A business cash flow forecast is not a crystal ball. But it will give you vital business intelligence to help your scenario-plan, search for cost-savings and look for strategies that will preserve your cashflow position.
During the ongoing crisis, many sectors are seeing income either disappear completely or drop to dangerous levels. To be able to navigate the future path of your cashflow, you need to start forecasting – so you can map out your financial position over the coming months and can take the appropriate action to safeguard your cash position.
Projecting your cashflow pipeline forwards during a crisis is vital. Having access to detailed forecasts helps you to scenario-plan, search for cost-savings and look for strategies that will preserve your cashflow position.
Remaining in control of the cash coming into (and going out of) the business is the real focus, so you can accurately predict your financial position and can resolve any issues.
Getting more from your forecasting
- Run regular forecasts – The financial landscape is changing on a daily basis at present. A cashflow forecast is not a document that remains static. Variables and external drivers are literally changing each day, so it’s vital that you run frequent forecasts and react swiftly to any projected cash issues as they become apparent.
- Use the latest cashflow forecasting apps – cashflow forecasting apps integrating with your Xero accounts, giving a drilled-down view of how your cash inflows and outflows will pan out over the coming months – information that will inform and justify the decisions you make during these extremely challenging times.
- Explore the right revenue streams – most sectors will have seen their face-to-face sales drop to absolute zero since quarantine restrictions came into place. To overcome this, there’s a real imperative to explore revenue streams and new opportunities for income if possible. The idea is to find ways to increase the money that’s coming in the door and balance out your unavoidable expenses.
- Get proactive with cost-cutting – if you can reduce cash outflows to a minimum, that will have a real impact on the health of your future cashflow. Pare back your operations and aim to reduce things like unnecessary software subscriptions, or over-ordering of basic supplies. Negotiating cheaper rates with suppliers, if possible, will also help.
- Review your staffing needs – ideally it is not the time to make anyone redundant, in some instances you may not have a choice, but you can look at ways to reduce the costs of staffing and resourcing. Reducing working hours or redeploying staff in different roles are all options that reduce payroll costs, while also looking after your staff’s welfare.
- Run a variety of scenarios – changing the financial drivers in your forecast model allows you to scenario-plan different strategies and options. Many of these will be in a long-term plan when restrictions ease. Scenario-planning lets you answer questions and will give you some hard evidence on which to base your decision-making and strategic outlook over the coming months.
- Look at various ways to access funding – if forecasts show a giant cashflow hole coming up, you’re going to need additional funding to get through this crisis. We can assist your business to investigate funding opportunities from grants, banks, loan providers and alternative lenders
If you need assistance with any of the above, please contact us at K3 Accounting