Cash Flow Analysis with Microsoft BI

Global Data 365
May 21, 2021

With the advancement in technology, it is more important than ever to understand how cash flow analysis will affect your company and how technology, such as business intelligence (BI), can help you keep track of your cash.

What is Cash Flow Analysis?

Financial reporting requires the use of cash flow analysis. You can tell where cash is produced and invested by looking at your company’s cash inflows and outflows over time so you can prepare accordingly. Controlling your cash will help your company not only stay afloat through difficult times but also open gates to new opportunities.

Have you had a profit or a loss? Cash flow is important at any point of a company’s development cycle, whether you’re a new start-up or an existing company. Anything you do requires money, from managing assets to hiring a new employee. To achieve security and consistency, you must have the right tools and structures in place at the right time to help you manage and predict your cash flow.

Different Approaches to Cash Flow Analysis

At the end of each quarter, most accounting teams are responsible for conducting a cash flow analysis to determine that all the company’s expenses are taken into account.

Free Cash Flow (FCF) is among the most valuable financial performance indicators. Experts look at FCF or operating cash flow minus capital expenditures to determine how much money a business has left over to broaden or return to shareholders. You have an issue if your expenditure exceeds your income.

A cash flow statement is a crucial tool for managing cash flow, and it contains data from operations, investing, and financing. A cash flow statement is traditionally created to use Excel-based manual data analysis. It can be difficult to combine data from your cash flow analysis, expected and real operating expenses, capital expenditures, accounts receivable/payable balances, and general ledger data. Excel costs time and money. Identifying the ramifications, many businesses have simplified manual accounting processes and adopted business management and intelligence technologies to better analyze and predict cash flow.

Cash Flow Analysis with BI

Companies have embraced business intelligence technology to change the way they handle their cash flow now that the platform is more available and affordable. Companies use business intelligence and analytics software to automate cash flow analysis and provide the tools they need to analyze data optimize cash flow analysis, and more.

Review the Jet Sample: Cash Flow Statement.

The best feature of business intelligence software is that it is designed to provide more precise financial statistics and, as a result, eliminate the guesswork from the cash flow analysis process. BI solutions provide managers with reports that are timely, reliable, and simple to use.

Here are a few examples of how BI is assisting companies all over the world in better managing their cash inflows and outflows.

- Intelligent Predictions

Financial predictions enable you to prepare for the allocation of resources and budgeting by providing a clear way to make strategic business decisions. Cash predictions can be generated automatically using BI software. Financial managers can remain updated with this ability, including advanced warnings of cash shortages or surpluses. This enables a business to respond rapidly to growth potential or to cut back when necessary.

- Data Management

Assembling data from various sources is the most time-consuming aspect of cash flow analysis by spreadsheet. You will get the figures you require in real-time using BI software that combines with your ERP and CRM solution. The cash flow analysis will provide more useful insights and up-to-date reports, allowing you to make fast, data-driven decisions.

- Manage Projects

Large projects may have a significant impact on cash flow. For cash flow development and proper development, financial managers need greater control of what goes in and what comes out, so the ability to analyse a project’s length, expenses, resources needed, and payment terms is critical.

- Plan Inventory

There are some costs involved with the inventory. It not only binds up cash in goods but getting too much inventory can also be harmful to your cash flow. You will make a decent source of supply and be more careful with inventory spending with BI tools. In the long run, BI will save you a lot of time and money by sales forecasting and intelligent reporting.

- Risk Management

Should you put money into a new venture? Should you temporarily reduce your spending? Risk management software such as BI software is a reliable tool. If you have a cash flow problem, if your prediction indicates that you may not have enough cash, a BI solution will enable you to perform a fast prediction and liquidity analysis to assist you in making the best decision possible.

BI Solution

BI tools help data-driven analysis and decision-making, which is just what you need to keep a tight grip on your cash flow. Although there are many BI solutions available today, particularly for Microsoft Dynamics users, there is no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” solution.

We are here to assist you if you want to improve your financial statements and cash flow review. Contact us today!

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Global Data 365 is composed of highly skilled professionals who specialize in streamlining the data and automate the reporting process through the utilization of various business intelligence tools.

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Budgeting Problems That Companies Face in Fiscal Planning

Global Data 365
May 21, 2021

Organizations all over the world are putting in more effort than ever before to achieve long-term, successful growth. Fiscal planning, which includes compiling, tracking, and reviewing a company’s income, expenditures, debt, and capital estimates for implementation in the annual budget, is a result of that growth strategy. It’s a big organizational challenge that happens once a year but typically lasts longer than expected.

If you ask every big company’s CFO, they will tell you that during this time of organizing staff, aligning numbers, and handling approvals, they’ve probably missed a few nights (or weeks) of sleep. They are the ones that are largely responsible for determining priorities, benchmarking business results, making changes, and implementing the budget company-wide, even though there are several different participants in the budgeting process leading to budgeting problems. It goes without saying that without the correct structures and processes in place, this can be a challenging time.

Budgeting and Fiscal Planning

Budgeting is necessary to direct daily revenue and expenditure decisions and assign resources. Long-term fiscal planning needs resources and support for financial targets. Although budgeting is intended to keep the business on track and find areas for change, the fact is that it is not a simple job. Rather than focusing on profitability and competitiveness, the budgeting process is often time-consuming and labor-intensive, with little return on investment. Tackling down the root issues, we conducted research and listed the top eight budgeting issues that most businesses face while preparing their fiscal year.

Time

Coordinating, editing, and consolidating various budget contributors’ versions of the same static spreadsheet takes a long time. Many CFOs have reported spending upwards of 250 hours on the budgeting process itself, from time spent reinforcing numbers to missed hours spent tracking down individual budget participants.

Communication

Before, during, and after the budgeting phase, there seem to be a lot of moving parts in a business. Budget developers, contributors, and approvers must all provide feedback at each point, but many businesses lack a tool to facilitate collaboration. They end up budgeting in silos, with no collaboration with other departments or a clear end goal in sight.

Complexity

Trying to deal with deadlines and unanticipated adjustments is another issue that many budget owners face throughout the multi-layered budgeting process. Any change or alteration to a budget result in a complex back and forth hassle of redoing numbers, responding to questions, and re-sending spreadsheets, which should be an easy fix.

Flexibility

When developing a budgeting document for all managers in an organization, it’s crucial that the form or spreadsheet they must fill out be structured and simple to comprehend. The problem is that unregulated spreadsheets lack the structure and marking needed for all budget participants. As a result, many people become engrossed in the information and find it difficult to provide correct answers.

Accuracy

Most businesses end up depending on manual data entry and procedures to put together 30 to 100 Excel files (each with different versions). Manual processes are notorious for causing human error, inconsistencies, and a lack of control since there is no easy way to filter down the numbers.

Optimization

Monitoring and changing the budget during the year is an effective business practice that contributes to increased profits and productivity. But, due to technical limitations and the manual labor needed to combine actuals and budgets, many businesses do not use it.

Cost

The cumulative cost of several annual budgeting projects will stack up once all the time and money that the six budgeting issues above consume are added together. Aside from the labour costs associated with inefficient procedures, many businesses are unaware of the value that good budgeting and fiscal planning can bring to the table.

Value

Perceived importance is one of the most critical factors in the budgeting process. Is the money you spend on planning and budgeting worth it? Operating managers should be able to make informed choices that are in line with the company’s overall financial priorities thanks to fiscal planning.

Key Takeaways for Fiscal Planning

At Global Data 365, we have learned these budgeting problems from our monitoring and analytics customers time and time again. As a result, with our new budgeting tools, we want to improve the way you budget. Our budgeting system is a simple, adaptable, and simple-to-use fiscal planning solution that manages and streamlines the budgeting process in Excel and on the web from more than 140 ERPs. Users can use their existing Excel skills to transform the budgeting process into an easily controlled, systematic process that can be completed in half the time with traditional Excel integration and an interactive web portal.

Here’s how we can help you gain more control over your processes and make your next budgeting period easier:

– By eliminating manual processes and disparate structures, you can save time and money on financial planning.

– Easily create, compile, and report on the budgets on a single forum for budget owners and contributors.

– With planned, automated workflows, you can cut the budget timeline in half.

– For simplified budget and actual reporting, import data directly from over 140 ERPs.

– Improve financial efficiency across departments by increasing productivity with fast, reliable budget numbers.

Budgeting tool that is both affordable and versatile, and that works the way people want a financial planning tool to work. Businesses can reduce the budgeting process, produce more reliable numbers, increase financial results and efficiency, and make better decisions in half the time.

If you’d like to gain control over your budgeting problems, schedule a demo with us today!

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