A shop can be profitable on paper and still fail to pay its suppliers. It happens when the owner counts a signed agreement as money already earned, orders more stock against it, and then discovers that the installments arrive over nine months while the supplier invoice is due in thirty days.

The fix is not complicated, but it does require keeping two ideas apart.

Profit is an opinion, cash is a fact

When you sell a phone for RWF 300,000 on a six-month plan, you have earned RWF 300,000 in margin terms. You have received nothing yet.
The rule: Never commit cash you have not collected. Stock orders, rent and salaries come out of collected value only. Contracted value is a forecast, and forecasts do not pay suppliers.

Know your collection curve

Every merchant has a pattern in how installments actually arrive. Find yours.

• If most payments land early in the term: You can safely plan against a larger share of contracted value.

• If payments tail off after month two: Your exposure is concentrated at the back end of every agreement. Shorten terms, or require a larger first payment, before you increase volume.

Deposits change everything

A deposit does two jobs at once. It reduces the amount at risk, and it filters out customers who were never going to complete the plan. Even a modest first payment taken at signing has a larger effect on recovery rate than any downstream reminder, because it converts a promise into a partial fact on day one.

Reconcile weekly, not monthly

Set aside twenty minutes a week to match payments received against installments due.

• Anything unmatched after seven days is a question, not an error , ask it while the customer still remembers.

• Anything overdue by fourteen days follows the escalation path written into the agreement, not an improvised phone call.

• Doing this weekly keeps recovery a routine administrative task. Doing it monthly turns it into a crisis four times a year.