive tools for founders who can’t afford to wait for government reimbursements or slow-paying customers. Platforms like Enduring Planet now structure these products more flexibly than ever — bridging the gap between delivery and payment without equity loss.

Use debt as a scalpel, not a hammer. There are various financing options for founders, including commercial credit cards, equipment finance, supply chain finance, and other receivables/revenue financing, which can include: 

• Receivables, PO, and Contract Financing uses unpaid customer invoices or contracts (your accounts receivable) as collateral for a loan, which is repaid by the customer and the remaining balance is remitted to the business minus fees. 
• Revenue-based Financing is a loan repaid as a percentage of your future revenue, which fluctuates with your sales. 
• A Merchant Cash Advance (MCA) is a fast (but often very expensive) credit product repaid by taking a fixed percentage of your daily or weekly sales, often drawn directly out of your account.

While there are benefits of merchant loans, watch out for predatory practices. Dimitry noted that platforms like Shopify and Stripe offer rapid financing with high costs, especially if businesses overperform their credit models (i.e. the faster you grow, the more expensive your capital). Jeremiah explained Sunstone's approach to project financing, emphasizing careful sizing of financing based on exact needs and direct payment to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) providing solar panels, for example. 

Understand your true cost of capital. Both Sam and Dimitry stressed the importance of understanding the cost of capital and the interconnected nature of speed, complexity, collateral, and covenants in debt financing. The key point: not all debt is created equal. Founders should model the all-in cost (including fees and covenants) and compare it to the opportunity cost of delayed execution. The panel indicated: 

• MCAs from platforms like Shopify can have a 20%+ interest rate (but often closer to 40%).
• Enduring Planet’s cost of receivables financing, for reference, is 15%-17%.
• Big banks are lending around 8-12% interest, but generally require personal guarantees or 2-3 years of profitability/cash flow. 

Operational fixes can be cheaper than financing. Will reminded founders that sometimes “the cheapest money is the cash you already have.” Simple operational actions like tightening billing cycles, offering early-payment discounts to customers who can pay sooner, or accelerating invoicing milestones can free up liquidity - and often much faster than closing a new line or facility.

Strategic Advice for Crunch-Time Cash Decisions

Knowing how and when to free up liquidity, and avoiding mistakes like overborrowing or missing obvious opportunities, is not an easy task. Founders should find heuristics and processes that help them monitor and manage cash regularly. 

Protect relationships, and not just the obvious ones — they’re your liquidity line. Every panelist agreed: transparency buys time. Whether it’s renegotiating with vendors, restructuring loan terms, or requesting customer prepayments: proactive communication beats silent panic. “Show up in person,” Dimitry urged. “Bankers and lenders fund people, not PDFs.”

Run “war-games” before you’re under fire. Several speakers encouraged founders to model worst-case scenarios quarterly — from revenue shocks to delayed payments — to see how decisions ripple through runway and your relationship matrix. Having playbooks ready bridges the difference between reacting and responding.

Keep optionality alive. Will summed up the ethos: “Liquidity isn’t about hoarding cash — it’s about buying time to make better decisions.” Whether that means deferring hires, repaying revolvers early, or pre-negotiating term flexibility, founders who preserve optionality tend to survive market turbulence.

Key Takeaways for Founders

• Managing your cash with a vice grip is most important when you have cash, not just when it's running out.
• Implement treasury strategies and policies, even for small rounds.
• Build multi-bank relationships early.
• Map your full cash flow cycle and identify friction points and opportunities.
• Evaluate all financing structures by the true cost of capital, and take the time to get this analysis right, even - or especially - when it’s crunch time.
• Run stress tests regularly and update your contingency plan at least annually.
• Transparency builds trust within your relationship, and you never know when you’ll need to call on them - lenders, vendors, or your own team.

Working capital may never make headlines, but it’s the foundation of every founder’s freedom. The best-run startups in 2025 aren’t just fundraising smarter — they’re managing cash like a craft.