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It’s June. The town’s gone quiet, the tourists are back on the N2 heading home, and your bank account knew it before you did.

Before you shut the laptop tonight, give me two minutes. Not for a budget. Not for a spreadsheet. For one number you’ve probably been dodging.

Two numbers, one sticky note

Open your banking app. Don’t scroll the transactions, don’t sort anything, don’t start a budget. Just look at the actual balance sitting there right now, and write it on a sticky note.

Underneath it, write a second number: everything that has to leave that account before month-end. Rent. Salaries. The VAT you’ve been carefully not-thinking-about. That supplier who’s owed R4 800 since before the long weekend.

The gap between those two numbers is your runway. Not your turnover. Not the “coming in soon” from the client who’s been promising since May. The gap. That’s the real one.

Knowing the number is uncomfortable for two minutes. Not knowing it is the thing that wakes you at 3am.

Why winter is exactly when this bites

Here’s the part that makes June dangerous: a lot of the money you’re counting on isn’t actually yours yet.

Late payment is the norm here, not the exception — by one 2025 count, around 91% of South African small businesses are dealing with customers who pay late. So the “coming in soon” pile is exactly the pile you can’t bank on. A small cash gap in the quiet months becomes a real one by July, and the founders who sail through are usually the ones who spotted it in June and moved early.

That’s the whole job tonight. Two numbers. Two minutes. If the gap’s tighter than you’d like, good — you’ve found out now, with three weeks to do something about it, instead of three days.

Reply and tell me one thing you’re doing this winter to protect cash — chasing an old invoice, trimming a subscription, holding off on a buy. I’ll share the sharp ones back here, no names, so we can all pinch each other’s good ideas.