# Ideas: covering a slow week without missing payroll

*Source: https://credicorp.co.uk/ideas-covering-slow-week-without-missing-payroll/*

Most small-business cashflow articles focus on suppliers and tax. The forgotten one is payroll. For a company with 2-5 employees on monthly PAYE, missing a payroll date is a bigger event than missing a supplier payment. The team finds out immediately. The trust takes months to rebuild. And the practical answer is usually short-term finance, not a hard conversation.

## The shape of the problem

A typical small-business payroll: £4,000-£8,000 on the 25th of each month. The cashflow that funds it usually arrives 7-14 days before — customer payments, milestone invoices, regular subscriptions. When one of those upstream cashflows slips (a slow-paying customer, a project milestone delayed), the £4,000-£8,000 gap appears on the 24th.

## The realistic options

- **Chase the upstream cashflow.** Sometimes it works — a polite “any update on the invoice we sent” lands the money. Worth trying first, every time.

- **Tap the business overdraft.** Cheapest if you have one. The overdraft is what it’s for.

- **Director’s personal funds.** Sometimes the right call for a single one-off. If it becomes a pattern, the company has a structural cashflow issue the director shouldn’t be subsidising.

- **Short-term business loan.** Defined repayment from the deferred upstream cashflow. Most appropriate when the upstream timing is uncertain.

- **Revolving credit facility (Credicorp Flex).** If payroll-bridging is a recurring shape, a Flex line sized to one month’s payroll is the cleanest match.

## What we wouldn’t recommend

Deferring payroll without telling the team. A late wage from a small business is often handled by employees with surprising patience IF the conversation happens early. The same lateness without the conversation is a trust event, and trust events compound.

Borrowing a payroll-sized amount without a real plan for the upstream cashflow that will repay it. The next payroll will arrive whether or not the loan was the right idea — financing both gets expensive fast.

## The plan-ahead conversation

If payroll has come close to slipping twice in a year, the underlying issue isn’t a borrowing question — it’s an upstream cashflow question. The right time to think about a £4,000-£8,000 facility (Flex or similar) is the QUIET month, set it up while there’s no pressure, and have it sitting ready for the next slow week. [More on how Flex helps](/support/how-credicorp-flex-helps-smooth-cashflow/).

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Credicorp Limited — UK lender to limited companies (Company No. 16093826). credicorp.co.uk