If you run an engineering, technical or SaaS business and you’re looking for cash flow help for small businesses in Surrey or West London, there is more free support nearby than most owners realise. There are also limits to what it can do. This guide sets out the free help in the area, what each option is good for, and the checks you can do yourself this week so that any adviser you speak to starts from your real numbers.

Start with your own numbers

Any adviser, free or paid, will ask the same questions first. Where is the cash going, and how much is stuck? You can answer most of them from Xero, QuickBooks or Sage in about fifteen minutes. Write down five figures:

1. Cash in the bank today, across all accounts.
2. Total owed by customers (trade debtors), and how much of it is past its due date.
3. Work finished but not yet invoiced. Most software won’t show this, so ask whoever runs your jobs.
4. Everything you must pay in the next 13 weeks: wages, suppliers, rent, VAT, PAYE and Corporation Tax.
5. Your average gap between finishing a job and sending the invoice. Check ten recent jobs.

A worked example

Take a made-up building services design consultancy in Weybridge with 22 staff and £2.2m a year of invoices (including VAT). Each day of invoicing is worth about £6,027 (£2,200,000 ÷ 365).

• Its terms are 30 days, but its debtor days come out at 55. Customers are paying 25 days late on average, which holds about £150,700 (£6,027 × 25).
• Invoices go out four days after each job is finished. That holds another £24,100 (£6,027 × 4).

That’s about £174,800 of the firm’s own money sitting outside the business, before anyone looks at pricing or overheads. An owner who arrives at an advice session with that figure gets far more out of the hour than one who arrives saying “cash is tight”.

Free cash flow help for small businesses in Surrey

Business Surrey

Business Surrey is a Surrey County Council service offering free business advice and support. It has enterprise mentors, including one for high-growth firms, and it points businesses to grants, regulation guidance and other Surrey support services. It’s a good first call if you aren’t sure what help exists or want someone to triage your situation.

Business Spelthorne (Staines, Sunbury, Ashford, Shepperton)

If your business is in Spelthorne, the council’s Business Spelthorne growth service is free to businesses in the borough. It offers one-to-one mentoring (finance included), growth masterclasses, networking and a free bill review to help cut costs. The current programme runs to December 2026, so sign up soon if you want to use it.

Help to Grow: Management

This is a 12-week course for leaders of small and medium-sized firms, and it is not free. The University of Surrey runs it in Guildford, where the government pays 90% and each participant pays £750. You need to work in a UK business with 5 to 249 employees and have at least one direct report. It covers finance alongside strategy, people and marketing, so it suits an owner who wants a broader grounding rather than a quick cash fix. For West London, Brunel Business School in Uxbridge also runs the course.

Free help in West London

London’s Growth Hub is called Grow London Local and is run by London & Partners. The Greater London Authority describes it as an impartial, free single entry point for London businesses. You fill in an online diagnostic, then a business support manager calls to refer you to relevant programmes. Many West London boroughs also list their own business support on their council websites, so check your borough’s business pages too.

Your accountant

Your accountant already has your numbers and is the right person for anything about tax timing, VAT or how to set money aside for Corporation Tax. Many will build or review a cash flow forecast if you ask. If yours only sees the business at year end, ask whether they offer quarterly or monthly management accounts.

What free support usually can’t do

Free services are good at signposting, mentoring and general training. They are usually not set up to go through your ledger, look at each customer’s payment record, rewrite your quote template or set up automatic reminders in your accounting software. That work takes days, not an hour. It’s also where most of the cash in the example above would be recovered, because the causes are inside the business:

• invoices that wait for a timesheet or a manager’s sign-off
• missing purchase order numbers, so the customer’s accounts team parks the invoice
• payment terms not written on the quote
• no fixed chase routine
• long jobs billed in one invoice at the end

None of these needs a grant or a loan to fix. They need someone to change the process and keep at it for a couple of billing cycles.

Five things to do this week

1. Work out your five figures from the list above and put them on one page.
2. List every invoice more than 7 days overdue, largest first, and phone the top five. Ask one question: “Is there anything stopping this being paid?” Our guide to chasing late payments without damaging relationships has wording you can use.
3. Invoice everything that’s finished. Ask each project lead for a list of completed work not yet billed, and send those invoices by Friday.
4. Add payment terms and a PO number field to your quote template, so the next job starts right.
5. Book one free session with Business Surrey, Business Spelthorne or Grow London Local, and take your one-page summary with you.

Our free Late Payment Kit includes chase-email templates and a cash calculator to help with steps 1 and 2.

When paid help makes sense

If your five figures show six figures of cash stuck with customers or in unbilled work, and nobody in the business has the time to fix the process, outside help can pay for itself. Make sure it’s specific, though. We’re based in Staines-upon-Thames and work with engineering, technical and SaaS firms of 10 to 50 staff across Surrey, West London and the Thames Valley, in person or by video. Our two-week Insight review (from £1,950) puts a £ figure on each leak, from late payment and slow invoicing to pricing and quoting, and ranks them so you know which to fix first. You can see the steps on our how it works page.

Whoever you use, free or paid, ask them to show their working in pounds. If an adviser can’t tell you how much cash a change should release and when, keep asking until they can.

Get your own figure

Our free leak calculator takes four numbers and shows roughly how much cash your late payers and invoicing delays are holding. It takes about two minutes. If the figure is bigger than you’d like, book a free 30-minute call and we’ll talk through where to start.