Cash Flow Reporting
Use Cash Flow Report activities (31.8) to forecast monthly cash projections. This function monitors actual and projected cash flow movements over a defined period consisting of projection intervals. The projections can be cumulative or non-cumulative.
Cumulative projections display the current balance on the account in this interval plus posting activity such as invoices or credit notes due. The system calculates a current balance for each interval by adding the due open items for this interval to the previous interval’s balance. Non-cumulative projections display only the expected posting activity for that account during that interval.
When you create a Cash Flow Report, the system follows these steps:
• The system retrieves the current balances and activity on the accounts you want to monitor.
• You define a projection period such as the next three months. The system then retrieves all actuals with a due date that falls in the projection period, and displays the projected balances (or activities only) for each interval accordingly.
The Excel integration option lets you export these figures to a spreadsheet for analysis.
You normally monitor customer or supplier control accounts, bank accounts, petty cash accounts, and expense accounts in a cash flow forecast, but you can include any type of GL account with Cash Flow Report. Credit notes and invoices due on future dates have an obvious effect on cash flow on accounts on those dates, and you can also include recurring entries; for example, direct debits for salaries paid from the account.
Balance sheet accounts display balance information as an opening balance in the report; profit and loss accounts display the account activity of the previous period, which you can use for projection to forecast future costs. For customer and supplier control accounts, the system displays AR and AP open items, such as customer invoices and supplier credit notes, but not operational transactions, such as sales orders and purchase orders.
You can manually enter correction amounts on the current balance for one-time instances of cash received or cash paid (cash on-hand).
The percentage option lets you include amounts in a projection that are due to increase over the period. For example, you can use this option to forecast expected salary increases over a 12-month period. The projection for each interval reflects the effect of the salary increase in that period, instead of accounting for the total increase at the beginning or end of the forecast.
The Currency view option lets you view the report in a currency other than the base currency. When you specify a non-base currency, only positions in that currency are accounted for.
To set up the Cash Flow report:
1 Specify the GL calendar cut-off period, which is the start of the projection intervals.
2 Specify the number of projection intervals and the length of the intervals.
3 Set the Actuals To date. The system retrieves all actuals up to this date.
You can reopen and recalculate saved reports.