Glofish
Industry practice is that customers pay deposits when placing aircraft orders and then stage payments prior to and during the manufacture of their aircraft. So the aircraft manufacturer could be in a cash neutral situation, even with very long lead times before aircraft delivery, depending upon the payment terms of each order.
Quite different to the local grocery store...and perhaps only becomes an issue if the aircraft manufacturer commits building aircraft without orders (and so without deposits & stage payments). But that would be foolhardy.