How do I create a basic 3-month survival plan for the company?

Creating a three-month survival plan requires disciplined focus on immediate cashflow management, essential cost reduction, and stakeholder communication. Start by preparing a brutally honest cashflow forecast for the next 13 weeks showing all cash coming in and going out week by week. Include confirmed sales receipts, realistic collection dates for outstanding invoices (not wishful thinking), and all committed expenditures including wages, rent, critical suppliers, tax obligations, and debt repayments. This forecast will immediately show when you'll run out of cash if no action is taken. Next, categorize all expenditures into three groups: absolutely essential to keep operating (wages for critical staff, essential supplier payments, utilities, rent for primary location); important but possibly negotiable (some supplier payments, non-essential staff, discretionary spending); and non-essential or deferrable (marketing spend, capital investments, discretionary bonuses, non-critical subscriptions). Your first priority is ensuring you can cover the essential category for three months. Identify your largest cost items and tackle them aggressively: Can you renegotiate rent? Can you reduce staffing through hour reductions or voluntary arrangements before resorting to redundancy? Can you exit expensive contracts or renegotiate terms? Can you defer capital expenditure entirely? Be ruthless about cutting anything that doesn't directly maintain revenue-generating operations. On the revenue side, focus on accelerating cash collection: chase all outstanding invoices aggressively; offer early payment discounts if necessary to bring cash forward; consider invoice financing or factoring for immediate liquidity even at cost; stop offering extended credit terms to customers; and focus sales efforts on quick-turnaround, cash-generating work rather than long-term projects that tie up resources. Identify which creditor relationships are most critical to maintain: which suppliers are essential to continued operations? Who could shut you down if they withdraw supply? Prioritize communication and payment to these critical partners while being honest with others about temporary difficulties. Create a specific action plan with weekly milestones: Week 1—complete cashflow forecast, identify critical cost cuts, initiate conversations with key creditors; Week 2—implement immediate cost reductions, accelerate collection efforts, renegotiate key supplier terms; Week 3—secure any available short-term financing, finalize negotiations with critical stakeholders, reassess cashflow forecast with new information; and continue reviewing and adjusting weekly because circumstances change rapidly in crisis. Build in specific triggers and decision points: if cash falls below £X, we take action Y; if major customer Z doesn't pay by date A, we implement plan B; if we can't meet payroll in week 6, we take action C. This prevents crisis decision-making and ensures you've thought through contingencies in advance. Communication is critical: keep your board or co-directors updated weekly on progress against the plan; maintain dialogue with your bank about the situation and your actions; provide key suppliers with updates on payment expectations; and ensure critical employees understand the situation appropriately so they can support rather than jumping ship. Include professional advice in your plan: if you haven't already, week 1 should include consulting an insolvency practitioner to understand your options if the survival plan doesn't work—having this conversation early doesn't commit you to insolvency but ensures you understand the alternatives and can move quickly if needed. Document everything: keep records of board discussions, decisions made, reasons for prioritizing certain creditors, and evidence that you're acting to minimize creditor losses. This documentation protects you personally if the business fails despite your survival efforts. Set honest milestones for success: by end of month 1, we need to have achieved X; by month 2, we should see Y improving; by month 3, we must be able to demonstrate Z. If these milestones aren't met, acknowledge that the survival plan isn't working and you need to consider alternatives including formal insolvency procedures. Be realistic about what three months can achieve: if fundamental problems require years to fix, a three-month plan only helps if it's buying time for longer-term restructuring, refinancing, or sale; if there's no realistic path beyond three months, you're just delaying inevitable closure. Finally, take care of yourself during this intense period: you need to be thinking clearly and making good decisions, so ensure you're getting basic sleep, eating properly, and have some form of emotional support rather than trying to handle everything alone. Many directors burn out trying to save businesses that cannot be saved, which doesn't help anyone and impairs the quality of decision-making at the most critical time.