founder
The order you pay people in when you can't pay everyone
There is an order, and it ranks by what breaks first. Write yours down this weekend.
By Samer Azar, Fractional CFO · 2026-09-05 · 8 min read
Key Takeaway: When the money will not cover everyone, there is an order. It comes out close to identical in every company I've seen, and it does not rank by who shouts loudest or who has waited longest. It ranks by what breaks first and what cannot be repaired. Write yours down this weekend, while nothing is wrong.
Dear reader,
I've missed you.
Four Saturdays came and went with nothing from me. I took the holidays off and recharged properly for the first time in a while. I'm back, I'm building, and there's a lot coming that I want to show you.
Before any of that, something closer to home.
As a founder I've missed my own payroll more times than I'd like to admit. It's not fun.
The part nobody warns you about is what the unpredictability does at home, to people who never agreed to carry your risk.
When that landed, I rebuilt my own finances around buffers and contingencies. Then I pointed my career at ambitious founders, so that fewer of them have to learn this the way I did.
Two quick things first, then the lesson that costs the most when it arrives late.
First, what you told me
In July I asked who you are, and the split was not what I expected.
Four in ten of you are founders or operators, divided evenly by whether you carry stock. A third are CFOs, fractional CFOs or finance leaders. A quarter are here to learn, which is a good reason to be here. Not one accountant.
There is no majority to write for. So from here I write things that work twice: for the operator reading their own numbers, and for the advisor reading a client's.
That changes what I write, so I am asking again.
Which best describes you?One click. It tells me who I'm writing for and makes these issues sharper. |
Worth your time this week
A mid-size accounting firm pivoted to advisory and grew revenue 42%. The clearest account I've read of what that move costs before it pays.
Only 35% of finance leaders can confidently measure the return on their AI spend. Worth reading next to your own AI line.
Fractional CFOs lost one asset corporate used to hand them for free. Uncomfortable, and correct.
The month arrives quietly
Nobody wakes up in a cash crisis.
It builds out of decisions that each looked reasonable on the day.
You spend a customer's prepayment on the product they're waiting for. You fund a revenue push that ramps slower than the deck promised. You put off the cost conversation because next month looks better.
By the time the bank balance shows it, the choices left are few and all of them hurt. Last time I wrote about what normal looks like. This is what you do the month normal stops being available.
Then one morning the money in the account doesn't cover the payments leaving it. Somebody is getting told no, and you're the one who picks.
The order
Most founders build this hierarchy from scratch, under pressure.
It already exists. I've sat through enough of these months to know it comes out close to identical every time, in businesses that have nothing else in common.
It does not rank by who is loudest, or who has waited longest, or who you feel worst about.
It ranks by what breaks first, and by what cannot be repaired afterwards.
First, the people who talk. Consultants, contractors, suppliers with a network.
Reputation travels faster than money and it comes back slower. One late payment to someone with a network costs you deals you'll never hear about.
Second, the people who make you money. Production, logistics, the vendors who keep revenue moving.
Skip these and you're not saving cash. You're funding this month by cancelling next month's income.
Third, the costs that are only yours. Legal that can wait two weeks. Admin nobody is chasing. Anything where the only person inconvenienced is you.
Fourth, anything you can renegotiate. A supplier asked for sixty days usually says yes. A supplier who finds out by being paid late says something else, and remembers it next year.
Last, you. Your own salary is the most flexible line in the business, and the only one where a deferral costs nothing but discomfort.
Every founder I've watched handle one of these months well arrived in the same place.
Consultants paid. Production running. The lawyer pushed to next month. Their own salary at the back of the queue, for the fourth month running.
One of them put it to me like this, mid-crunch:
"Apart from my salary, we'll pay all our consultants. The salaries and all the rest will have to not pay on time. I think I used all my options."
The order, and what each tier is protecting.
You are the most flexible line in your own business. That is useful, right up until it becomes the plan.
Write it before the month arrives, because the month brings company.
In early-stage businesses, the costs nobody forecast run to roughly a third of a lean month's total spend. Import tax you get back eventually. A renewal nobody diaried. A legal bill with no warning attached.
The order has to survive a bill you didn't budget for, which means it can't be invented on the night one turns up.
What stops the bleeding
Cutting costs sounds like the answer, and it's the wrong shape of answer.
Cutting still assumes a deficit is acceptable. You trim, the gap narrows, the account keeps draining, just more slowly.
The version that holds is harder and simpler. Cash in has to equal cash out. It is a rule, and it makes the deficit impossible by design.
Every payment stops being routine and becomes a decision, ranked against money that has already landed.
If it isn't in the account, it doesn't go out.
The cut that saves nothing
One trap worth naming, because it catches careful people.
When cash is tight the instinct is to cut headcount. Notice periods mean the cost carries on for months while the capability walks out on the first day.
You keep paying, and you lose the person who knew how the thing worked.
Marketing is usually the only line with real give in it, which is exactly why it goes first.
For a business still building demand, that's the one cut that shrinks next quarter's revenue while barely touching this quarter's cash.
There is a better question than WHAT CAN WE CUT. It is what is the least we can spend and still be able to earn.
Do this before Monday
Write your order down now, while nothing is wrong.
Five lines:
Who gets paid first, whatever else happens.
Who gets paid second, because they keep the revenue moving.
What waits, because only you feel it.
What you will renegotiate, and the number of days you will ask for.
Where you sit is line five. That is the whole rule, and it is short enough to remember when the month arrives: you go last.
A hierarchy decided in advance is a policy. The same hierarchy decided at 11pm is a panic, and under panic you'll get it wrong in the direction that feels kindest rather than the direction that keeps you alive.
You'll probably never need it. Write it anyway.
Build it this weekend
Paper works. A machine holding it works better, because the month arrives while you are looking somewhere else.
Nothing here is exotic. If you can write a script, or sit next to someone who can:
Put the five lines in a file. Not a doc you will never open. A file the machine reads.
Give each tier a number. At what balance does tier three start waiting. At what balance do you stop paying yourself. You are writing the decision down now so you are not making it at 11pm.
Point it at the account. Balance today, committed outflows for the next fourteen days. Two figures, pulled live, never from an export somebody downloaded once.
Run it weekly. One scheduled job. It compares what is there against what is leaving, and works out which tier that puts you in.
Make it say the tier out loud. "You are in tier one, nothing to do." Or "tier three starts this week." A report that does not end in a move stops getting opened.
The tools are commodities. Deciding the thresholds while you are calm is the hard part.
I pointed mine at my own numbers first. You debug on yourself before you touch anyone else's.
It never decides who gets paid. That judgment stays yours, and it is the whole of this email. What it does is tell you which month you are in, while you can still act like it is the good one.