#  What Does It Cost You to Win a Customer? The cheapest cash flow you'll find this July. Convenient doesn’t mean competent. TTT - #2626

This week: how to judge whether the cost of winning a customer is worthwhile, when reducing July Payments on Account could protect your cash flow, and why choosing an accountant for convenience can prove costly.

## 1.What Does It Cost You to Win a Customer?

Last week I wrote about measuring marketing ROI. This week, let's look at another number that's often ignored: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

The calculation is simple:

Total sales and marketing costs ÷ Number of new customers won.

Let's say you spend £10,000 over the year on your website, Google Ads, van signage, networking, sponsorships and sales activity, and you win 20 new customers. Your CAC is £500.

But is £500 good?

That depends on one thing: profit.

A builder might complete a £15,000 extension and make £3,000 profit. Spending £500 to win that job is probably money well spent.

Spend the same £500 to win a £1,200 decorating job that makes £200 profit, and you've actually lost money before you've even picked up a paintbrush.

That's why turnover can be a dangerous metric. Revenue pays the suppliers. Profit pays you.

Understanding your CAC alongside the average profit generated by each type of job helps you answer much better questions. Which services are genuinely worth promoting? Which marketing channels attract your most profitable work? And are you chasing volume when you should be chasing margin?

It's not about getting your CAC as low as possible. It's about making sure every pound you spend acquiring customers generates a worthwhile return in profit.

That's where good financial information stops being historical and starts helping you make better commercial decisions.

## 2. The cheapest cash flow you'll find this July

For many business owners 31st July is the date the second Self Assessment Payment on Account (POA) falls due.

Here's the bit that's often overlooked.

If your income has fallen since last year, or you've already taken steps to reduce your tax bill, you may not need to pay the full amount.

HMRC allows you to reduce your Payments on Account if you genuinely expect your tax liability to be lower.

That can leave thousands of pounds in your business rather than sitting in HMRC's bank account for the next six or twelve months.

That's not tax avoidance. It's simply better cash flow management.

But there's a catch: If you reduce your Payments on Account too far and it turns out your tax bill wasn't as low as you expected, HMRC will charge interest on the shortfall from the original due date.

In other words, it's a useful tool, but not one to use with guesswork.

Every July we review clients' positions before the deadline. Sometimes the answer is to reduce the payment. Sometimes it isn't. The important thing is making the decision based on current numbers rather than last year's.

If you've got a sizable Payment on Account due on 31 July, it's worth checking whether it still reflects reality.

A ten-minute conversation with your accountant could make a meaningful difference to your cash flow. Just make sure the numbers support it.

## 3. Convenient doesn’t mean competent

We lost a proposal this week. Not on price. Not on expertise. Not because they preferred another system.

The deciding factor: \*"Our accountant is only five minutes down the road."\*

That surprised me. Because over the last few weeks we'd heard all about the slow responses. The missed deadlines. The lack of proactive advice. The frustration that prompted them to speak to us in the first place.

Yet, when it came to making a decision, geography won and it got me thinking.

Business owners are brilliant at challenging assumptions in their own businesses. They'll switch suppliers, renegotiate contracts and rethink processes if something isn't working.

But many never apply the same logic to professional advisers.

Somewhere along the line we've convinced ourselves that an accountant needs to be close enough to pop in for a coffee.

In reality, when was the last time you visited your accountant?

Most of our meetings are online; documents are signed electronically. Records are shared in real time. The technology removed distance years ago.

The thing that still matters isn't where your accountant is.

It's whether they answer the phone. Whether they spot problems before you do. Whether they help you make better decisions.

If your accountant happens to be local and does all of that, fantastic. But don't confuse convenience with competence.

One is measured in miles. The other is measured in value.