Nobody talks about the summer squeeze

There's a particular sense of quiet that settles over a business in August. The office half-empties, and replies naturally slow down. A decision that took a day in June now takes most of a week, because the one person who can sign it off is somewhere with no signal and a very good reason not to check their phone.

We tend to file this under scheduling. Cover the shifts, keep the lights on, hang on until September. And on the surface that's what it is, a rota puzzle you solve and forget. But something more interesting is happening underneath, to the numbers, and it's the part almost nobody mentions.

Summer squeezes a business from both ends at once (industry dependent, of course). Clients are away, buying decisions stall, the enquiry that would normally close in a fortnight quietly drifts into September. On the other side, none of your costs care that it's August. Rent, salaries, software, the finance repayment, they all turn up on time regardless of who's on a beach. And this year the fixed side sits a little heavier than usual. Rates are holding at 3.75% with no cut expected for a good while yet, so borrowing stays expensive. Inflation's ticking back up towards 3% on the back of energy costs. Growth for the year is forecast at under 1%. None of that is a summer problem exactly. It just means the gap between lower income and steady outgoings has less give in it than it did a couple of years ago.

The busiest month for the person at the top is often the quietest month for the business. You spend August covering gaps and putting out small fires, and the thinking, the actual lifting-your-head-up work, gets pushed aside again. The one thing summer could hand you, a bit of space, gets swallowed by the scramble to keep everything ticking.

There isn't much mystery to what helps. Look at your real cash position instead of your feeling about it, because a short forecast tells you more than a hunch that things are "a bit quiet." Chase what you're owed before everyone disappears, since summer is prime season for the invoice that goes unpaid simply because the person who signs it is away. None of it is clever. It's just the sort of thing that's easy to let slide precisely when it matters most, and easy to be glad you didn't.

The positive flipside to this coin however, is that it can show you something about the business you can't see the rest of the year. If the whole operation falters the moment you or someone else important takes a fortnight off, you have a problem. That's the business telling you it still depends too much on you. A company that only works when you're standing in it isn't quite a company yet, it's a very demanding job with your name on it. August is a great time of year in the sense that it will let you know if that's the case.

This may not a comfortable thing to notice during an August heatwave, but it might be the most useful thing the season has to offer. The businesses that come out of September in good shape usually aren't the ones that worked hardest through August, but simply the ones that understand how to adapt during the lulls that certain seasons bring them.

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