Three weeks decide the year
The flower business runs on a cash calendar unlike almost any other retail: large outlays land weeks before the revenue they create, three times a year, with a long quiet stretch that has to be pre-funded. Wholesale prices rise into Valentine's week as demand spikes everywhere at once, so the buy is committed early and committed big, and either way the cash is gone in January. Managed month by month, that calendar produces permanent low-grade panic; managed as a year, it is almost entirely predictable.
| Time of year | What the cash is doing |
|---|---|
| January | Valentine's stock committed at premium wholesale prices, weeks before a rose sells |
| Mid-February | The biggest week of the year; the surplus needs a destination before it dissolves into the shop |
| March to mid-May | Mother's Day repeats the cycle, with plants and porch pots widening the buy |
| June to September | Counter trade thins; weddings booked a year earlier carry the studio |
| October and November | The stretch the February and May surpluses were saved for |
| December | Poinsettias, centrepieces and corporate standing orders close the year |
The CFO's job is to make that table the operating plan: a target set for each peak, cash routed deliberately after it, and the autumn trough funded on purpose in February rather than discovered in October.
A 13-week cash view ahead of every peak
Before each rush we build a rolling 13-week cash forecast: buy commitments, extra drivers and designers, rent, remittances and loan payments on one side, realistic daily sales on the other. It answers the questions that otherwise get answered by nerve: how deep the Valentine's buy can go, whether pre-orders should be pushed harder, when the line of credit gets drawn and when it gets repaid. It also carries the boring but fatal items, the HST remittance and payroll deadlines that land mid-peak, so a rush is never funded with money already owed to CRA.
If the buy needs financing, that is arranged like a plan rather than a scramble. Walla Assaf spent years in banking and corporate finance before founding Tauro, and our Business Financing Advisory work puts a lender-ready case together: a seasonal shop asking for a line sized to its cycle, with the forecast showing exactly when it comes back down.
Booked solid is not the same as profitable
Wedding season fills the calendar; whether it fills the bank is a different question. Per-event margin has to count everything: stems and hard goods, design hours, delivery, setup and teardown, rentals that come back damaged. Costed honestly, some shops learn the counter has been quietly subsidizing the events; others learn the reverse, that weddings deserve more of the shop's capacity than they get.
Either answer changes behaviour: minimum spends, delivery-and-setup pricing, how many events one weekend can hold, which inquiries to decline. Those are finance decisions, not floral ones, and they are exactly what the monthly Fractional CFO session is for.
Standing orders are the flattest line on the calendar
The counter is seasonal and weddings are lumpy; standing orders are neither. Weekly arrangements for hotel lobbies, restaurants, offices and funeral homes bill every month of the year, including the autumn trough the peaks have to pre-fund, which makes that book the shop's only real smoothing tool. The CFO questions are blunt: how large could the book sensibly grow, what does each account earn after design time and delivery are charged to it, and when was its price last touched? Wholesale costs move every year, so a standing order priced at signing and never revisited becomes a quiet discount that compounds.
Home subscriptions do the same job at retail. They trade a discount for predictability, so the discount should be set against the value of guaranteed volume in slow months, never against peak-week prices. And because recurring work is invoiced rather than paid at the till, its payment terms belong in the 13-week forecast like everything else, with renewal dates on the planning calendar so pricing conversations happen on schedule instead of never.
Decisions bigger than a season
Between peaks the agenda turns to direction: whether a second location or a studio-only pivot fits the numbers, whether the cooler upgrade should be bought or leased, when a full-time designer replaces seasonal hands, and what the wire services and delivery apps really contribute after fees. Each gets a model, a recommendation and a decision date, not a hunch.
All of it stands on numbers that close on time; the florist accounting page shows how we keep them that way. CFO engagements for GTA flower shops run monthly, scoped and quoted in writing after a free 15-minute discovery call.
