You know the money from your government contract is not working, but you do not yet know where the break is, and the break decides the work.
Reimbursement trouble comes in four shapes that need completely different fixes: you have a contract you do not know how to set up to bill, the billing itself is broken and claims are not getting paid, the billing works but the wait to be paid is strangling you, or the danger is a denial, a clawback, or an audit. This sorts out which one you have, confirms the money is really a government contract, separates a timing problem from a revenue problem, and hands you a plan. It is a sorting instrument, not a fix. It will not get a single claim paid. It takes about three hours, which you can spread across sittings, and it asks for your contracts and an honest look at what you are owed, what has been denied, and what one unit of service actually costs.
This is a timing emergency, not a revenue collapse. First, collect: chase every claim that is submitted and unpaid. If the gap is still real, a short-term bridge such as a line of credit is a banker conversation, which lives in the financial health work. Go to the two-minute steadiness check for the immediate money, then come back to build the operation.
Hold this truth: do not cut a program that is actually paying its way to plug a hole that is only a delay, because that is how a timing problem becomes a real one. This is a route, not a stop.
You cannot diagnose a reimbursement problem you have not laid out: what you bill, what you are owed, what has been denied, and how long the wait runs. List each government reimbursement contract, its payer, its rate and unit, and for each what you have billed, been paid, are still owed, and have been denied, then measure the average wait from delivering a service to being paid.
Open the Contracts and Receivables Snapshot →First, make sure you are in the right place. Then place your trouble in one of the four shapes, because the shape decides the guide. Answer each honestly.
Good, you are in the right place. Now answer each of these the way it really is, not the way you wish it were. There is no shame in a low score. That is the whole point of looking.
A reimbursement rate that does not cover the cost of delivering the service is a structural problem no amount of clean billing can fix, and most leaders have never worked out the true cost of one unit. Calculate what it actually costs you to deliver one unit, counting staff time, documentation time, supervision, and a share of overhead, and compare it to the rate.
Cleaner billing will only help you lose money faster. That is a structural decision, not a billing fix: route to renegotiating or exiting the contract, to mission clarity and strategic direction for whether this work belongs in your organization at all, and to the financial health work for the numbers and any deliberate, funded subsidy. Keep your billing finding here too, but face this first.
Turn the finding into an ordered plan that names your first guide and follows the order reimbursement actually works: set up, bill, manage the cash, protect. You cannot bill a contract you have not set up, and you cannot manage the cash from claims you are not getting paid. Add any routes the checks surfaced, then give the first guide a real start date.
Open the Prioritized Billing Plan →Two moments here call for a professional. If anything in your billing history raises a question of whether what you billed was truthful and fully supported, stop and get an attorney now, because billing a government payer for what you did not properly earn is not a paperwork error, it is fraud, with consequences far beyond the money, and that work lives in the compliance and risk work. And if you are already facing an active audit or a demand to repay, get a nonprofit accountant and an attorney before you respond. This is the most serious edge in this work.
You can say, in one plain sentence, whether your trouble is setup, billing, cash flow, or protection. You have a written plan that names your first guide and a date. And you know two things you may never have calculated: how long you really wait to be paid, and whether one unit of service actually covers its cost.
Once the money you are owed is flowing and you are on your feet, it is worth stepping back to look at the whole organization, not just the part that was on fire. There is a short whole-organization check-up waiting when you are ready. That is not a sales pitch. It is the next honest thing to look at. The whole-organization check-up →