Where did the money go? A founder’s guide to cash accountability
Money moves fast in a Nigerian SME — transfers, POS, petty cash, supplier advances. This is how you stop guessing and start naming every naira.
- Name every transfer the same day — vendor, category, and who paid.
- Check cash, spend by category, and unmatched lines every Friday.
- Petty cash and job floats need labels, not memory.
Ada runs a logistics company out of Apapa. June started fine: ₦4.2M came in from two regular clients. By the third week her ops lead Tunde says diesel is “almost finished again.” She opens the bank app. ₦1.1M left. Nobody can explain ₦3.1M without opening WhatsApp, three notebooks, and a prayer.
The money didn’t disappear. It just never got a name when it left.
Every accountant who has seen a founder’s June
Transfers land in the bank. The story stays in people’s heads.
This is not a discipline lecture. Nigerian SMEs move cash through NIP transfers, POS terminals, staff floats, and “just send to this account” vendor payments. The fix is not more willpower — it is a short ritual everyone follows so spend has an owner, a category, and a date before the week ends.
The three questions you must answer every week
If you can answer these on a Friday afternoon without calling three people, you are in control:
- How much cash do we have right now (all accounts)?
- What did we spend it on this month — by category, not by vibe?
- Which lines still have no owner or receipt?
Money Pulse answers the first two in one screen — naira, this month.
Name the money when it moves — same day
The failure mode is familiar: Tunde pays ₦185,000 to a diesel vendor from his phone. The alert hits the company account. Everyone nods. Nobody logs it until “we’ll do books later.” Later is never.
- Every outflow gets a vendor name (even if it is “Total Apapa” not a formal invoice).
- Every line gets a category: diesel, rent, supplies, salaries, misc.
- Every line gets a person: who initiated or approved it.
- Petty cash withdrawn from the bank is logged as a transfer to “Petty cash — Tunde,” not ignored.
When each line has vendor, category, and who logged it, arguments shrink.
Separate “busy” from “accountable”
Your business can be profitable and still feel broke because money cycles through too fast. Float for jobs, supplier deposits, and staff advances are normal. What hurts is when those amounts live only in memory.
Tag advances clearly: “Deposit — Lekki warehouse job” beats “transfer.” When the job closes, move the tag to income or write off the balance with a note. Your future self doing VAT or investor diligence will know it was a job float, not stolen diesel money.
A Friday ritual that actually sticks
- Pull bank activity for the week (CSV import or manual check).
- Match each material line to a logged expense or income — or create one on the spot.
- Open Money Pulse: does “where it went” match what you remember?
- Assign anything unmatched to a named owner — they explain it by Monday.
- Note cash on hand and one thing to watch next week (rent, VAT, pay run).
One login for pulse, transactions, and bank match — not five tabs.
What changes when you do this for a month
Founders tell us the shift is emotional before it is financial. You stop dreading “how much do we have?” You catch duplicate payments earlier. Staff stop assuming money is a black box only you understand. When PAYE or VAT is due, you are not rebuilding June from bank alerts.
Your home dashboard surfaces unmatched spend before it becomes a month-end fight.
See your cash story in Business Buddy — Free for teams up to 5 · import bank CSV same day