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The Edge of Financial Disaster
Topic: Risk Management
$3.99
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Short Description:
Calder Ridge Millwork has just had the best year in its history. The books show a $485,200 profit and the order board is full, yet days before payroll the bank balance cannot cover it. The Edge of Financial Disaster follows one small manufacturer through a cash crisis, showing business owners how to spot early warning signs, decide what to pay first, build a thirteen-week forecast, and talk honestly with lenders before profit becomes a trap.
Book Details
Pages
132
Language
English
Published
June 2026
Publisher
amacox
ISBN
Book Details:
What if your business is profitable, growing, and still days away from missing payroll? That is the situation Maya Calder faces on a Wednesday afternoon in September. Her custom millwork company has just won the largest contract in its history, and the profit and loss statement looks wonderful. The bank account does not. A major customer has delayed a $412,000 payment, and the week’s bills leave her nearly $100,000 short. The Edge of Financial Disaster is a practical guide to cash flow, liquidity, and small business risk, told through one fictional company and one very bad week. Alongside Maya, a retired controller named Lionel Brandt shows you where profit actually goes, why fast growth can drain a healthy company, and how lenders, suppliers, and covenants can turn a tight month into a default.
You will learn to calculate your runway, spot the behavioral tripwires that appear months before a crisis, rank payments in a sensible order, and build a rolling thirteen-week cash forecast. You will see how to tell the truth to your bank, suppliers, customers, and staff, stress-test a plan, shorten your cash cycle, and decide when to turn down work you cannot afford to fund. Every chapter ends with a short “On your desk this week” task, so you build your own early-warning system as you read. Formulas, a forecast template layout, and a plain-English glossary are also included. If you own, run, or advise a small or mid-sized business, start reading before the next bad Wednesday arrives.
About the author
Meet Evelyn Hartwell
Evelyn Hartwell grew up in Spokane, Washington, where she spent childhood afternoons behind her grandfather's hardware counter, watching neighbors who owned small shops count the day's receipts and worry over the week's bills. She studied accounting at Gonzaga University, then spent two decades in commercial lending and turnaround advising, sitting across the table from owners whose companies looked healthy on paper and were short of cash in practice. She began writing to explain those ledgers in plain language. Turning that habit into books meant dropping jargon and fearing nobody reads about cash flow for pleasure.
For Hartwell, writing is a way of handing people a flashlight before the lights go out. Her ideas come from conversations with owners, and she checks every figure against its source before it reaches the page. She wants readers to feel steady rather than scared, and to finish each chapter with one small task done. She admires Willa Cather's patience and keeps a worn copy of My Antonia nearby. Now living in Bend, Oregon, she reads her bank balance with her first coffee, bakes sourdough on weekends, and walks the river trail at dawn. Her guiding rule is simple: look early, act small.
