It’s time to automate cash flow management

Cash flow management is one of the top concerns for businesses today—with good reason. According to Jessie Hagen, the former VP of the Small Business Association Division at US Bank, 82% of small businesses fail because of poor cash flow management or poor understanding of cash flow.

There’s also an opportunity cost to slow, labor-intensive cash flow management. You don’t know what you don’t know, and basing critical business decisions on outdated or incomplete data can hinder business growth and competitiveness.

Challenges for SMBs

Effective cash flow management involves monitoring ongoing inflows and outflows. It also involves projecting what the future will bring, which requires gathering and analyzing data from a variety of software systems to produce timely forecasts and reports.

In a 2021 survey of executives in the distillery industry, cash flow management was the top priority cited by respondents—above concerns such as budgeting, staffing, and increasing capacity.

Common cash flow challenges for small and medium businesses include:

Gathering real-time data to create an accurate cash forecast
Dealing with unexpected surprises in cash inflows and outflows
Keeping data and forecasts up to date, especially during busy periods and growth
Producing timely analytics and reports

Automated tools to the rescue

Automated, AI-based tools are now available to alleviate many of the struggles businesses face with traditional cash flow management methods. For example, Sage Intacct, the cloud-based ERP solution, seamlessly integrates with a variety of advanced tools designed to manage and forecast cash flow automatically.

One such tool is Payference, which uses AI to provide real-time cash visibility, optimize businesses’ cash positions, and deliver actionable analytics and reports. Payference combines accounts receivables, accounts payables, purchase orders, and bank transactions, and uses algorithms based on AI and machine learning to provide a unified view and strategies to optimize cash flow.

A big advantage of Payference and other AI-based tools is that they are excellent at predicting trends and modeling a variety of cash flow scenarios. There’s no need to invest hours of time to create a monthly forecast that may or may not consider every variable. Instead, data can be fed automatically into the AI-based systems to produce accurate forecasts within minutes—forecasts that can then be used to make smart business decisions.

Learn more

Insero & Co. is a public accounting firm with decades of experience working with businesses and nonprofits of all sizes. We can help you weigh the benefits of automating your accounting processes, including cash flow management, and help you make the transition to the latest software solutions. Whatever type of support you’re looking for, we’re here to help you find the right solution.