Cash Flow Software
Cash Flow Software is an important tool for your business and is a tool that is used for projecting into the future rather than analysing the past, which is left for your accounting software.
I know that in the past I would spend hours setting up a myriad of spreadsheets, projections and sit analysing numbers, sales, costs, overheads etc. only to find that each time I did this the major time was spent in setting up the actual spreadsheets and making sure these all worked and add up. Does the balance sheet balance, have I included the right numbers in the right place and so on. As I already had Excel, the spreadsheets were effectively free, but my time wasn’t.
As my personal time is valuable to me, in the end, it made sense to set up a cash flow forecast template, which developed into the present cash flow software versions, which includes a free trial version of the software, through to a version that will help you forecast for up to 7-years forward.
The main purpose of the forecasting process is to show in advance how much cash you will need and when you will need it. Certainly, if you are looking to borrow money in the business for an expansion, preparing a cash flow forecast will help you to work out how much of a loan or bank overdraft you will need.
Having professional looking Cash Flow Reports to present to your bank manager for this purpose will help in this process, especially when presented with a professional looking balance sheet to validate the numbers. Having cash flow software with preset cash flow and profit and loss templates, will save you hours of time, so you can focus on putting together the numbers and forecasts, rather than spending time reinventing the wheel.
When I ran my own Chartered Accounting practice a few years back, I often cam e across clients that would reinvent accounting software using elaborate spreadsheets and the like. I would always recommend to them to invest in an account package, as this would make life much easier and it would also save money, as the numbers would be presented to us at the end of the year in a much better format.
The key to any software is in its ease of use and having plenty of functionality. With all of Bowraven’s products I have spent time in making sure our software is easy to use, with easy to follow manuals. We have also recently added an online support forum for those additional questions you may have whilst using any of our fully downloadable products.
Finally, forecasts will set flexible goals that are very effective in controlling expenses and for you to manage budgets and costs going forward. Furthermore, the by-product of the information produced will make the information in financial statements significantly more meaningful and be effectively used for managing the business. It is difficult to assess financial data if you don’t know what the numbers should be in the first place.
BASIC FINANCIAL FORECASTING is the tool that will provide sufficient data to navigate the future. If you knew or could forecast approximately how much cash you’ll have in the bank at the end of each month for the next 12 months or more, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Wouldn’t you like to know that?