Discover how automated Cash Flow Forecasts can transform your advisory services and help you empower your clients with business insights.
Why Cash Flow Forecasting?
Cash flow forecasting is a vital tool for businesses of all sizes. A cash crunch can significantly heighten stress levels. Yet, even well-established businesses with robust financials and strong revenue streams can face challenging periods of tight liquidity. Such constraints can lead to payroll disruptions, increased pressure to manage accounts receivable, and potential material shortages if the liquidity issues persist for too long. However, the true key to maintaining stability is forward-looking financial planning. Effective cash flow management and strategic budgeting are critical in mitigating these risks.
For accountants advising small business owners, cash flow forecasting is particularly valuable. The urgency and universal understanding around the importance of cash makes it a tangible concept clients can more easily grasp. Cash flow forecasts are a vital tool you can build for your clients, to explore various scenarios and develop contingency plans.
Creating Automated Cash Flow Forecasts
Implementing automated cash flow forecasts with Jirav's Autoforecast feature is a straightforward process that can greatly enhance your financial planning and advisory services. By leveraging this feature, you can quickly generate accurate and reliable cash flow forecasts for your clients based on their historical performance data. Jirav connects to the business general ledger, workforce and other non-financial data and takes into account various factors such as seasonality, trends, and historical patterns to provide a reliable projection of future cash flow.
After generating this cash flow forecast, it is essential to have advisory consultations with your clients to validate the accuracy of the forecast and make any necessary adjustments.
Automated cash flow forecasts offer numerous benefits for both accountants and their clients. They eliminate the need for manual data entry but also reduces the risk of errors and ensures accuracy in the forecast. Additionally, automated cash flow forecasts provide real-time updates, allowing you to track and monitor your client's cash flow on an ongoing basis. This enables you to have up-to-date insights into their financial health and make timely recommendations or adjustments as needed. The ability to access this information quickly and easily is invaluable for both accountants and their clients, as it empowers them to make proactive financial decisions and stay ahead of any potential cash flow challenges.
Furthermore, automated cash flow forecasts offer a level of flexibility that manual forecasts cannot match. With the ability to easily adjust plans and assumptions, you can create multiple scenarios and analyze the potential impact on your client's cash flow. This allows you to explore different strategies and make well-informed decisions about their financial future, helping them navigate through various business challenges and opportunities.
Lean into your Advisory Meeting to Keeping Cash Flow Forecasts Relevant
Armed with the Cash Flow Forecast, you are ready to get into business insights advisory conversations with the client to validate the plans match their goals for the upcoming months. Through monthly conversations, you can also compare where cash flows are not matching what was originally planned and make adjustments with business realities.
To see how your firm can step into high level advisory with a simple automatically generated cash flow forecast, request a demo with Jirav.