The freshly updated QuickBooks Cash Flow lets you see how your business is doing in real time and gives you the details you need to manage your cash flow and make smarter business decisions.
Cash flow explained and the importance of cash flow predictions
Cash flow is the inflow and outflow of $ from a business. Cash allows us to pay the bills, re-invest in the business, return cash to shareholders and ensure there is a surplus ready for future financial challenges. Negative cash flow indicates the business’s liquid assets are decreasing therefore its a wise to move to keep your eye on how your business is travelling at all times. A cash flow prediction on the other hand is a forecast of how your cash will look in the future. The prediction can assist to show any cause for concern about running short of cash up to a year in advance based on your past numbers. A prediction is important because if you simply rely on whats in the bank now, you may not be able to identify an upcoming issue and take appropriate action before it’s too late.
When it comes to understanding your financial situation, how can QuickBooks help?
As a business owner, you may have one main bank account for your business, but it’s likely that you’ll also be using credit cards, and possibly supplementary accounts too. By connecting all of your bank accounts and credit cards to QuickBooks, you’ll be able to see your overall balance at a glance and have a better understanding of your cash position in real time.
What are the new features?
QuickBooks Online have added 4 powerful updates to make predicting your cash flow even more accurate;
- Stay on Top of BAS liabilities – QuickBooks can help to forecast tax liabilities like GST to make preparing and paying your BAS a breeze
- Know when your invoices will be paid – Smart predictions make it easy to know when your customer invoices will be paid.
- See the future of your cash flow – QuickBooks uses bank and QuickBooks Activity to predict money-in and money -out for up to a year ahead
- Check your cash flow on the go – Now available on the QuickBooks Online iOS app and coming soon to Android
How to use QuickBooks cash flow.
QuickBooks cash flow has two main sections. The first section is an overview and the second is the planner.
The cash flow overview shows your money in and money out for this month. You can view your overall net position or click in the sections to dig deeper and take action towards proactively managing your cash flow, including:
- Following up overdue invoices with clients
- Invoicing for unbilled time
- Reviewing overdue bills
- Reviewing PAYG obligations
The cash flow planner is an interactive tool that forecasts your cash flow, the money going in and out of your business. It looks at your financial history from your bank feed to forecast future money in and money out events. You can also add and adjust future events to see how certain changes affect your cash flow. PS: please be aware that if you disconnect a bank account (or have not connected a bank account) the data will not appear on the chart.
Want to learn more about getting on top of your cash flow? Contact us today.
