While the issue of ‘Future CashFlow Reporting’ (or similar) has already been the topic of much debate on the forum, but - as of yet - without any case-closing decision or outcome, I would like to revitalize this topic based on the following rationale and proposal for a basic and pragmatic solution.
Background: the present cash-flow reporting function in Manager takes a ‘were’ view on the cash (cash-like) transactions, looking at what happened in a given past period. However, monitoring and managing future cash positions (i.o.w the ‘to be’ view) is a fundamentally important aspect of running a business. Currently, Manager lacks a date-consolidated forward view on the money-position.
Use-Objective : to facilitate the data-gathering in Manager for subsequent manual input in a dedicated satellite cash flow forecasting application.
Use-Case : At present, in order to be able to have a forward view on the overall available ‘cash’ balances in a given time-horizon, some key-data of all Purchase and Sales Invoice transactions are manually re-entered in a bespoke developed VBA-Excel application. This modus operandi is inevitably time-consuming (in my own case on average some 250 invoices per month), duplicates information already available in Manager and requires additional checks to ensure correctness of the manual input.
Suggested solution : The existence of a report that aggregates by date the sum of the Payable amounts (Purchase Invoices) and Receivables (Sales Invoices) would substantially reduce the workload and improve the accuracy of the input. The existence of such a report - as a Standard report (as opposed to a Custom report to be developed by the user) would further enrich the already impressive ‘portfolio’ of features in Manager. No doubt that such a report may prove to be helpful to a large number of the many users of the application in many countries as, indeed, ‘money-position’ management is a universally critical function even for small businesses. The report would be a very useful and practical source of information for the use of purposely developed cashflow management software that exists in the market, with varying range of features, level of complexity and pricing structures.
Report Definition :
User-supplied parameters : From date; To date (being the near-date and the far-date of the time horizon of the Payables/Receivables due date). Description: user narrative of the report.
Report Heading :
(placement and style as per the ‘standard’ layout)
Business name
Payables Projection or Receivables Projection (as applicable)
For the period from From date to To date
Report Content :
(in a 3-column lay-out- left to right)
Date : date of the grouping of the Payable / Receivable amounts due for that date.
Name : name of the Supplier / Customer (as applicable) with invoices due on the Date.
Amount : the total amount due on the Date.
Sorting :
In Ascending date-order, and within by Ascending name-order.
Report Definition :
User-supplied parameters : From date; To date (being the near-date and the far-date of the time horizon of the Payables/Receivables due date). Description: user narrative of the report.
Report Heading :
(placement and style as per the ‘standard’ layout)
Business name
Payables Projection or Receivables Projection (as applicable)
For the period from to
Report Content :
(in a 3-column lay-out- left to right)
Date : date of the grouping of the Payable / Receivable amounts due for that date.
Name : name of the Supplier / Customer (as applicable) with invoices due on the Date.
Amount : the total amount due on the Date.
Sorting :
In Ascending date-order, and within by Ascending name-order.
Grouping :
At the change of Name, print a (sub) Total for that Supplier / Customer
At the change of Date, print a (sub) Total for that Date.
At the end of the Amount column, print a (grand) Total.
Grouping :
At the change of Name, print a (sub) Total for that Supplier / Customer.
At the change of Date, print a (sub) Total for that Date.
At the end of the Amount column, print a (grand) Total.
Content Expansion :
When clicking on the amount next to the name in a date-row, list the transactions making up the Total amount for that Supplier / Customer on that Date
Details to show (with Edit and View buttons for each transaction)
Date : the date of the transaction
Transaction : the Invoice type – # Invoice reference number
Amount : the amount of the transaction
Conclusion :
The report-based suggestion attempts to offer a pragmatic solution without - to my very limited knowledge - extensive development work, design changes and inclusion of new attributes. Final judgement on that statement is entirely and exclusively left to the expertise of the developer. From a user point of view, the addition of a ‘projection’ report would provide a minimum-minimorum but helpful instrument to manage - or assist in managing - money position without having to resort to error-prone and tedious (extensive) data re-entry.
Appreciating a positive consideration for development of the idea.