Helping Marketing Pros turn complex cash flow into confident funding decisions

The challenge: growing cash complexity, shrinking confidence

Marketing Pros is a staffing and placements business operating across the UK and South Africa. As the business grew, its cash position became genuinely hard to read. Clients paid in both GBP and ZAR. Placement costs followed their own timing rules. Payroll and PAYE landed monthly, VAT built up quarterly, and cash sat across multiple entities, bank accounts, and funding facilities — all moving on different timelines.

The problem was not a lack of financial data. The problem was turning that data into a daily cash picture the team could trust. In practice, that showed up as four recurring pain points:

• Cash visibility relied on manual checks. Piecing together the position took time, and the answer was out of date almost as soon as it was produced.
• Timing mismatches looked like funding crises. A shortfall on paper could simply be a client payment landing a few days later — but without a forward view, it was hard to tell the difference.
• Funding headroom blurred with real cash. Facility balances and operational cash were difficult to interpret together, making it risky to judge how much money was truly available.
• Forecast numbers could not be explained. When a figure looked wrong, there was no quick way to trace it back to the underlying transaction.

The business risk was real: reacting to shortfalls only once they became urgent, or taking on bridging debt for what was actually a timing problem.

The smart decision

Rather than jumping into a heavy finance system implementation, Marketing Pros chose a practical first step: a structured, traceable cash-flow model the team could put to work immediately and maintain themselves.

The priority was speed, clarity, and trust — a working decision tool, not a perfect finance system.

What we built

Comma helped Marketing Pros build a traceable cash-flow model that turns fragmented financial inputs into a clear daily cash view and a 12-month forecast.

The model connects four layers: source financial data, revenue and placement logic, a consolidated schedule of upcoming cash events, and a daily cash-flow dashboard. Every number on the dashboard can be traced back through those layers to the source data — so the forecast is never a black box, and discrepancies can be investigated in minutes rather than days.

The model was built around the real operational complexity of the business:

• Client receipts across GBP and ZAR, with multi-currency handling
• Placement-related cash movements and their specific payment timing
• Payroll and PAYE obligations
• VAT timing — cash received through client payments but paid out quarterly
• A clear split between operational cash and available facility headroom

Just as importantly, the model was built to be owned by the internal team. Comma paired it with a simple operating routine — update source data, review upcoming cash events, and mark payments once they clear — so the forecast stays accurate without relying on external support.

Pain points addressed → value created

The results

Marketing Pros moved from reactive cash monitoring to a clear decision system. Instead of asking "Where are we today?", the leadership team can now ask "What is coming, what is driving it, and what can we change before it becomes urgent?"

• A clear daily cash position
• A 12-month cash-flow forecast
• Earlier visibility of future cash pinch points
• Clean separation between operational cash and funding headroom
• A traceable model leadership can review and trust
• A repeatable process the internal team maintains
• More confidence in strategic and funding decisions

In the client’s words

“He helped us build a new cash flow model that gives us a clear daily cash position across a 12-month projection period. That model has been built into a wider cash flow forecast, allowing us to identify potential pinch points in advance and make much better strategic decisions as a leadership team.”

“That visibility has helped us identify pinch points early and make much better strategic and funding decisions.”

“Just as importantly, he has trained our internal team to use the systems properly, so the improvements are embedded into the business rather than sitting externally.”

— Doug Haines, Co-Founder, Marketing Pros

Is your cash flow getting harder to trust as you grow?

If your business is growing across entities, currencies, payroll cycles, tax timing, or funding facilities, the first step may not be a bigger finance system.

It may be a trusted daily cash forecast your team can actually maintain – one that shows you pinch points before they become urgent.

Talk to Comma about building a cash forecast your team can trust.