Cash is the fuel that keeps a business running. Sounds obvious, doesn't it? But in an economic environment of sustained strong sales and ready access to credit, and with Internet startups bursting on the scene with tens of millions of dollars tossed at them by venture capitalists, it's been easy to overlook this age-old business truism.
The fact remains that simply generating revenue -- even vast quantities of it -- does not guarantee business success. Nor does rapid growth in sales. Unless a business has sufficient cash coming in to cover its expenses and fuel growth, it may well fail.

As business consultant Bill McGuinness says in Cash Rules, "Growth takes cash, and fast growth takes lots of cash... Business doesn’t run on sales growth; it runs on cash." And it isn’t the accountant’s balance-sheet view of profitability that counts, says McGuinness. Rather, it is a company’s cashflowability that determines success.

McGuinness believes that maintaining positive cash flow is everybody’s business within a company, from the owners and directors to sales personnel to accounts-receivable and accounts-payable staffers.

In Cash Rules, McGuinness identifies seven "cash drivers" businesses need to control to maximize cash flow and shows not only how to track flow but, more importantly, how to forecast future cash flow based on projections of sales growth.

Important reading for every business manager, Cash Rules, as Knight Kiplinger writes in his introduction, "should be mandatory reading for every young business manager who may have gotten the impression that cash grows on trees, or bubbles up from the ground, or -- more to the point -- arrives every payday in the bulging satchels of sugar daddies known as venture capitalists." (from the publisher)