The Tiendanube report says you sold $800,000 this week. Meta shows you conversions everywhere. Your accountant says the business is doing well. But when you open your banking app, the account is bone dry.
This isn't a profitability problem (or at least, not necessarily). It's a cash flow problem. And in Argentine e-commerce, it's one of the most common and most underestimated.
The difference between selling and getting paid
When a customer buys from your store, you "sold". But you didn't get paid. The money isn't in your account yet. And depending on how they paid, it can take anywhere from 1 business day to 90 days to arrive.
That gap between the sale and the payment is the heart of the e-commerce cash flow problem. In a business with good revenue that doesn't manage this gap, the result is a profitable business with no liquidity. Sales, but no cash.
How the payout calendar works in Argentina
With Mercado Pago, the timing depends on how your customer paid:
- Cash (Rapipago, Pago Fácil): 24-48 business hours.
- Bank transfer: 24-48 business hours.
- Debit card: 2-3 business days.
- Credit card, single payment: 14-18 business days (or instant payout with an extra 6.5% charge).
- Card in installments: the money arrives in installments. 12 installments = the last payment arrives 12 months after the sale.
If you sell $300,000 today in 6 interest-free installments, nothing lands in your account today. $50,000 comes in this month, $50,000 next month, and so on. But you paid for the product today.
The problem multiplies when you scale
When your store sells little, the mismatch between sales and payouts is manageable. When you start to grow, it becomes a serious problem.
Imagine you sold $2,000,000 this month, 50% more than the month before. To meet that demand, you had to buy more inventory now. But a good part of those $2,000,000 will reach you in installments over the coming months. Meanwhile, you have to pay suppliers, salaries, platforms, advertising.
Scaling too fast without managing cash flow can lead to a paradox: your best sales month is also the month with the worst liquidity problems.
Interest-free installments: the double-edged sword of Argentine e-commerce
Interest-free installments are a powerful tool to increase conversion. The problem is that you absorb the cost of offering them, and the income arrives in pieces over time.
If 60-70% of your sales are in installments (very common in Argentine e-commerce with mid-to-high tickets), your real cash flow can be far below what your monthly revenue shows.
Why your accountant can't help you with this
Your accountant works with information from the past. The balance sheets and cash flow statements they prepare are a snapshot of what already happened. They're useful for AFIP (Argentina's tax agency). They don't tell you what you'll collect next week.
To manage cash flow in real time you need real-time data: what you sold today, how each customer paid, when the processor pays you out, and how much money you have projected for the next 7, 15 and 30 days.
How Escalafy shows you when you'll collect every peso
Escalafy's Cash Flow Predictor connects directly to your store and your payment processor, and shows you an up-to-date projection of how much you'll collect over the coming days and weeks, broken down by payment method and payout date.
You don't have to enter anything by hand. The system takes each sale, identifies how the customer paid, applies the processor's payout times, and tells you exactly when and how much you'll have in your account.
Somos Fans used a full-time employee to consolidate data and build manual inventory and cash flow projections. With Escalafy, the Cash Flow Predictor gives them that projection in real time. That employee now focuses on work that creates real value.
Operating on real information changes everything
When you know precisely how much you'll collect and when, you can negotiate better terms with suppliers, plan inventory months ahead, and decide whether it makes sense to invest more in advertising this month or wait until the next.
Cash flow isn't an accounting problem. It's an operational problem that affects every decision you make. And the only way to solve it is to have real visibility into when money comes in and goes out.
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What Escalafy does for your store
Connect your channels and see the truth behind your numbers. No Excel, in real time.